Property for People, Not for Profit

The issue of private property - how it is conceived and the rights it confers - has barely been discussed in the current wave of criticism of globalisation and free-market economics, and in the alternatives put forward by the global social justice movement. Yet, as the authors argue, property lies a [...]
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The issue of private property - how it is conceived and the rights it confers - has barely been discussed in the current wave of criticism of globalisation and free-market economics, and in the alternatives put forward by the global social justice movement. Yet, as the authors argue, property lies at the heart of an economic system geared to relatively unchecked maximisation of profit that has no regard for either the lives of human beings or the integrity of nature. The reason for this, they suggest, is because in capitalism property is not treated in terms of its use-value for people, but of its exchange value in the unlimited accumulation of money assets by those who have. The authors show how the notion of private property emerged and took on its absolutist nature and most extreme form - a form which neo-liberal economics is now imposing on humanity worldwide through the mechanisms of globalisation.They argue that the only hope of overcoming the destruction of people's ways of living and of nature - and the vicious cycle of worldwide terror and fundamentalist resistance to it - is to reshape our notions of private property in accordance with the lives of people and the common good. What human beings have created, human beings can change. They look at practical ways in which we can redefine our notions and the legal forms of different kinds of property. And they look at how social and ecumenical movements can campaign for alternatives.