Re: Lisa replies re: Lisa's anthro--and "private prop"

[cbcox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Carrol Cox)]

    As I've thought over this (possibly) developing thread, it occurs to
me that at some point it will raise an issue Lisa raised last summer and
that never got very well defined: the "origins of private property."

    At the time I said Lisa was asking the wrong question, and had no response
when she challenged me with "What is the right question?"

    We approach the right question by noting that when Engels spoke of
pp in his *Origins* he was *not* speaking of "merely" private possessions,
such as the shirt on my back, even if, like a knife, they were means of
production. He was speaking of "control over the labor of others." In this
sense, "private property" is very nearly a synonym for "class society."

    So the right question is, "How did class society originate?" We
will never get any answer to "How did private property originate" in any
more inclusive sense of "private property." Jane Goodall speaks of some
of her chimpanzees carrying around an "ant 'fishing'" twig for several
days, and I suppose that is private property in the more inclusive sense.
So? It is not a very interesting concept at that level of generality.
     As Adam Rose notes, a Marxist perspective can help in almost any
study, but the core of Marxism is the analysis of class relations. As a
friend in the '60s put it, it is the summary of the historical experience
of the proletariat. Carrol


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