Re: Private Property

[phillp2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Property rights are not only a relationship, but also are a bundle of
rights.  There is no such thing as simple private property.
Privatizing property, as Proudhom declared in 1849, is "theft" --"la
propriete, c'est le vol."

Eric Roll notes, Proudhon
	"accepted the view that labour was the sole source of wealth
and constituted the only title to property, he regarded it as vital that
every one should be able to enjoy and own the furits of his labour.
What he objected to was the abuse of property ... the power to
exact an unearned tribute which modern capitalist enterprise and
its laws gave to capitalism.. Rent, interest, profit, should be
abolished, but property should be preserved.
	How were the excrescences of private property to be removed?"
[Eric Roll, A History of Economic Thought, 242]

The eminent American Jurist David Bazelon wrote, "Property is
never for long anything more or, really anything different from what
some politically appointed court says it is." [ in Mermalstein, ed.,
Economics, 59]

So to say that property is private and that private property is good
because it is efficient (which by the way does not accord with the
empirical record where public utilities have almost always proved
more efficient than private utilities) is a meaningless statement.  (If
I could relate that to another stream on Pen-l, is co-operative
ownership private, social, collective property?  What about the
equiptment owned by the Amnesty International?)

I have discussed many of these issues in "Functional Rights:
Private, Public and Collective Property",  Studies in Political
Economy, 38, Summer 1992.  The current discussion on Pen-l is
rather superficial and ignores the enormous literature on the
subject which I am not about to review here.

Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba