Purse stealing car smasher

PROPERTY: THE DEFINING CONCEPT

“To the ass who broke my car window and stole my purse… you are a dick.” Window-less

“All property is theft.” Joseph Prudhon

Why was the poster so upset about the thief who broke her car window and stole her purse? She was upset because they were her property and, for Window-less, her property is co-extensive with her identity. In other words, she IS her property. Beyond her property, however defined, there is no Window-less. She does not exist. But this raises the question as to what property consists and who, as a consequence, is the thief.

For the 19th. century French anarcho-socialist Joseph Prudhon it is not the thief who is the thief, the one who broke her car window and stole her purse but, since she posses property, Window-less herself is the thief. The fact that she possesses property entails not so much that someone else does not possess that particular piece of property but rather that the the concept of property itself is the culprit. It is a profoundly defining concept shaping who we are on all levels.

Western society has always been ambivalent about the concept of property. The framers of the American Declaration of Independence, property owners all, thought even then the wording “life, liberty and property” to be too edgy and so changed the last word to “the pursuit of happiness” which is not far off the mark since such “happiness” is equated with the possession of personal property. And of course our Christian heritage renders us ambivalent in respect to private property since the rich man has as much chance of gaining heaven as the camel does passing through the eye of the needle. In other words, the concept of property itself is our dirty little secret.

But property can be defined in many ways. The English philosopher Bertrand Russell famously remarked that mankind was divided into two groups, those who moved objects about the face of the earth and those who told them where to put it, so to speak. Russell was talking, of course, not about the possession of objects but about the possession of power. But the possession of power embodies the symbolic possession of property and the symbolic possession of power comes in many forms, from the possession of wealth – the capacity to possess nearly anything – to political power – the capacity to control nation states which, possessing sacred territorial boundaries to keep the intruder out, embody a still further manifestation of the ubiquity of property. In addition, one can speak about clerical power vested in the leaders of the world religions, of politico/economic power vested in world ideologies such as capitalism and communism, of intellectual power vested in the current leaders of philosophical thought such as Montrealman, and so on.

But where’s the bottom line? Where does all this take us?
It takes us back to the beginning of this comment, that property defines us to ourselves. Without property, we really don’t know who we are. That is why Window-less was so upset.That is why she called the thief an ass, a dick. She had lost a part of her identity and to that extent did not know who she was.

That will be $10 please.

A pleasure as always.

Cheerio!