Dear Editors

A question of terminology

Dear Editors

I was reading articles about Karl Marx’s works on Wikipedia. It didn’t just say ‘common ownership’ but ‘free association of producers’. I was also reading something Georgian-related in Wikipedia and there was something about ‘unowned’ and ‘commons’, which appears to be the same. I am wondering if the stateless, moneyless society should be common ownership or free association of producers or commons or unowned? Because I feel that the difference would have a different impact (for better or worse) in a stateless, moneyless society, especially about post-scarcity. Please answer this question. Thanks.

Vojtech Mikulec

Reply:
The short answer is that all four terms could be a way of describing the situation where every member of society stands in the same relationship to the productive resources that society needs to survive; where there is democratic control over how and for what purpose these are used. They are all words to describe a situation where there is no section of society which has privileged control of or access to these resources, a classless society. Which best describes this?

But, first, to answer your question about what terms Marx used to describe this situation. In Volume 1 of Capital he wrote of ‘a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common’ (chapter 1, section 4), appropriating what they need in a society based ‘on cooperation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production’ (chapter 23). In his Critique of the Gotha Programme, he wrote of ‘the co-operative society based on the common ownership of the means of production’ and of ‘the material conditions of production’ being ‘the cooperative property of the workers themselves’, and in Volume 3 of Capital (chapter 43) of ‘socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their exchange with interchange with Nature, bringing it under common control’. He also used the term ‘associated producers’ in connection with workers’ cooperatives under capitalism. (Note that these are not Marx’s own words. They are words his translators chose).

This suggests that, of your four terms, he would have opted for ‘common ownership’. He did also use the term ‘associated producers’ but, except when he is talking of cooperatives under capitalism, to mean all producers. However, to say ‘common ownership by all producers’ is still not entirely satisfactory as it could be interpreted as excluding those members of society who, for one reason or another, are not or cannot be involved in actual production. You are right that, if it was interpreted in that way — of common ownership of the means of living just by those who work — it would be something different from, and not an improvement on, the ‘common ownership by society as a whole’.

Henry George, the 19th century American land reformer, proclaimed that ‘God gave the land to the people’, to everybody equally, and that ‘we must make land common property.’ However, what he envisaged was still allowing people to use land to produce and sell some product but that any element in their income that corresponded to ground-rent, resulting from monopolising a part of the Earth, should be taxed away and the money used to provide benefits for everybody. Thus the benefits of the private ownership of land would be negated. As he envisaged capitalism continuing, his view is irrelevant to the discussion here. All that can be said is that some of the arguments he employed against private property in land can also be employed against private property in the human-made instruments of production.

‘Global commons’ is the term used to describe those parts of the world that are not owned either by individuals or states, such as Antarctica and the oceans outside territorial waters (also the Moon and asteroids). But, as again capitalism continues elsewhere, this ‘common ownership’ is in effect common ownership by all the world’s states. Nevertheless, the term ‘global commons’ could be applied to the society socialists aim at, where nowhere would belong to anyone.

Common ownership of the land and instruments of production by and for everyone is a good description of what socialism (or communism) involves.  Even so, to use the words ‘ownership’ and ‘property’, even in conjunction with ‘common’, does not fully bring out the fact that the transfer to all members of society of the power to control the production of wealth makes the whole concept of property redundant.

With common ownership no one is excluded from the possibility of controlling or benefiting from the use of the means of production. So, the concept of property in the sense of exclusive possession becomes meaningless. No one is excluded, there are no non-owners. If something is owned by everybody then it is owned by nobody. We could describe the land and instruments of production in socialism as being ‘non-owned’ or ‘unowned’, of them being simply there to be used in accordance with rules democratically decided by society. In fact, we sometimes do.

This would make it absolutely clear that we aren’t talking about government or state ownership, which is still sectional ownership as the state represents only a section of society. We use the term ‘common ownership’ (understood as ownership by everybody, society as a whole) to refer to the basic social relationship of the alternative society to capitalism. This common ownership of the means of production could not exist without democratic control, that is, control by everybody. Common ownership, democratic control and classless society are three different ways of referring to the same situation from different angles. There can be no common ownership by and for everyone without democratic control by a community of free and equal human beings. — Editors.

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