This question <155|159> overall <156-4|158> MIKE: <28|210-2>.

Question 235: Is there anything wrong with private property?

[157] MIKE: Private property   According to Marx, there is a problem with private property. Marx discusses how private property is an illusion of freedom by the ability to own a commodity, but this illusion reverses the role into where the commodity has precedence over its keeper. Instead of the need for personal relationships, where a person places his concern and worry into, his concern rather is for a thing a person owns. A person's relationships are turned into his or her ownership of commodities, because the owner is the one who chose to exchange for that commodity. This creates a situation where the private property or commodity controls the individual who legally owns it.

Marx also feels this is a problem because if one owns a commodity, but does not need it, he may destroy, burn, or simply throw it away with no guilt or responsibility to another. Even if the other could use the discarded object and was willing to exchange something for it, he is not allowed because the other person has ownership over the commodity. This leads to the concern that the object has more importance than another person's need for it. If a person owns two rocking chairs and only needs one, and this person then breaks the chair and uses it for fire wood when his neighbor who has plenty of wood to burn is willing to exchange it for the chair because he has no knowledge of how to build a chair, cannot because the chair is the property of someone else. That person has no obligation to his neighbor even though it would serve the purpose of both their needs, rather than just the owner of the chair.

	Students enrolled for Econ 5080 in 2009fa are invited to give feedback to the above message Pseudonym:      UofU ID:   Text: