Property

Private Property

A common misunderstanding of leftism revolves around a confusion between the terms “private property” and “personal property.”

In Leftist terminology:

Private property is the ownership of the means of production. This includes factories, machinery, and other expensive facilities that are needed to produce goods.

Personal property are all the things you own: your car, your clothes, your smartphone, your TV, your tennis racket, etc.

Personal Property

Virtually all Leftists are not opposed to individuals owning personal property. Indeed, we believe that Leftism will allow most people to own more things and nicer things than capitalism ever could.

So when Centrists and Rightwingers naysay Leftists by saying we want to take your personal property, don’t believe it.

I close with this pertinent excerpt from Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread:

Obviously we shall not need for that to despoil all citizens of their coats, to put all the garments in a heap and draw lots for them, as our critics, with equal wit and ingenuity, suggest. Let him who has a coat keep it still — nay, if he have ten coats it is highly improbable that any one will want to deprive him of them, for most folk would prefer a new coat to one that has already graced the shoulders of some fat bourgeois; and there will be enough new garments and to spare, without having recourse to second-hand wardrobes.