Property and Freedom
June 23rd, 2011 // 11:38 am @ Oliver DeMille
We can learn a lot about freedom by understanding how Marx wanted to establish communism. One of his ten planks of establishing communism was this:
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes…
Take away property and you take away freedom. If a man or woman cannot own land, a house, his or her own things, freedom is gone.
Note that there is more than one way to abolish property and ownership. One is to make it illegal, to not allow ownership. This is extreme, of course.
But there are other ways that are less obvious.
For example, what if it is legal to own property but only those who can afford a license, taxes, filings and attorneys to implement these things can actually own land.
This is an “abolishment,” but it is of the right rather than the left. To the person who can’t own the house, the land, or the car, however, the reality is the same.
Another way to abolish land or house ownership is simply to establish a legal-economic system where the majority cannot afford such ownership without advanced education and/or the careers which require such education.
Another is to disallow immigration so that the poor of other nations have no change to come to your nation and benefit from a system that allows ownership.
The left can abolish property ownership simply by taxing at rates that keep those with money from investing in real estate development and keep those with little money from seeking ownership.
There are many other ways to in effect abolish property ownership. Any of them hurt freedom.
Whatever your politics, it is important to evaluate each policy to ensure that you are not unknowingly supporting a Marxian reduction of freedom.
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Oliver DeMille is a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of Thomas Jefferson Education.
He is the co-author of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller LeaderShift, and author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
Category : Blog &Culture &Economics &Family &Featured &Prosperity
Samuel Louis Dael
12 years ago
Property ownership is the capitalist’s pruritic form of freedom and is mistakenly thought of as the foundation of all freedom. The freedom to capitalize does not foster true liberty. Eventually every democracy will gradually set Marxist controls upon the people in order to curb capitalism because they know that capitalism does not foster freedom. Your argument proves that. Eventually, capitalism eats away the right to be enterprising. It does it through government controls. This is not by the people, but by the corporate powers. Ownership is not the issue. Rather it is responsibility to what you are in control of that preserves freedom. Take two corporations—Chevron and British Petroleum. Chevron has by far the best safety record. BP has the poorest—even before the spill. Ownership and oil rights have nothing to do with freedom. It is responsibility to what you possess and steward over that preserves freedom for all. The American Indian did a far grander job with this land than the Capitalistic need to own property. Was not the Indian trully free.
Keith
12 years ago
Agreed, this last comment brings up an issue that we need to start looking at better forms of responsibility as the better checks against unjust powers and not cry about the need for freedom. We need more responsibility to secure greater freedom. This means less centralized controls and more open access to leadership. So much is going to change in the coming generations that our old ideas of leadership will not willingly to accept. What if leadership is the open access to take responsibility? Does this not fly in the face of entrenched establishment powers that argue that leadership is a position of authority.
Blake Elliott
12 years ago
Samuel, what did Thomas Jefferson originally write in the Declaration of Independence? “That among these [Rights] are Life, Liberty and Property–That to secure these Rights Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed…”. Of course the Congress of that day switched the word “Property” for “the Pursuit of Happiness” because they didn’t want men to construe the word property for slaves, the intention however remained the same. Samuel, let this suffice. And by the way, about the Indians, wasn’t it not owning property in a legal sense that led to almost constant warfare among themselves Over land? And wasn’t it our legal control of the lands they were on that left them almost defensless against the western migration? Is your rights trampled on in this manner freedom? It is not freedom.
You hit something there Keith! The essential part of leadership is responsibility, in fact freedom comes about because of responsibility. Unfortunatly, our authority figures are not leaders in the True sense as you point out. So what’s the solution? We need to be responsible first in our own lives, paying the price of a great education, second, we need to become as responsible as possible for the government.
By the way, this is a good and true article by Oliver.
lynda Eggimann
12 years ago
As our education deteriorated… our leadership deteriorated.. and with our leadership went morals. Thus the pursuit of happiness became the pursuit of ‘more’ without responsibility to your country, your neighbor or the next generation.
We can be free with or without property or even leadership, we can not be free without morals and a sense of responsibility to God.. therein lied our greatness.. and therein our present dilemma.