Once, when I was an adolescent, I was walking a dog around the neighbourhood. It was a cousin’s dog, they had gone away and left it to us to look after in the meantime. It was dusk, and I enjoyed the stroll around the block as it gave me time to think, even if the neighbourhood wasn’t much more than a hotchpotch of run down red brick terraces in rows and mundane semis. Sink estates like this were dotted around the periphery of the city, the air was equal parts menace and tedium. Some houses were completely derelict, the windows and doors covered by sheets of MDF plywood or corrugated iron frames. There was the odd small front garden with a few flowers in it, although it was far more common to see tufts of overgrown grass and weeds. Some decorated the space in front of their houses with a rusted washing machine. It was not much to look at. I was chewing some gum as I often did, and as I expended its utility the time came to dispose of it. Rather than simply throw it down on the ground as was the custom there, I thought I might make a show of civic pride and put it in a bin. It was the night before collection, so lines of wheelie bins sat on the pavement all along the streets. Seeing nothing more suited as I walked along, I disposed of my gum in a random bin, kept walking and thought little of it, for about ten seconds at least. At this point I heard a voice behind me.
Him: “Eh!!! Did you just use me bin?!”
Me: [stopping, turning around] “Er, yeah, what of it?”
Him: “That is my bin!!”
Me: “It’s a bin”
Him: “It’s my property!!”
Me: [walking on]“It’s a fucking bin!”
Then, as I carried on walking again as he blathered away to himself, I thought about this incident. Why was this man so apoplectic over someone using his bin. It was nothing more than a waste receptacle, his only relation to it was periodically disposing of his rubbish in it before the council sent people to collect it. What difference did it make if it contained a piece of chewing gum that he had not himself chewed? It was this that got me thinking seriously about property. What is property? Its basis in law appeared self-evident. Everywhere one looked, one saw evidence of how enshrined it was. Houses, cars, the aforementioned rusting washing machines. Everything with its designated owner, the conditions of ownership of inscribed in law, agreed upon and defended by all.
For those who devoutly believe in unfettered private property, it seems perfectly logical that everything ought to be owned by someone (as opposed to everyone), generally with the exceptions of the police and the military (to ensure that this state of affairs goes on uninterrupted). In their atomised reality, this is simply the natural of order of things, there will always be those who enjoy the benefits of ownership, and it is their right to so to the detriment of others. These people would make it sound like those who saw limits of private ownership as necessary were intent on collectivising children’s toys on night raids, or requisitioning family heirlooms for storage in a People’s Sentimental Objects Depot.
But personal belongings are of no relevance to the management and composition of society in terms of the allocation and distribution of material resources. It is a spurious argument to try and equate the ownership of a water treatment plant that ensures the availability of potable water to a necklace passed on by three generations of women. Opposition to any form of personal belongings is an attempt to demonise opposition to privately owned enterprises as the opinions of people intent on creating a 1984-esque dystopia in which no individuality is permitted. This is utterly facetious and on par with the ‘politics of envy’/’champagne socialists’ dichotomy used to respond to systemic criticism whether from the less fortunate or the more fortunate.
Nevertheless, all too often the more dominant strands of anti-capitalist ideologies have acquiesced to the framing of the debate as one between free enterprise and private ownership versus planned economies and state ownership. This is also a red herring designed to induce the stagnation of the imagination. These are not the only options available to us. It is possible to conceive of forms of collective ownership that do not entail state supervision, oversight or control.
Take for example the disused washing machine sat rusting in the rain out in front of the house. Is it economical for a neighbourhood of 1000 families to have roughly the same number of washing machines? Would it not be a better use of the resources of society to have a communally owned launderette, in which there are a sufficient number of machines for the community to be able to utilise a machine whenever necessary? Could the machines not be maintained en masse, so that repairs would be streamlined (of course, in such an imagined society planned obsolescence would no longer be a factor, further reducing the burden) by virtue of a single location where all the machines were contained?
This is just to consider one example of how a communalist-collectivist idea might manifest in a fashion that makes better use of the limited resources of our environment. One of the great challenges to emancipatory and liberatory modes of thinking that reject the state as an entity which can bring about freedom, autonomy and equity is the question of how vast and complex operations like hospitals and electricity production can be administered. It is not my contention that centralised control is essential, but the kinds of structure and organisation that could guarantee provision need to be trialled out. It is quite possible that different regions will require different approaches and different structures based upon their set of conditions.
But to insist that private property is the condition of freedom looks increasing ridiculous in the face of the deprivation endured by billions of people around the world, whilst others reside in enclaves of opulent luxury. This state of affairs in not sustainable, and must be challenged. Successful counter examples are the only viable way in which people can be made aware of other ways of operating, and that the idea that they are what they own is nothing more than divisive psychological manipulation designed to ensure consent and conformity.