Trade without private property
Recently, on facebook, someone commented that "You can't have markets without private property." This was my response:
You
definitely can have markets without private property. Remember, in the
Communist Manifesto, Marx distinguishes between "private property" and
"personal property." He doesn't have any quarrel with personal property
(individual property, like your toothbrush and your lawnmower). His
quarrel is with private property - that is, bourgeois ownership of the
means of production. (Notice that this is usually NOT individual
property: rarely does 1 person own a factory. Usually a factory is
owned by a corporation, a "fictive person," a made-up person that is
recognized by the law, which is in turn owned collectively by its
stockholders, which may number in the millions, all over the world.)
Private
property is an innovation of capitalism. Early examples include the
British East India Company and the V.O.C., which both started around the
year 1600.
Markets,
on the other hand, have existed since prehistoric times. Early trade
required neither personal property nor private property - most trade was
not trade between individuals, but trade between tribes, in a highly
ritualized format, and often involved the trade of people: marriage
partners and slaves, for instance.
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