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Authors: David Harvey
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2007–8 was a crisis that took in the first instance a financial form.
Contradiction 3
Private Property and the Capitalist State
Commodities do not take themselves to market. Individual agents – buyers and sellers – come together in the market to trade commodities for money and vice versa. For this to occur, both buyers and sellers must have exclusive rights of disposal and appropriation over the commodities and the moneys that they hold. Exchange value and money jointly presume the existence of individual private property rights over both commodities and money.
To clear the air, let me first make a distinction between individual appropriation and private property. We all of us, as living persons, appropriate things in the course of actively making use of them. I appropriate food when I eat it, I appropriate a bicycle when I ride it, I appropriate this computer while writing this. My use of many of the processes and things available to me precludes anyone else from using them when I am using them. There are, however, some items whose use is not exclusionary. If I watch a TV programme this does not prevent others from so doing. And there are other goods (‘public goods’) that are often held and used in common, though usually with limitations. I use the street, as do many others, but there is a limit to how many people a street can hold and there are certain activities that either by custom or by law are prohibited upon the street (for example, defecation on the streets of New York). For many processes and things, however, an exclusive relationship exists between the user(s) and that which is being used. This is not the same thing as private property.
Private property establishes an exclusive ownership right to a thing or a process whether it is being actively used or not. At the root of commodity exchange there lies the presupposition that I do not myself actively want or need the commodity I offer for trade. Indeed, the very definition of a commodity is something that is produced for someone else to use. Private property rights confer the right to trade away (alienate) that which is owned. A difference then emerges between what are called usufructuary rights (rights that pertain to active use) and exclusionary permanent ownership rights. This difference has often been the source of confusion, particularly throughout the history of colonialism. Indigenous populations frequently operate on the basis of usufructuary rights to land, for example (this is the case with shifting agriculture). Colonial powers typically imposed exclusionary ownership rights and this was the source of a great deal of conflict. Populations that moved around from one site to another, following their herds or moving from exhausted land to fresh and more fertile land, suddenly found themselves barred from moving by the existence of fences and barbed wire. They often found themselves prevented from using land that they had traditionally regarded as open for use because someone now owned it in perpetuity even if it was not used. The indigenous population in North America suffered greatly from this. In contemporary Africa people’s customary and collective resource rights are currently being pell-mell converted to an exclusionary private property rights regime by what many regard as fraudulent agreements between, for example, village chiefs (who have customarily held the land in trust for their people) and foreign interests. This constitutes what is generally referred to as a huge ‘land grab’ by capital and foreign states for control over Africa’s land and resources.
Private property rights presuppose a social bond between that which is owned and a person, defined as a juridical individual, who is the owner and who has the rights of disposition over that which is owned. By a marvellous sleight of juridical reasoning, it has transpired that ownership is vested not only in individuals like you and me but also in corporations and other
Contradiction 3
Private Property and the Capitalist State
Commodities do not take themselves to market. Individual agents – buyers and sellers – come together in the market to trade commodities for money and vice versa. For this to occur, both buyers and sellers must have exclusive rights of disposal and appropriation over the commodities and the moneys that they hold. Exchange value and money jointly presume the existence of individual private property rights over both commodities and money.
To clear the air, let me first make a distinction between individual appropriation and private property. We all of us, as living persons, appropriate things in the course of actively making use of them. I appropriate food when I eat it, I appropriate a bicycle when I ride it, I appropriate this computer while writing this. My use of many of the processes and things available to me precludes anyone else from using them when I am using them. There are, however, some items whose use is not exclusionary. If I watch a TV programme this does not prevent others from so doing. And there are other goods (‘public goods’) that are often held and used in common, though usually with limitations. I use the street, as do many others, but there is a limit to how many people a street can hold and there are certain activities that either by custom or by law are prohibited upon the street (for example, defecation on the streets of New York). For many processes and things, however, an exclusive relationship exists between the user(s) and that which is being used. This is not the same thing as private property.
Private property establishes an exclusive ownership right to a thing or a process whether it is being actively used or not. At the root of commodity exchange there lies the presupposition that I do not myself actively want or need the commodity I offer for trade. Indeed, the very definition of a commodity is something that is produced for someone else to use. Private property rights confer the right to trade away (alienate) that which is owned. A difference then emerges between what are called usufructuary rights (rights that pertain to active use) and exclusionary permanent ownership rights. This difference has often been the source of confusion, particularly throughout the history of colonialism. Indigenous populations frequently operate on the basis of usufructuary rights to land, for example (this is the case with shifting agriculture). Colonial powers typically imposed exclusionary ownership rights and this was the source of a great deal of conflict. Populations that moved around from one site to another, following their herds or moving from exhausted land to fresh and more fertile land, suddenly found themselves barred from moving by the existence of fences and barbed wire. They often found themselves prevented from using land that they had traditionally regarded as open for use because someone now owned it in perpetuity even if it was not used. The indigenous population in North America suffered greatly from this. In contemporary Africa people’s customary and collective resource rights are currently being pell-mell converted to an exclusionary private property rights regime by what many regard as fraudulent agreements between, for example, village chiefs (who have customarily held the land in trust for their people) and foreign interests. This constitutes what is generally referred to as a huge ‘land grab’ by capital and foreign states for control over Africa’s land and resources.
Private property rights presuppose a social bond between that which is owned and a person, defined as a juridical individual, who is the owner and who has the rights of disposition over that which is owned. By a marvellous sleight of juridical reasoning, it has transpired that ownership is vested not only in individuals like you and me but also in corporations and other
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