Post #40,513
5/30/02 10:13:14 AM
|
No, I wouldn't.
Which I guess makes me a communist ;-)
A small true story will illustrate my point, I think. When I was in Soviet Russia, the US guides on the exhibit (of which my father was one) had a party in our hotel suite. There were perhaps 20 people there, one of which was a Russian girl that one of the single guides had asked to accompany him to the party. I remember her apologizing to my father for being absent during the party (she had come into the room occupied by my brother and me to sit quietly at a table and read a contraband book - don't remember which one it was perhaps "Nicholas and Alexandria"). At any rate, she had to forward the book to her contact the next morning or risk falling off the "illegal book trading train". Everyone understood, of course, and left her alone to finish her book.
The freedom to read anything and everything does not require private property.
The freedom to say anything and everything does not require private property.
The freedom to believe anything and everything does not require private property.
The freedom to think and express any idea does not require private property.
The freedom to expand one's education to the fullest extent does not require private property.
These are but some of the greatest freedoms that a people can know, imo.
|
Post #40,521
5/30/02 11:00:13 AM
|
The freedom to read requires the freedom to own the book
I think your story is a proof of my point. The girl 'had to forward the book to her contact the next morning or risk falling off the "illegal book trading train"'. If this is not a violation of private property, what is? I wonder if she managed to finsh the book...
Also, check out R. Stallman's essay about the brave new world where ownership of books is illegal. How would you like to live there?
As to freedom of speach... You may be right. But, it's a bit hard to say a lot when you can't legally own a copier, a printer or a computer.
Freedom of belief... Did you mean freedom of worship? How do you worship when a church is not recognised as a legal unit, therefore cannot own a place of worship? How about a prohibition to use you private house for anything but family gathering? It's your private house, right? Think again.
I'll grant you this: a _person_ can be free w/o owning anything. A person can be free under any government. A state that does not recognize private property cannot be called a "free state" ( I define "free state" as such a state that does not require a free person to hide the fact that they have freedom).
|
Post #40,541
5/30/02 12:47:50 PM
|
Do you "own" library books?
WRT my story, some one did have to buy the book and pass it around because of the absence of freedom. Far from supporting your argument, my story illustrates an instance of private ownership becoming a necessity because of a lack of freedom.
And a state that does not recognize private property could be the state that provides its citizens with more freedom than any society has yet enjoyed. Of course here I'm speaking theoretically as no such system has ever been attempted, let alone achieved. And I'm willing to grant you that it may not be possible to create such a state given the overwhelming limitations of our species at this point in our evolution.
|
Post #40,557
5/30/02 2:16:59 PM
|
cuba does not recognise personal property
in housing, automobiles etc. Doesnt appear to be a rush of freedom lovers lined up trying to get in. Albania was another where there was no private property. They are all moving to serbia.
thanx,
bill
TAM ARIS QUAM ARMIPOTENS
|
Post #40,596
5/30/02 4:49:49 PM
|
Clarification.
I'm not saying that you can only be free if there is no private property. All I am saying is that it is not necessarily the case that one must possess private property in order to be free, nor is it the case that private property rights must exist or a society cannot be free (which is essentially Arkediy's position).
Private property rights and "freedom" are not mutually exclusive, nor are the necessarily intertwined. And all too often private property rights are considered by a populace that possesses them to be more important than [other] liberties. One need look no farther than the US to see that this is the case.
|
Post #40,604
5/30/02 5:46:13 PM
|
Bullshit, I think. (Goes for the Soviet Union too, BTW.)
Cuba is known, in car enthusiast circles, for its rich supply if Battista-vintage American cars; collectors, custom-builders, and just ordinary people -- some who got hooked on some particular model when they were kids, for example -- go there to buy a well-preserved (or "fixer-upper") rarity on the cheap.
Whom do you think they buy them from?
In all the car-magazine articles on the theme I've seen, it's always something like "I bought it off an old guy who had been driving it as a taxi in Havanna for thirty years, and was retiring" -- ergo, a *private citizen*.
(Oh, and that 'BTW' in my subject line: Hey, Arkadij, betcha you (or your mother, if you will) owned the clothes you wore as a kid, right?)
Christian R. Conrad
Of course, who am I to point fingers? I'm in the "Information Technology" business, prima facia evidence that there's bats in the bell tower. -- [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=27764|Andrew Grygus]
|
Post #40,617
5/30/02 7:05:46 PM
5/30/02 7:06:14 PM
|
Individual belongings versus private property.
Yes, I owned my clothes. No one else wanted them. Even socialism recognises that people needed to own _something_ . But, say you have a clothing drive for suffering Vietnamese children. Try not to bring some of your stuff. Ass-chewing at a Komsomol meeting is guaranteed. And if do not say that you "forgot", if you say "I need clothes for myself"... KGB will open a case.
Another thing about clothes: school uniform. You get a coupon for one set for whole year. Want to buy more? Tough. Want to wear something different to school? Much, much worse. My whole childhood I was wearing patched up pants - they were worn right through in a few months. Hardly a private property :)
By the time of Brezhnev, people were even allowed to buy cars. But, try to use yours as a taxi - you're dead meat (unless of course, you pay some bakshish in time). Selling of used cars is allowed only at state-owned places, using state as the middleman, at state-set prices. Of course, people talk to each other and some money is exchanged under the table. The "dealership" employees simply look the other way.
You're confusing what's happening with what's supposed to happen. People under socialism can have some individual stuf. And much more is allowed through corruption. Still more is allowed because the system realises it can't survive on its own principles. But the principles stay the same: you don't have anything that can't be sacrificed for the Radiant Future.
Edited by Arkadiy
May 30, 2002, 07:06:14 PM EDT
|
Post #40,575
5/30/02 2:59:53 PM
5/30/02 3:01:36 PM
|
No. Library does.
The books in the library are still someone's property, even if that someone is a city or a church. If I decide to start a library tomorrow, can you tell me what books to buy with my own money?
As for your "could be" argument... Looks like we both agree that humans like they existed in history and exist now are not capable of of such "could be". I think it's indeed called "communism", and it failed everywhere it was attempted. Moreover, its failure produced human suffering and death beyond anything else humanity experienced before.
(Some say it has never been attempted properly. May be. I don't care.)
Edited by Arkadiy
May 30, 2002, 03:01:36 PM EDT
|
Post #40,595
5/30/02 4:45:49 PM
|
Ah, but who owns the library? The People do ;-)
Soviet Russia was a fascist state. Even it at least had the decency not to call itself a communist state (CCCP - Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).
Its more than a semantics game. Nazi Germany was "Socialist" as well. Don't blame the communists, blame the socialists. :-)
|
Post #40,637
5/30/02 9:15:06 PM
|
Guess I don't see any real argument here.
Given that USSR was nothing to do with (anyone's) concept of: a future.. not ever even approached, "communism". USSR isn't then about communism.
Ditto re property; maybe the most realistic aim for dealing with that concept (could be): an acquired dislike for the ugliness produced everywhere, when a person's status/power in a society is measured by # of things acquired. This attitude might lead to a large de-emphasis on (at least) "buying stuff as recreation". (Surely that direction would eschew "buying stuff as the Meaning of Life\ufffd and possibly - after-life too? that Great Mall in the Sky with Free Credit and Approved Sex-substitutes)
Given "how we're doing" - I'd think the above is a realizable goal, hardly an assured one. As to further than that, the gradual dying of the Need to Own Stuff (generally), I'd think it obvious that such an idea would be completely inaccessible of understanding.. except in some future adult society.
If the species survives adolescence, that is.
Ashton
|
Post #40,542
5/30/02 12:52:14 PM
|
And she did finish that book (I saw her) ;-)
|
