It's actually not a 'major tenet in Communism' - a quick read of any Communist literature (yes, even the Manifesto) would correct this notion. I have no idea how the feeling that communism promotes no personal property originated other than by, charitably, mistranslation and misunderstanding. Marx never said everyone will be sharing a toothbrush.
Yes but outside of personal basic needs, you don't own anything in communism, it's all owned by the community collectively. No doubt completely controlled by the party leaders.
Could be because of how major things like real estate and means of employment can’t be owned individually in major communist systems like what the USSR did.
It’s not toothbrushes that people care about so much as their homes and jobs.
I’m not familiar with all communist countries, but the whole “can’t own property” from USSR and China probably contributes to the feeling that communism promotes no personal property.
>"The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class
antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few. In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."[0]
Ctrl + Fing for 'private property' brings up a lot more. I haven't actually read this thing, but I wanted to check because I was curious what the manifesto actually did say.
Here's the German of the last sentence in case you think it's a bad translation:
>"In diesem Sinn können die Kommunisten ihre Theorie in dem einen Ausdruck: Aufhebung des Privateigentums, zusammenfassen."
If you do a surface level reading of text, you're going to get a surface level understanding of it.
From here[1]:
> In political/economic theory, notably socialist, Marxist, and most anarchist philosophies, the distinction between private and personal property is extremely important. Which items of property constitute which is open to debate. In some economic systems, such as capitalism, private and personal property are considered to be exactly equivalent.
> Personal property or possessions includes "items intended for personal use" (e.g., one's toothbrush, clothes, and vehicles, and sometimes rarely money).[3] It must be gained in a socially fair manner, and the owner has a distributive right to exclude others.
> Private property is a social relationship between the owner and persons deprived, i.e. not a relationship between person and thing. Private property may include artifacts, factories, mines, dams, infrastructure, natural vegetation, mountains, deserts and seas—these generate capital for the owner without the owner having to perform any labour. Conversely, those who perform labour using somebody else's private property are deprived of the value of their work, and are instead given a salary that is disjointed from the value generated by the worker.
> In Marxist theory, the term private property typically refers to capital or the means of production, while personal property refers to consumer and non-capital goods and services
> In Marxist theory, the term private property typically refers to capital or the means of production, while personal property refers to consumer and non-capital goods and services
Hmm... maybe I misread the Communist Manifesto or something, but I did not get this. In fact, you can almost feel his hatred about the whole idea of personal ownership. This even extends to marriage and having children i.e children should be raised by the commune rather than individual parents.
> Hmm... maybe I misread the Communist Manifesto or something, but I did not get this. In fact, you can almost feel his hatred about the whole idea of personal ownership.
His distaste is not for “personal ownership” but for the distinct model of property that exists in the capitalist system, which is why he explicitly casts the Communist move to abolish bourgeois property (referred to equivalently as “bourgeois private property” and “private property”; the distinct system of property relations under capitalism) as consistent with the universal historical reality that new systems of property relations and economic systems involve destroying the prior system of property relations, e.g.,
“All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.
---quote---
“The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.
“The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
“In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”
> This even extends to marriage and having children
Viewing wives and children as part of a system of property relations, while very much a feature of the capitalist system Marx critiqued, is viewed distastefully even by many of the people who defend “capitalism” today, not just socialist critics.
> children should be raised by the commune rather than individual parents.
Where does Marx argue for this? Marx notes that the charge of destroying the family is levelled at Communists, and argues that this is hypocritical in that thr capitalist system has destroyed, in different ways, the substance of both proletarian and bourgeios families, and that what what Marxism seeks to extinguish is the hollow form of family that is left under capitalism, and not even that through any direct policy. He says that the existing family system would naturally fall away as a consequence of replacing the system of property and removing the class oppression which depends on it.
Thanks for the reply. Ok, I think I'll have to go back and re-read with this new perspective. Maybe I took the words too literally.
> money will become superfluous
Given your different perspective, what does he mean my this line? This one bit and the surrounding sentences is where I started to dismiss the text as quackery (compared to Das Kapital, which I did enjoy).
When hearing Marx say money will become useless, you've got to wonder what it means to have property. How do you become to posses a toothbrush if you didn't exchange money for it? Or do we go back to a barter economy?
It depends on what you mean by "raised", but after calling for the abolition of the family in the Manifesto (in whatever sense that the family under capitalism is bourgeois I guess) he says that children will be educated "on a communal basis" and will not be dependent upon their parents (since private property would be abolished). [0]
Secondly, I do not see how our current understanding of "personal ownership" escapes being "bourgeois private property". It seems disingenuous to keep implying that there would not be many radical shifts in how "personal property" would be understood under Marx's ideal communist system compared to how its understood now.
>If you do a surface level reading of text, you're going to get a surface level understanding of it.
I'd take this comment more seriously if you cited Marx in a primary text making this distinction, and not some secondary Wikipedia defense. Note that none of the citations in your copy/paste are from Marx himself.
Also, in the definitions given above, personal property could very well be private property, in cases where it was not "gained in a socially fair manner", which seems like a highly subjective criteria.
edit: for those who are silently downvoting, keep in mind that the poster I'm responding to criticized my 'surface level' reading of a primary text (which I readily admit to) and then, rather than presenting a more thorough understanding of the text, copy/pastes a vague summary of an argument, which fails to even properly make the distinction he wants to prove.
> a quick read of any Communist literature (yes, even the Manifesto) would correct this notion.
You must have missed it. And by it, I mean the whole document. Here's an extract from one of the dialogs:
> Question 3: How do you wish to achieve this aim?
> Answer: By the elimination of private property and its replacement by community of property
More extracts:
> What will this new social order have to be like
> ... Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement – in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods.
And more:
> Finally, when all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought together in the hands of the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord, money will become superfluous, and production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off whatever of its old economic habits may remain
>
> ...
>
> What will be the consequences of the ultimate disappearance of private property?
>
> ...
Karl Marx studied Property Law and his pamphlets before and after the Communist Manifesto were all about abolishing the personal ownership of property!
Thanks for that... I didn't know there was a difference under Marx.
So one thing Marx did say is that he wanted money to be "superfluous". If money would be useless, how do you get to own a toothbrush? Does that mean we either go back to a barter economy, or something like a social points system like Seasame Credit?