What is meant by “mine”? (1994)

From the July 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

My daughter, my son, my husband, my wife, my girlfriend, my house, my land, my dog, my business, my factory, my country . . . Does "mine" simply mean that these things and these people are important to me, that I need them and care for them — or does it mean something more? Does "mine" mean that I have control over these things and that I can exclude others from enjoying the benefits they have to offer, and limit the parameters within which they may move?

The concept of ownership pervades the world we live in. Socialists believe that it goes hand-in-hand with an anti-human system of living.

I was recently involved in a very unpleasant incident. A woman I know phoned me, very distressed, at 6am, having been awake all night. Another woman, known to us both, was harbouring her 14-year-old daughter and my friend wanted her daughter back. She asked me to give her a lift to her (ex-)friend’s house. When the daughter was still not forthcoming, she called the police.

The upshot was that the daughter, who no longer wanted to live with her mother, called Childline and the woman harbouring her contacted a solicitor. It was very dramatic and I was not happy about being caught up in the middle of it. The mother had not been violent and the friction between them did not seem any different from what is normal between parents and teenagers.

But the daughter no longer wanted to live with her mother. She is now living with foster parents and, so far, is happier. The mother is heartbroken — and furious.

At the height of the crisis, she resorted to the argument of property: "She is my daughter. Aren’t I supposed to tell her what to do?"

As parents, present society makes as responsible, legally and socially, for the behaviour of our sons and daughters until they are 16 years old. This means that we are expected to control them, expected to have the final say over their every last action and we are culpable if their behaviour displeases the wider society. How much is "adolescent rebellion" a simple expression of indignation by a person who knows they are being treated as someone else’s property?

Generally speaking, all responsibility for the care of one or more children is placed upon the shoulders of just one or two adults for years on end; it is not necessarily the best way for either children or parent. There are societies, usually coming under the heading of "primitive", where the care of children beyond breastfeeding is a far more communal affair.

Discussion of the property relationship between parents and children raises other issues. The world is dominated by a system of property relationships which various people, including Engels, Reich and more recently, women in the feminist movement have described as "patriarchy".

Patriarchy involves the control of women and children by men. It is intrinsically patrilinear. Children are seen to be the property of their biological father, and take on the name of that father, as does their mother.

Each man has one or more wives, whom he regards as his property. The control of a woman's sexual behaviour is a very strong focus of patriarchal society, both because of the danger of "illegitimate" children, but also because one of the benefits which a man derives from his wife is sexual pleasure. If the wife is his property, he does not want other men helping themselves to the benefits thereof. Sadly, the imperative to control women’s sexual behaviour has led to the most terrible measures being taken, for example, footbinding in China and clitoridectomy in Africa. Back home in Britain double standards of sexual morality still exist. Commonly used insults such as "dog", "tart", "slut” have no masculine equivalent.

Many readers may know their personal relationships to have a very different basis from this. It is nonetheless a fact that this system of family relationships has dominated the world for thousands of years and it is supported and maintained by women as well as men. It is an important element of property-based society, so deeply ingrained it is regarded by many as "natural". Radical feminists can be forgiven for believing that the ultimate solution to the world’s problems is for women to overthrow patriarchy . . .

However it is not just women and children who are oppressed. These are not the only property relationships.

A slave is a human being who is being treated as another’s property. And we know there have been slaves far back in the past. What is not so immediately obvious is that the majority of us today are ourselves the slaves of a small minority of people who own and control the means of production; land, factories and so on. We are wage-slaves. Our relationship with our employers is a property' relationship.

Before our present economic system, the one dominating Britain was feudalism. In the preface to his version of Robin Hood, Henry' Gilbert wrote in 1912:

"Once upon a time the great mass of English people were unfree. They could not live where they chose, nor work for whom they pleased. Society in those feudal days was mainly divided into lords and peasants. The lords held the land from the King and the peasants or villeins were looked upon as part of the soil, and had to cultivate it to support themselves and their masters."

Henry Gilbert was, of course, right to suggest that the "Free Market Economy" which now dominates the world, does afford a greater freedom to the majority of the human race than the preceding feudalistic economy.

However, few of us now can live where we choose, or even have the dubious privilege, in these days of high unemployment, of finding another master, if we do not like the present one. I, for one, am very dissatisfied with the treatment I receive from my present employer but I have precious little chance of finding another job in a hurry, and, as for living where I choose, even with full-time employment I have been unable to move to more suitable accommodation, because I could not sell the house. Yet our local area has plenty of homeless people who would gladly have my house to live in, if only I was in a position to give it to them. So much for our "free" market economy.

To return to the aforementioned "primitive" societies; a large number of them demonstrate that we are perfectly capable of living as human beings without such a property basis. Having no property does not mean that you lose your house, your wife, your children. Far from it; it means that you can far more readily move to suitable accommodation. If your wife stays with you, you will be sure that she wants to because of who you are, not because she is economically trapped. Likewise your children . . .

We need to reclaim our sociality and begin to relate to each other as equals. Many of us are making sincere attempts to do just that already. We will find our attempts under constant threat of sabotage by a world system which eats, sleeps and breathes property and slavery. The only way to effectively and permanently achieve equality in our relationships is to first reclaim, as a class, the means of production, to set up a system of decision-making in which we may all have a part and a system of supply and demand whereby all people make and do what they are able to make and do, and receive that which they consider themselves to be in need of.

This way any limitations upon a person’s freedom are dictated only by the real needs of the overwhelming majority (for instance, our need for an ozone layer will interfere with a person’s freedom to manufacture CFCs). The vested interests and indulgences of a wealthy minority can no longer take precedence.

This is what is meant by socialism. We need the vast majority of the world’s people to understand it, want it and be prepared to work for it, in order to bring it about. Let us hope we do.

Nicky Snell