[This is a twitter thread from
@HeavenlyPossum in Sep. 2021 that I archived and am reposting here with their agreement. It is about property as a social construct.]
In his essay “Manners, Deference, and Private Property,” David Graeber made this point:
“A number of authors have pointed out how many languages lack any verb for unilateral ownership, simply identifying some object and some thing.”
This might come as a surprise to you if you’ve spent any time listening to libertarians, who have a habit of asserting that private property — what Graeber calls unilateral ownership — is a sort of self-evident, universal and transhistorical human default.
To support his claim, Graeber cites the anthropological work of Robert Firth on the Pacific island of Tikopia.
If you’ve read Jared Diamond’s “Collapse,” you’ll recall Tikopia among his examples of a society that achieved a sustainable approach to its environment.
In his work “We, the Tikopia,” Firth does indeed make the claim that Tikopians lacked a word for what we would consider ownership, instead using the same word, “tau,” to signify any kind of connection — between people and other people, between people and objects, etc.
1/5
But sharing is something that has to be taught to many children. "Mine!" is a survival instinct.
All i'm saying is that capitalist private property has never arisen through a spontaneous voluntary act of free association, but rather through violent appropriation.
I don't see what that has to do with «our natural state», whatever that means, or survival instincts.
Sorry if i'm being obtuse.
But, I say, those grapes you have look tasty. Swap? ... The beginnings of trade. Next year I say, give me your grapes and I will take my apple, and trade them both for for three different fruits elsewhere. Investment. Mercantilism. I haven't needed violence.
That is not private property in the political economy sense that Fabio is using. You’re mixing up a sort of colloquial expression (“my stuff is my private property”) with an analytical term (rentier extraction through unitary ownership of economic chokepoints).
>>But sharing is something that has to be taught to many children. "Mine!" is a survival instinct.<<
Then how do you explain cultures that don't even have a word for unilateral ownership?
https://kolektiva.social/@RD4Anarchy/111891044015665650
How do you explain the ubiquity of commons over hundreds of millennia before their violent appropriation by a particular culture?
RD
2024-02-07 16:03:58
This sort of conversation makes me think of the Tikopia, who linguistically lack a term for possessive ownership, but rather use a term that means “is associated with” for things they possess.