On Property 1911

Otherwise Than It Appears at First Sight

A conception of property that is quite common is that, at least in many instances, it is something that once created is handed down from generation to generation. This may in a sense be true, but a careful scrutiny of the case will show the value supposed to be attached to property in natural resources, and machinery of production, to be located in quite a different place, and these forms of property being merely the means of obtaining control or possession of it.

Landed property may be handed down from generation to generation. Land, however, of itself possesses no exchange value, no matter how richly stored with natural resources. It is the presence of a working population that gives to land its exchange value. The exchange value of land taken as a general proposition, is determined by the amount of surplus value the owner may be able to extract from the workers who carry on industry by converting its resources into usable, or at least, saleable things. Land, therefore, without exchange value itself, becomes an instrument by means of which the owner is enabled to transfer the exchange values produced by working people into his own possession, without anything in return. Land which the owner set aside for individual use does not so figure, because it is not a part of the means of production in the capitalist sense, while so used. Capitalist property in the instruments of wealth production, factories, mills, railroads, etc., is purely the product of labor. It is continually undergoing the process of reproduction, even the more durable portion of it being entirely replaced by new at least every few years. The lifetime of the more durable parts of it is only prolonged even these few years at the expense of new labor expended upon it continually in the shape of repairs.

The vast property in the shape of food, clothing, etc. the things of daily consumption, is produced and re-produced each year, and much of it several times during that period.

Capitalist property is purely an instrument for the purpose of controlling labor, the only force that creates wealth from the earth’s resources, and transferring the wealth so created into the possession of capitalists without cost to them. The value or capitalization of any capitalist concern is determined by the amount of labor it can command, and the magnitude of the surplus value it can pilfer from it.

The bonds, stocks, title deeds and other evidences or certificates of capitalist property that are transferred from hand to hand, or passed downwards from generation to generation, are merely title deeds to Labor. In the factories, mills and sweatshops of the capitalist inferno these deeds are put on record in the sweat and blood of slaves.

Once capitalist property is stripped of all sham and pretense, and its hideous nakedness exposed to the working people, its victims, the superstitious reverence for it will of necessity speedily vanish. They will be only too willing to abolish it, and substitute the Socialist system of property under which labor shall be free. Then will property become what it should be, a means of securing the comforts and protection of those who create it.

The function of capitalist government is to defend the present system of property regardless of its terrible consequences to mankind. In so doing they act without scruple and without conscience. In fact, scruple and conscience are not attributes of material interest. Let no one be disturbed over the question of whether it be right or wrong for the present system to continue, or another take its place. It is purely a question of power, egged on by material class interest. So long as the capitalist class interest can marshal to its support the control of the legislative, executive and judicial powers of government, it will demonstrate its system of property to be right, against all who may dispute the claim.

When the working class aroused to its material interest shall, through the exercise of its political rights, have marshalled these powers in its behalf, it will, in equally convincing manner, demonstrate the capitalist system of property to be wrong and relegate it to the oblivion which it is so eminently qualified to adorn.

E. T. K.