Improprieties Of Property

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, in his chapter on “Property Considered as a Natural Right,” refers to a “frenzy of possession.” Marvelous phrase, which perfectly captures United Stares culture. 90% of time, energy and innovation in the United States is devoted to the acquisition of things. Possessing things. Which involves money, and predation and borrowing and loaning and trickery and thievery and skilled labor and unskilled labor and misery and tedium and sometimes – if you’re lucky – having a blast performing on a stage, which is more a matter of being possessed than possession.

The other 1% of time is spent in waiting rooms, dressing rooms, bus depots and airports, scrolling up and down a screen on a mobile phone, gossiping, talking, adjusting a seatbelt, reading a map, hanging out in bars hoping to get lucky, reading menus and laboring to keep a conversation going without veering into politics or religion, which can be quite dangerous in these times of hypersensitivity and paranoia.

Why do people in our society crave ownership so much?

The legal definition of property in the United States is “anything (items or attributes/tangible or intangible) that can be owned by a person or entity. Property is the most complete right to something; the owner can possess, use, transfer or dispose of it.”

That doesn’t sound very exciting, at least on the surface. The complete right to something excites libidinal thoughts and – in many instances I’m sure – assholes exercising this principle in abusive and exploitative ways. But maybe that’s just me and my cynical mind. A right to something can also mean right to a bed and shelter, right to food, right to speak one’s mind, in which case language is the item in question, nobody owns a language. At least I hope not. Right to travel freely, right to plant vegetables and flowers and till the earth and fertilize it however one chooses, right to keep a collection of postage stamps in a locked drawer, right to take certain drugs and medications, right to an attorney, right to medical attention, right to modes of transport, especially private forms of travel, in which one can drink whatever one wants and gaze out a window and not have to think a single thought. Right to a thought means what, exactly? You have a right to think whatever one wants. And sell it to the highest bidder.

Intellectual property is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect and imagination; the best-known types are patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. It does seem odd that something with no physical existence, no boundaries or weight, no density or texture, no smell or color can be considered property in any conception of property however stretched or inflated it may be. If I imagine a speech balloon propelled by a glass propeller proving the existence of God does that become a property? Can I sell it to a baseball enterprise? Will it buy me a house in Malibu? Can I auction it off at Sotheby’s?

I think God would have some say in the matter. Is the idea of God a form of property? Clearly, nobody can possess God. Of course, if anyone did, they’d have one hell of a bodyguard.

“The whole strength of the State is at the service of each citizen,” Proudhon wrote. “The obligation that binds them together is absolute. How different with property! Worshipped by all, it is acknowledged by none: laws, morals, customs, public and private conscience, all plot its death and ruin.”

Property is anti-social. The items most illustrative of this phenomenon are books. I remember doing a lot of visiting in my 20s, and everybody had books, everybody loved books and everybody read books, and bought books and talked about books and wrote recommendations about books. Almost every time a friend would visit, they would scour my library and pull out a book with excitement and ask to borrow the book. It felt wrong to say no. Books are communal. There’s some inherent quality books possess that makes them immune to the poisons of possession. This is certainly not be the case with online magazines and other similar entities that ask for a fee. Nobody possesses words, but if the words are arranged a certain way, arranged to convey knowledge in the clearest way possible or arranged for aesthetic purposes, to create a certain feeling or sensation or cause the mind to dilate and disburden itself of harmful ideologies and conceptions, then it has value as something to possess. Possession, however, is not the right word. The right word is access. You may be asked for a fee in order to gain access to the pixels holding the content in place. This is not anti-social, exactly, but it does impose burdensome conditions on someone’s time and financial resources.

Morality comes into play during times of extreme inequities between shelter and resources. The city I live in – Seattle – is extremely expensive. The minimal amount required to buy an average house in Seattle is an annual income of $200,000 dollars. I thought this was ludicrous when I first read it. I thought the only people who make $200,000 a year were Hollywood actors, corporate lawyers and gifted neurologists and heart surgeons. Turns out quite a few trades and professions pay that amount. But it’s still far from average. Most people are struggling to make rent and put food on the table. And a lot of people have fallen into the most inhumane circumstance of all, which is homelessness. The most conspicuous aspect of morality here is its complete absence.

Proudhon famously said that “property is theft.” The hoarding of wealth keeps it out of circulation. And wealth buys power, particularly the capacity to insure legislation favorable to the acquisition of more wealth and more power, while removing goods and services from the public, and further impoverishing those whose assets keep shrinking. “Behind every great fortune,” said Balzac, “is a great crime.”

Ok, but what about someone like Taylor Swift or Paul McCartney, musicians who made ginormous fortunes writing songs and making music? There was nothing criminal in their actions. You can’t arbitrarily demonize the rich and expect to maintain a solid grip on the morality of money. Which is why I say thank God for cognitive dissonance. The dissonance of being rich. And the propensity of property to become private. One man’s privacy is another man’s deprivation. And who isn’t galvanized by dreams of plenty, luxuries and exhilarating freedoms? Is there a balance to this picture, or anything like a center that serves to make it coherent?

Wealth and poverty are polar extremes, but not polar opposites. A young man in good health in a one-bedroom apartment is wealthier than a billionaire with pancreatic cancer. That’s your center. Life itself. Life is nobody’s property. I don’t own my body. I am my body. And my body owns me.