Post-capitalist property

Abstract

This paper addresses a puzzle which at first glance might seem rather parochial but which is, we believe, of considerable practical as well as theoretical importance. The puzzle is that surrounding Marx's ideas about property and, in particular, property in his imagined 'post-capitalist' society of the future. It is well known that Marx was critical of 'capitalist private property' in the means of production. In the 1844 Manuscripts, for example, he anticipated with enthusiasm the replacement of capitalist societies based on private property by communist societies based on 'truly human and social property' (Marx, 1970 [1844], p.118). In similar vein, in Capital, written twenty years later, he looked forward to the 'transformation of capitalistic private property … into socialised property' (Marx, 1961 [1867], p.715), and in the Critique of the Gotha Programme contemplated the creation of 'co-operative property' and a 'co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production' (Marx, 2010b [1875], p.345). It is often forgotten, however, that in the Manuscripts he also wrote of the need to preserve the 'positive essence of private property' (Marx, 1970 [1844], p.135); that in Capital he anticipated not only the emergence of 'socialised property' but the simultaneous establishment of 'individual property' (Marx, 1961 [1867], p.715); and that in The Civil War in France he praised the Paris Commune's attempt to 'make individual property a truth' (Marx, 2010a [1871], p.213). Even a sympathetic commentator like Chris Arthur is driven to ask, 'What on earth does [this] mean'? (Arthur, 2004, p.114) How can 'individual property' and 'socialised'/'truly social property' in the means of production co-exist?

Will we work in twenty-first century capitalism? A critique of the fourth industrial revolution literature

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Resolving Douglass C. North's ‘puzzle’ concerning China's household responsibility system

“…Although never expressly rejecting Demsetz's emphasis on indivisibility and individuality of ownership, he also acknowledged Ostrom as a ‘pioneer’ who had ‘probably done more than anybody else in her work examining common pool problems and ways [to show how] we can effective structure problems using common property’ (North, 1999: 10). Integrating the insights of North and Ostrom into a theory of property rights which is capable of explaining the huge diversity of such rights that can be observed in practice, and their complex relationship to development, is an ongoing project (Faundez, 2016; Ireland and Meng, 2017; Upham, 2009).…”

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