Public property

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Public property is property that is dedicated to public use. The term may be used either to describe the use to which the property is put, or to describe the character of its ownership (owned collectively by the population of a state). [1] State ownership, also called public ownership, government ownership or state property, are property interests that are vested in the state, rather than an individual or communities. [2]

Contents

Differences from private property

American economist Armen A. Alchian explored what distinguishes public property from private property, concluding that a unique difference lies in the limitations put on its alienability. [3] That is, a crucial feature of public property lies in the inability of their owners to sell or grant them to others. According to Alchian, private property is that which can be transferred at the discretion of its owners, whilst public property is that which cannot.

Consequently, because of the absence of exchange in much of what is public property and thereby the absence of market prices reflecting its value, it is difficult for a government to appraise its holdings. This can lead to problems with economic calculation.

Both rights with respect to public and private property are in part determined by governments. The owner of a private property can control it at own discretion, whilst the state reserves the right to charge taxes and nationalize it, or temporarily use it. The difference between public and private property lies in their alienability.

Most public property is government-provided and not charged for separately to users, but open to the public. However, it is incorrect to say that all public property can be used freely by the public. Many public goods are provided only to subsets of the population, such as care for the elderly and playgrounds for children. That is, the 'public' may vary and does not in fact determine its public or private nature.

In Marxism

Karl Marx described private property as a fundamental social relation of bourgeois society, where it is used for appropriation of labor by capitalists. Marx considered that public property will replace the private property, as a natural historical change of a property relationship.

All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.

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.

– Marx & Engels: Library: 1848: The Communist Manifesto : Chapter 2 [4]

Generally, in Marxism, private property is understood as property that is used by bourgeoisie to increase capital. [5]

Crown property

In the modern representative democracy, "public property" is said to be owned by the people as a commons or held in trust by the government for common benefit. In many Commonwealth realms, such property is said to be owned by the Crown. Examples include Crown land, Crown copyright, and Crown Dependencies.

Examples

USSR

According to the 1977 Constitution of the Soviet Union:

State property, i. e. the common property of the Soviet people, is the principal form of socialist property.

The land, its minerals, waters, and forests are the exclusive property of the state. The state owns the basic means of production in industry, construction, and agriculture; means of transport and communication; the banks; the property of state-run trade organisations and public utilities, and other state-run undertakings; most urban housing; and other property necessary for state purposes.

– Article 11 [6]

But "public property" itself as a separate form was not foreseen, instead there was social ownership of the means of production.

United States

In Alaska since the 1950s was working off the model of public property in the resource sector. There was almost one third of the state with huge reserves of oil. For the realization of the right onto the public property in 1976 was founded Alaska Permanent Fund, which included 25% of the annual fee of the incomes of private oil-producing companies.

That fund is the public property of the state population.What is expressed in payment of dividends to all citizens(except convicted criminals). The average value of the dividends is between $600 and $1500, for the 2020 it was $992. [7]

Canada

In Canada, the Public Debt and Property are under the exclusive legislative authority of the parliament of Canada, [8] rather than the Queen or the local authority, according to the Constitution Acts, 1867 and 1982, article 91.

Common land

Common land was in a public usage of a village community for cattle breeding, growing cereals, fishing. Forest lands were used for timber extraction.

See also

Related Research Articles

Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems. Social ownership can take various forms, including public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee. As one of the main ideologies on the political spectrum, socialism is considered the standard left wing ideology in most countries of the world. Types of socialism vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, and the structure of management in organizations.

State capitalism is an economic system in which the state undertakes business and commercial economic activity and where the means of production are nationalized as state-owned enterprises. The definition can also include the state dominance of corporatized government agencies or of public companies in which the state has controlling shares.

<i>The Communist Manifesto</i> 1848 political publication by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

The Communist Manifesto, originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party, is a political pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London in 1848. The text is the first and most systematic attempt by Marx and Engels to codify for wide consumption the historical materialist idea that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles", in which social classes are defined by the relationship of people to the means of production. Published amid the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, the manifesto remains one of the world's most influential political documents.

Private property is a legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental legal entities. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which is owned by a state entity, and from collective or cooperative property, which is owned by one or more non-governmental entities. John Locke described private property as a Natural Law principle arguing that when a person mixes their labor with nature, the labor enters the object conferring individual ownership.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">State ownership</span> Ownership of industry, assets, or businesses by a public body

State ownership, also called public ownership or government ownership, is the ownership of an industry, asset, property, or enterprise by the national government of a country or state, or a public body representing a community, as opposed to an individual or private party. Public ownership specifically refers to industries selling goods and services to consumers and differs from public goods and government services financed out of a government's general budget. Public ownership can take place at the national, regional, local, or municipal levels of government; or can refer to non-governmental public ownership vested in autonomous public enterprises. Public ownership is one of the three major forms of property ownership, differentiated from private, collective/cooperative, and common ownership.

Nationalization is the process of transforming privately owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization contrasts with privatization and with demutualization. When previously nationalized assets are privatized and subsequently returned to public ownership at a later stage, they are said to have undergone renationalization. Industries often subject to nationalization include telecommunications, electric power, fossil fuels, railways, airlines, iron ore, media, postal services, banks, and water, and in many jurisdictions such entities have no history of private ownership.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Property rights (economics)</span> Economics concept

Property rights are constructs in economics for determining how a resource or economic good is used and owned, which have developed over ancient and modern history, from Abrahamic law to Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Resources can be owned by individuals, associations, collectives, or governments.

Communism is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in the society based on need. A communist society would entail the absence of private property and social classes, and ultimately money and the state.

The Marxist Group was one of the largest communist organization of the "New Left" in West Germany. The program of the MG focused on the abolition of private property and of the state altogether. The group aspired to have the free-market economy replaced by social planning according to the specific needs that were present.

Marxian class theory asserts that an individual's position within a class hierarchy is determined by their role in the production process, and argues that political and ideological consciousness is determined by class position. A class is those who share common economic interests, are conscious of those interests, and engage in collective action which advances those interests. Within Marxian class theory, the structure of the production process forms the basis of class construction.

Bourgeois socialism or conservative socialism was a term used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in various pieces, including in The Communist Manifesto. Conservative socialism was used as a rebuke by Marx for certain strains of socialism but has also been used by proponents of such a system. Bourgeois socialists are described as those that advocate for preserving the existing society while only attempting to eliminate perceived evils of the system. Conservative socialism and right-wing socialism are also used as a descriptor, and in some cases as a pejorative, by free-market conservative and right-libertarian movements and politicians to describe more economically interventionist strands of conservatism, such as paternalistic conservatism.

Karl Marx's idea that the state can be divided into three subject areas: pre-capitalist states, states in the capitalist era and the state in post-capitalist society. Overlaying this is the fact that his own ideas about the state changed as he grew older, differing in his early pre-communist phase, the young Marx phase which predates the unsuccessful 1848 uprisings in Europe and in his later work.

The social dividend is the return on the natural resources and capital assets owned by society in a socialist economy. The concept notably appears as a key characteristic of market socialism, where it takes the form of a dividend payment to each citizen derived from the property income generated by publicly owned enterprises, representing the individual's share of the capital and natural resources owned by society.

State socialism is a political and economic ideology within the socialist movement that advocates state ownership of the means of production. This is intended either as a temporary measure, or as a characteristic of socialism in the transition from the capitalist to the socialist mode of production or to a communist society. State socialism was first theorised by Ferdinand Lassalle. It advocates a planned economy controlled by the state in which all industries and natural resources are state-owned.

Social ownership is a type of property where an asset is recognized to be in the possession of society as a whole rather than individual members or groups within it. Social ownership of the means of production is the defining characteristic of a socialist economy, and can take the form of community ownership, state ownership, common ownership, employee ownership, cooperative ownership, and citizen ownership of equity. Within the context of socialist economics it refers particularly to the appropriation of the surplus product produced by the means of production to society at large or the workers themselves. Traditionally, social ownership implied that capital and factor markets would cease to exist under the assumption that market exchanges within the production process would be made redundant if capital goods were owned and integrated by a single entity or network of entities representing society. However, the articulation of models of market socialism where factor markets are utilized for allocating capital goods between socially owned enterprises broadened the definition to include autonomous entities within a market economy.

In Marxist philosophy, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a condition in which the proletariat, or working class, holds control over state power. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the transitional phase from a capitalist to a communist economy, whereby the post-revolutionary state seizes the means of production, mandates the implementation of direct elections on behalf of and within the confines of the ruling proletarian state party, and institutes elected delegates into representative workers' councils that nationalise ownership of the means of production from private to collective ownership. During this phase, the organizational structure of the party is to be largely determined by the need for it to govern firmly and wield state power to prevent counterrevolution, and to facilitate the transition to a lasting communist society.

The proletariat is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose possession of significant economic value is their labour power. A member of such a class is a proletarian or a proletaire. Marxist philosophy regards the proletariat under conditions of capitalism as an exploited class⁠ forced to accept meager wages in return for operating the means of production, which belong to the class of business owners, the bourgeoisie.

A socialist state, socialist republic, or socialist country, sometimes referred to as a workers' state or workers' republic, is a sovereign state constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. The term communist state is often used synonymously in the West, specifically when referring to one-party socialist states governed by Marxist–Leninist communist parties, despite these countries being officially socialist states in the process of building socialism and progressing toward a communist society. These countries never describe themselves as communist nor as having implemented a communist society. Additionally, a number of countries that are multi-party capitalist states make references to socialism in their constitutions, in most cases alluding to the building of a socialist society, naming socialism, claiming to be a socialist state, or including the term people's republic or socialist republic in their country's full name, although this does not necessarily reflect the structure and development paths of these countries' political and economic systems. Currently, these countries include Algeria, Bangladesh, Guyana, India, Nepal, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka and Tanzania.

Permanent revolution is the strategy of a revolutionary class pursuing its own interests independently and without compromise or alliance with opposing sections of society. As a term within Marxist theory, it was first coined by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as early as 1850. Since then different theorists, most notably Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), have used the phrase to refer to different concepts.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to socialism:

References

  1. ↑ Clarke, Alison; Kohler, Paul (2005). Property Law: Commentary and Materials. Cambridge University Press. p. 207. ISBN   978-0521614894.
  2. ↑ Clarke & Kohler 2005, p. 40.
  3. ↑ Alchian, Armen A. (December 1965). "Some Economics of Property Rights". Il Politico. 30 (4): 816–829. ISSN   0032-325X. JSTOR   43206327.
  4. ↑ "Communist Manifesto (Chapter 2)". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 2020-12-19.
  5. ↑ "Glossary of Terms: Pu". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 2020-12-19.
  6. ↑ "1977 Constitution of the USSR, Part I". www.departments.bucknell.edu. Retrieved 2020-12-19.
  7. ↑ "Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation". 2014-10-06. Archived from the original on 2014-10-06. Retrieved 2020-12-19.
  8. ↑ "Constitution Acts, 1867 to 1982 – VI. Distribution Of Legislative Powers". Justice Laws website. Government of Canada . Retrieved 2013-11-14.
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