theblacksquid's random thoughts

I. Definitions

Property

Any possession which may used produce products, services or otherwise benefit one party or another. This includes, but is not limited to, land, industrial equipment, agricultural equipment, books, computers, etc.

Utility

Right to participate in activities involving the use of the property. (Ex. Driving a car; Reading a book; Farming on a plot of land, etc)

Benefit

Right to the products of the property. (Ex. A season's harvest on a farm; Cars built in a factory; Profits of selling a service, information on a database)

Alienation

Right to destroy, consume or exchange the property for something else.

II. A distorted present

During the 18th-19th century when people first began asking about their place in the world when it comes to who's in charge and how to organize civilized life, the definitions of property, especially between private and personal property, were clear:

Private property includes the factories, farms and the equipment within them, which are owned by a very small number of individuals.

Personal property are the things that you use directly, your clothes, your house (assuming you're not renting) and your household appliances.

However, things are no longer that simple.

Life for the common person has gotten so bad that sites like eBay and Amazon allow you to sell almost anything online – mostly what was once your personal possessions. Services like Uber and Angkas, the motorcycle ridesharing app in the Philippines, promise that “you can be your own boss”, all while taking a large chunk out of the earnings you've made with your own car or bike. People rarely even own the place they call “home” anymore.

Things aren't as simple anymore.

No, that's a lie – Things were never simple to begin with, because capitalism will do as capitalism does:

Reduce everything and everyone into a series of transactions.

Time we take a closer look at how it twists our lives and how we can take it back.

III. Looking past the curtain

With the lines between private and personal property blurring everyday as a result of rampant neoliberalism, we need to reduce both of them to their basic principles. We will define each of them in terms of Utility, Benefits and the Alienation (otherwise known as the right to take away) of Property.

As it stands today, the means to produce the needs of humanity, food, water, power, land, etc, are all considered Private Property. What this means is that those who have ownership of, say, a factory, have the right to the products (or, more often, the right to the profits on the sale of the products) and the right to sell, or even demolish the whole place if they so choose. They also have the right to work at the same factory, but if they can get people who are willing to work for a wage at that factory, why would they? And that's what they did, they hire workers to do the actual value-producing labor for them.

So let's take a look at what's happening here:

The Utility of the factory – the performance of labor – is given to the workers, while not excluding the owners. The owner working alongside the workers is the normal mode of operation for entrepreneurs and startups, for example. In most cases, however, this is practically surrendered to the workforce, especially in the case of large, multinational corporations.

The Benefits of the factory clearly go to the owners, that's why they could earn many times more than their workers despite not working that many times harder.

The right to Alienate – that is, change, destroy or sell – the factory is completely the owners'. It's in this manner they could sell portions of “ownership” to the public via stocks in order to raise more money to fund more money-making ventures. These stocks are then used to divide the profits among the stockholders, as well as the weight of each stockholder's vote. Vote on what, you might ask? Votes on matters of changing, selling and destroying parts of the factory.

All of the above can be said of landlords, the haciendas in rural Philippines, Uber, eBay, Facebook, etc. If a business allows you to use something, with or without pay (in both directions), while a vanishingly-small minority benefits off of your use, all while reserving the right to change the terms of the game all at the same time, you're being exploited.

IV. Looking at yourself

So where does this all leave you, the individual?

We live in an era in which the grip of profit-driven interests has escaped the walls of the workplace and follows us into our daily lives. It's likely you're reading this from an electronic device of some sort, most likely a phone, which, if we look at it in the terms we established above, is not completely yours. It's also likely you live in one or more online communities.

And yes, you did not misread that, I said “LIVE”.

Everyday we participate in social relations mediated by structures and services set up to benefit a minority. Here in the Philippines, for example, we continue to allow our parks, watersheds and other open spaces to be entombed in concrete by real estate firms seeking to build malls and walled communities. This is all while knowingly depriving the communities that live there their homes and livelihood. This is all in the face of an ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots.

So what do we have? What can we truly call ours?

Property is considered to be personal property when only one person, or a very limited number of people, have permission to use it, benefit from its use and can decide to sell, change or destroy it. So that book you and your friends might be taking turns to read is still personal property. Your clothes are personal property, your house (if you're not renting) and your other personal possessions are all personal property. The work you submit to your boss, whether it be research, products, etc, aren't. And neither do you truly own your social media profiles. By this measure, the modern worker, especially the modern Filipino worker thus owns less of the total things they use in their daily lives than they ever did in previous eras.

V. Looking out into the world

So we have talked about the things we use, or the places where we work, which we don't own, and talked about the things that we could truly call our own. But what about the things that we share, not just with our close friends and family, but with everyone in our communities, or even all of humanity?

Public property is when a large number of people are permitted to use it. It's when a large number of people benefit from the property being used. It's when decisions to change, destroy or sell a property are made by a community, or more often than not, that community's representatives.

We can see from here that roads, public hospitals, public schools and historical monuments are all this. Although, if you've seen a public school in the Philippines, then you know there's a lot left to be desired when it comes to public works and property.

This is because right now, the State (The Philippine Republic), is not doing a really good job of managing public works, and is falling into the trap of letting for-profit corporations take care of utilities and roadworks. What this means is that a large, centralized organization is making decisions on what to do with the properties under its care. Imagine for example a distant relative who hasn't seen what your home life has been like for the past ten years calling all the shots in your life. The State is like that, a far-removed entity that holds too much power over its people because of how it has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, via the Police and the Military.

Make no mistake, the under-funded schools, the public hospitals filled with over-worked and underpaid healthcare staff and constant water and electric shortages, are all just so much icing on this shit cake. A nation like Japan or Norway could have good public services and infrastructure, but the fact they still have a State to protect the interests of the rich still make them complicit in the abuse of the people.

VI. What is to be done?

This way of life is just slavery given another name.

Everyday, the rich get richer off of the work that others did. Their wealth being protected by the State, who is fed by that same ill-gotten wealth. All this while everyone is too distracted by the latest celebrity scandal, or fighting each other because of preconceived notions of what human beings should be like. This doesn't even include how The State treats indigenous people who choose to live their own way of life like trash.

What should we do about this?

As Anarchists, also known as Libertarian Socialists, we call for the complete abolition of Private Property in order to hand the workers the means to their own living. Worker's councils will replace managers and administrators, and decisions are to be made by consensus democracy. This ensures that the “tyranny of the masses” and mob rule does not overtake, and thus delay, the production of the needs of the community.

We call for the dissolution of the State, to be replaced with a confederation which is subdivided at the Regional, District and Community level. This replaces the overgrown bureaucracy of government processes and allow each community to decide what is best for their on lives. However, not every community will be able to provide for their own needs. We also recognize that the needs of the city is different from the needs of the countryside, and the needs of the indigenous people radically different from the prior two. This is the reason for the Confederation – coordinating the distribution of surplus and the needs of each community, as well as for infrastructure projects that affect multiple communities. No more will the farmer or the indigent be thrown to the wolves whenever powerful people want something from their property.

Alongside the dissolution of the State, we call for the abolition of the Police and The Military. In their place, an armed working class shall protect against internal threats, and a volunteer militia with a democratically-elected leadership to combat external threats to the cause.

I know that the above may be new concepts for you, and they are outside the scope of this brief work's scope. The person that sent you this will likely be able to elaborate on them, as well as answer any questions you might have. Further works like this one will be distributed soon, and we look forward to standing side-by-side with you against the forces of oppression.

ALL POWER TO THE UNITED WORKERS OF THE WORLD!!!