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Of those, private property - the Marxist definition of it, at least - is mostly new. For anyone not familiar, that definition of "private property" is something

Of those, private property - the Marxist definition of it, at least - is mostly new. For anyone not familiar, that definition of "private property" is something like productive assets used by other people for the profit of the owner, and "personal property" is like, your clothes or your TV. It's a little artificial, and fuzzy in some cases (but not that fuzzy, it's a useful way to look at society). Prior to the industrial revolution, most private property was land and slaves (or serfs, same thing). Land supports only so many people, and land is finite, so both of those have limits on growth. And tools for any given trade were generally cheap enough that anyone of that trade would own their own set. With the industrial revolution, suddenly the best ways to produce certain goods were wildly more expensive than what any given worker can afford, and even more wildly more productive. So there needed to be a mode of organization besides "every worker owns their own set of tools," and at the same time, factories were the first thing ever to be more valuable than owning land. So that's why "who owns private property" suddenly became an important question about 200 years ago, when "who owns land" would've been the entire discussion for most of human history.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> Of those, private property - the Marxist definition of it, at least - is mostly new. It is newly independently significant, not new. > Prior to the industrial revolution, most private property was land and slaves No, “private property” in the Marxist sense excludes both land and slaves, but most private property was generally held in the same hands that held land and, if not actual slaves in name, power over subject people equivalent to that of government (and often recognized as governmental authority) as a personal (though often not freely transferrable) property right.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Of those, private property - the Marxist definition of it, at least - is mostly new. It is newly independently significant, not new. > Prior to the industrial revolution, most private property was land and slaves No, “private property” in the Marxist sense excludes both land and slaves, but most private property was generally held in the same hands that held land and, if not actual slaves in name, power over subject people equivalent to that of government (and often recognized as governmental authority) as a personal (though often not freely transferrable) property right.