Hostile and Notorious: The Conditions of Private Property | MARK PASCHAL - Viewpoint Magazine
Hostile and Notorious: The Conditions of Private Property | MARK PASCHAL - Viewpoint Magazine
Very good essay here on the conditions around private property and how this relates to the occupy movement, specifically the recent occupations of buildings in the US. Of course, although the particular history of US property law maybe be slightly different to what is on the statute book here the fundamental points are exactly the same.
In the Irish context however, the lines are even less clear when it comes to the occupation of NAMA property. It is perfectly reasonable in the context of NAMA to ask: are these private or public properties? Who actually owns the titles to the buildings? Do property titles exist? What rights do ordinary working people have to use those building for a social good given that the money NAMA is using to ‘bailout’ developers comes from the Irish exchequer leading to the reduction of that money being used for various social services?
“There are no inalienable rights to own private property. Private property means different things in different countries and communities, and the limits and responsibilities of its use are constantly changing according to political pressure. It took statutory laws, the Preemption Act and Homestead Act, to make public lands private.
Claiming private spaces by a social movement is illegal within a legislative and juridical framework that equates the “public good” with gross domestic product. Notions of the “public good” in the United States have tended to rely on the perceived ability of commercial activity to make life better for for the majority. For this reason, blighted property can be seized by “public servants” and handed over to “private enterprise”; chambers of commerce have more importance in local politics than associations of community gardeners; and the stock market is the bearer of US economic wealth, rather than the number of unemployed or homeless. The last forty years, however, have demonstrated that all of these assumptions hide the reality of a class society. Arguments about what constitutes the “public good” in the United States have been increasingly revealed to be arguments about what is good for “job creators” - the wealthiest men, women and corporations in the world.
Against this ideology, the strategy of occupying dormant private property articulates the interests of the working class. Public-space occupations have presented themselves as the establishment of new forms of community, based on the mutual exchange of voluntary labor. But for the masses of people whose time is in short supply, whose days are entirely structured by work, it is clear that labor remains the fundamental element of a system of exploitation. By attacking private property itself, a strategy of illegal occupations - which nevertheless takes advantage of the gaps and openings of the existing laws - can move us past the “public good” to the foundations of working-class power.”
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