They also did make it very clear that they didnt draw any distinction between personal and private property tho, so like...thats where it stems from....but really, youre gonna point out toothbrushes in your argument? Fuckin really?

Goddamn dude aight I guess.

Deeply unserious.

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[–] SirSmoothAES@lemmygrad.ml 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

From what I understand Marxism makes no active distinction between personal and private property. It's just that toothbrushes and other personal items aren't considered "property" in the first place.

They're not relevant to our understanding of property nor the economic relations we want to change. Have your toothbrush. It's fine.

[–] quarrk@hexbear.net 10 points 1 month ago

The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.

Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?

But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism.

To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion. Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power. When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character.