But can anyone direct me towards some reading matter that does address seriously what 'abolishing property' would mean? This isn't a rhetorical point but I genuinely can't attach any meaning to the idea of a society without some concept and institutions of 'property': 'my stuff', your stuff', 'swapping stuff', 'allocating stuff' and so on.

Most of the arguments seem to start off understandably, and urgently, enough with the brute and brutal facts of inequalities in property ownership and the need for redressing this. So we seem to be heading towards the ideal of equality in property ownership (or perhaps 'equality according to need' which is far from being the same thing). All well and good. But it is the further step, which is presented as logical but never fully explained in anything I have ever read (including Marx and Engels), to suddenly shying away from equality and towards the abolition of property that I cannot follow.

I understand equality and inequality all right. I understand the distinctions between private property, collective property, public property and State property. But what I genuinely can't get a handle on is what is being proposed in 'no property' (and, vitally important IMHO, what equality would consist in without any concept of property at all). Marx notoriously (doesn't he?) stops short of giving an account of this just when you've got to the point where you expect him to. It's left hanging and unexplained for, ahem, the next inevitable stage of the progressive unfolding of history to take care of ...

I'm not asking for an account on a Message Board, not even the awesome R3OK Message Board which has cracked tougher nuts than this in its time , but can someone point me to somewhere where this has been written about and tackled seriously?


Count me a member of that club too, HtoHe, although I think it makes us, in Engels' non-PC phrase, 'cretinous Parliamentarians'. I know it's prissy of me but I have a thing about using 'cretin' as a term of abuse.   

I don't believe those are serious questions!

But ok, if you need it spelling out, the difference between financial acuity and selfishness is that for success in financial matters you would presumably need some mathematical or business skill.  Selfishness means that what you have you would like to keep entirely for yourself.  I have never said that I would want to do that.  I do object to paying it in taxes though!  I don't want my hard-earned money going towards wars for example.  I'd rather give it away myself to the neediest among us.  Unfortunately I do not have that option.  We have no say at all as to what taxes are used for, which I think is disgraceful.

If you think it is selfish to want to acquire assets in order to keep the family, friends and the rest of society going then I think that is a very weird concept. Presumably you think that acquiring assets is selfish because it may be at the cost of others?  Well I don't necessarily agree.  There are many grey areas. 

As for what has cleverness to do with it.....see the bit about mathematical skills or business acumen.

Milly, I fear we are at such cross purposes it's impossible to go any further with this! What you call "business acumen" I would call intelligence directed to the end of accruing money for oneself (OK, and one's family, though I don't see at all how "the rest of society" is supposed to benefit) when that intelligence could be far better used doing something less destructive - in business there are always losers as well as winners, that's the way it's set up and I don't think appealing to "grey areas" gets away from that.

I don't assume that people ought to be rewarded for being clever as you seem to. Actually I see no fundamental reason why they should be.

I have to say I'm in agreement with Milly here to some extent (excepting the "it's in our nature" remark). 

The difference between mere financial acuity on one hand, and selfishness on the other, is quite hefty.  You take some financially unskilled ****-wit who you think to be a selfish ******* and put him in control of a business or hedge-fund.  See how he does.

I personally have less issues with people spending money on themselves than I do with the thought of the fantastically wealthy distributing cash willy-nilly amongst their family.  That idea seems much less fair to me than the ideal of people going out to do some work and make some money in the process.

The same could be said of pretty much any walk of life.  Does this mean that all such endeavours are pointless or, indeed, dangerous to society a whole?

Well, you get to vote for which government collects and spends taxes, and their policies in this respect are usually a major election issue. And the same principle applies for local government. How would you organise things differently?

I'm not necessarily a 'parliamentarian' but, being influenced by the ideas of the SPGB, I am convinced of the need to 'make socialists' before a revolution can be considered viable.  It's clear that this means not just the creation of a dedicated vanguard party but the persuasion of an overwhelming majority - the SPGB is famous, among other things, for telling voters not to vote for their candidates unless they not only agree with their policies but understand them.  They're also known for having pointed out as early as 1918 that the material conditions required for a socialist revolution did not exist in Russia and were, afaik, the first to insist that what was happening in the Soviet Union was the development of 'state capitalism', not socialism or communism.  I suspect you already know about them, George, but in the unlikely event that you don't, they do have a web presence where you might find some food for thought, if not direct answers to your questions (just google spgb).  The big problem for those of us who insist on the democratic approach is that the vast majority of people show few signs of wanting a revolution.  Overcome that problem and the details of how you organise production directly for use without the neurotic need to amass property are at least halfway solved.

Revolution is the last resort for people. Usually things have to be very bad for people to make a revolution.
Or people's anger is highjacked by some special interest group.

There is a Russian saying: Be afraid of people who know (how things have to be done). Russians have a long history of revolutions.
On the whole they are very docile people.

Yes, Russia had state capitalism instead of socialism. But if one country takes the power excesses will happen.

Democrasy  has many minuses. The good thing is that people can vote politicians from government.


It will make me feel better too if money are spend wisely. The amount of waste in government is awfully big.

I don't know if there is a solution for this problem.

Even helping poor brings another problem: they make it their way of life and don't want to improve themselves and work.
This is very sensitive subject.

May be it is rubbish, Mr Dr Richard Barrett.
I am not an expert on the subject.
I just don't know why the system is set up in such a way that it is better for people to stay on social assistance than work. Why they get less money if they are working than if they are on social assistance.
I just don't understand that is all. Here I am usually not allow to speak on economic matters (as well as on political).
My thinking is not very logical.

I do like the government to subsidize Arts (music), hospitals, unemployed etc. I don't like this individualistic way of capitalism like it was in the States. I like ideas of socialism. But the experiment was so bad.