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> [Marx] thought we should abolish private property. People should not be allowed to own things. At certain moments one can sympathise. But it's like wanting to

> [Marx] thought we should abolish private property. People should not be allowed to own things. At certain moments one can sympathise. But it's like wanting to ban gossip or forbid watching television. It's going to war with human behaviour. A common misconception is that 'private property' here is to be equated with 'personal property'. Marx and marxists do not believe that personal property should be abolished, or indeed that it makes sense to try and do so. Generally speaking, the private property that Marx advocated abolishing was private ownership of land and the 'means of production', the latter being a category akin to 'fixed assets'.

deleted 13y ago
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GuiA 13y ago
Reading that paragraph made me cringe, as it's such a basic misunderstanding of Marxism that it's the kind of thing you'd expect to read in a freshman essay written the night before after the student skimmed the first 10 lines of the Wikipedia article for "marxism" in a drunken stupor. Fortunately the rest of the article is pretty good, and shows that the author has actually read Marx a tiny bit. Which makes the presence of the first paragraph even more confusing.
- DavidAdams 13y ago
  I get the impression that the author wanted to dispense with all of the usual preconceptions about Marxism right at the beginning, to inoculate the essay against the reflexive prejudice people tend to have about Marx.
- nhaehnle 13y ago
  The first paragraph is probably intended to establish the author as somebody who isn't crazy. The disconnect between the majority beliefs about Marxism and its actual contents (as well as the beliefs of those who actually follow in Marx's footsteps today) is gigantic. I perfectly understand that the author felt they needed some way to bridge that gap without turning the vast majority of readers away at first sight.
- sanderjd 13y ago
  Ridiculing the parts of Marxism that are thought ridiculous by people who only know the popular view of Marxism was a very purposeful technique the author used to convince such people that the author is just as skeptical as they are, so that they could get people to read their (really great, I think) article about the parts of Marx' ideas that fewer people (at least Americans) are aware of. It worked really well on me!
- firstOrder 13y ago
  You're certainly correct, he invents ideas, puts them in Marx's mouth, then knocks them down.
  - notahacker 13y ago
    Then for good measure he invents ideas, puts them in Marx's mouth and builds them up. When Marx wrote about alienation he was writing about having no choice but to spend seventy hours a week performing repetitive tasks to order in a factory owned and run for someone else's benefit, not the existential angst generated by musing over whether it would be more fun being an architect than designing ads for garden furniture.
- rmc 13y ago
  It's probably wise to head off the common misconceptions and deal with common rebuttals up front. Otherwise the first comment on this would be "Oh yeah! Well we can't be happy if we don't even own our own wedding rings (for example)"
atom-morgan 13y ago
I've never been able to find a consistent definition of "means of production" or the distinction between "personal" and "private" property. At what point does my laptop go from a piece of machinery that gives me access to HN to a mean of production that could make something like HN?
- Jtsummers 13y ago
  A way to look at it may be: Is there one community laptop or are their many laptops? A mainframe setup and limited internet constrained to university and business campuses, it becomes more like the "means of production". If there are enough laptops (or near enough) to go around, it's personal property.
  - atom-morgan 13y ago
    But this is exactly what I'm talking about. I've never been able to get a clear answer because so many people in this camp have to take it on a case by case basis. So if laptops are plentiful, it’s personal property. I feel it’s safe to say that most developers probably have their own laptop. So if I hire a developer to write code on my laptop (which was previously personal property) is it now private property since it’s being used as a means of production? If so, the true distinction between personal and private property is intent which is far from satisfactory if we're defining property. So many things I own today would constantly be switching between personal and private property based on what I was trying to accomplish at that moment in time.
    - shornlacuna 13y ago
      The difference is not intent but use. This is the same with real estate: if I own a building to live in it, that's personal property, but if I own a building to rent it out or run a business in it then it becomes private property.
      - humanrebar 13y ago
        What if it's my personal property is valuable as a commodity? As in, what if I want to sell my home? I'm not sure the lines are so distinct. Even if they were theoretically distinct, I doubt that a legal system would fairly make the necessary distinctions.
snorkel 13y ago
But this is still the crucial flaw in Marxism, be because some greedy bastard will control means of production either way to their own benefit, and I'd rather that be owned by a professed capitalist who is regulated by the government rather than owned by the government that then regulates itself thus accountable to no one. This was really the major flaw in Marxist systems, the fat cats were given authority to govern both the public and private sector to their own benefit, no counterweight.
- Shamanmuni 13y ago
  That's a major point of the article. In his work you have a part in which he identifies the problems (eg Das Kapital) and another part which proposes a solution (eg The Communist Manifesto). In medical terms Marx made a good diagnosis, but a bad prognosis (as demonstrated by history). I think it's important to differentiate them. Marx wasn't a religious prophet, you can take the good stuff and leave out the bad. Even he said in his later life that his goals could be achieved by democratic means.
voyou 13y ago
It's true that when Marx talks about abolishing private property, he has in mind means of production, but I think it's a mistake to try and explain that by making a distinction between "private" and "personal" property (a distinction which Marx himself didn't make, FWIW). The distinction ends up being a distraction, because its hard to make clearly (for reasons people in this thread have given), and, in any case, it's not really important to what Marx is saying; if you abolish ownership of the means of production (private property) there's no real point in ownership of consumption goods either (personal property). In a society in which I can only gain access to consumption goods by subordinating myself to the people who own the means of production, it matters that I have a firm hold on the consumption goods I need. But, if we were able to abolish private ownership of the means of production, I would be able to access consumption goods in some non-alienated way, so there would be no need to own them. So I don't think it's quite right to say that "Marx and marxists do not believe that personal property should be abolished"; although the important thing is to abolish private property, the natural result of that would also be that personal property as we understand it would cease to exist.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

GuiA 13y ago

Reading that paragraph made me cringe, as it's such a basic misunderstanding of Marxism that it's the kind of thing you'd expect to read in a freshman essay written the night before after the student skimmed the first 10 lines of the Wikipedia article for "marxism" in a drunken stupor. Fortunately the rest of the article is pretty good, and shows that the author has actually read Marx a tiny bit. Which makes the presence of the first paragraph even more confusing.

DavidAdams 13y ago
I get the impression that the author wanted to dispense with all of the usual preconceptions about Marxism right at the beginning, to inoculate the essay against the reflexive prejudice people tend to have about Marx.
nhaehnle 13y ago
The first paragraph is probably intended to establish the author as somebody who isn't crazy. The disconnect between the majority beliefs about Marxism and its actual contents (as well as the beliefs of those who actually follow in Marx's footsteps today) is gigantic. I perfectly understand that the author felt they needed some way to bridge that gap without turning the vast majority of readers away at first sight.
sanderjd 13y ago
Ridiculing the parts of Marxism that are thought ridiculous by people who only know the popular view of Marxism was a very purposeful technique the author used to convince such people that the author is just as skeptical as they are, so that they could get people to read their (really great, I think) article about the parts of Marx' ideas that fewer people (at least Americans) are aware of. It worked really well on me!
firstOrder 13y ago
You're certainly correct, he invents ideas, puts them in Marx's mouth, then knocks them down.
- notahacker 13y ago
  Then for good measure he invents ideas, puts them in Marx's mouth and builds them up. When Marx wrote about alienation he was writing about having no choice but to spend seventy hours a week performing repetitive tasks to order in a factory owned and run for someone else's benefit, not the existential angst generated by musing over whether it would be more fun being an architect than designing ads for garden furniture.
rmc 13y ago
It's probably wise to head off the common misconceptions and deal with common rebuttals up front. Otherwise the first comment on this would be "Oh yeah! Well we can't be happy if we don't even own our own wedding rings (for example)"

atom-morgan 13y ago

I've never been able to find a consistent definition of "means of production" or the distinction between "personal" and "private" property. At what point does my laptop go from a piece of machinery that gives me access to HN to a mean of production that could make something like HN?

Jtsummers 13y ago
A way to look at it may be: Is there one community laptop or are their many laptops? A mainframe setup and limited internet constrained to university and business campuses, it becomes more like the "means of production". If there are enough laptops (or near enough) to go around, it's personal property.
- atom-morgan 13y ago
  But this is exactly what I'm talking about. I've never been able to get a clear answer because so many people in this camp have to take it on a case by case basis. So if laptops are plentiful, it’s personal property. I feel it’s safe to say that most developers probably have their own laptop. So if I hire a developer to write code on my laptop (which was previously personal property) is it now private property since it’s being used as a means of production? If so, the true distinction between personal and private property is intent which is far from satisfactory if we're defining property. So many things I own today would constantly be switching between personal and private property based on what I was trying to accomplish at that moment in time.
  - shornlacuna 13y ago
    The difference is not intent but use. This is the same with real estate: if I own a building to live in it, that's personal property, but if I own a building to rent it out or run a business in it then it becomes private property.
    - humanrebar 13y ago
      What if it's my personal property is valuable as a commodity? As in, what if I want to sell my home? I'm not sure the lines are so distinct. Even if they were theoretically distinct, I doubt that a legal system would fairly make the necessary distinctions.

snorkel 13y ago

But this is still the crucial flaw in Marxism, be because some greedy bastard will control means of production either way to their own benefit, and I'd rather that be owned by a professed capitalist who is regulated by the government rather than owned by the government that then regulates itself thus accountable to no one. This was really the major flaw in Marxist systems, the fat cats were given authority to govern both the public and private sector to their own benefit, no counterweight.

Shamanmuni 13y ago
That's a major point of the article. In his work you have a part in which he identifies the problems (eg Das Kapital) and another part which proposes a solution (eg The Communist Manifesto). In medical terms Marx made a good diagnosis, but a bad prognosis (as demonstrated by history). I think it's important to differentiate them. Marx wasn't a religious prophet, you can take the good stuff and leave out the bad. Even he said in his later life that his goals could be achieved by democratic means.

voyou 13y ago

It's true that when Marx talks about abolishing private property, he has in mind means of production, but I think it's a mistake to try and explain that by making a distinction between "private" and "personal" property (a distinction which Marx himself didn't make, FWIW). The distinction ends up being a distraction, because its hard to make clearly (for reasons people in this thread have given), and, in any case, it's not really important to what Marx is saying; if you abolish ownership of the means of production (private property) there's no real point in ownership of consumption goods either (personal property). In a society in which I can only gain access to consumption goods by subordinating myself to the people who own the means of production, it matters that I have a firm hold on the consumption goods I need. But, if we were able to abolish private ownership of the means of production, I would be able to access consumption goods in some non-alienated way, so there would be no need to own them. So I don't think it's quite right to say that "Marx and marxists do not believe that personal property should be abolished"; although the important thing is to abolish private property, the natural result of that would also be that personal property as we understand it would cease to exist.