Property and Poverty!

on the authority to exclude or include others.

“Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.”—Mark Twain

Way back in time, around 1225 CE, common serfs and monks lead by Saint Francis of Assisi, celebrated and venerated poverty while challenging the justification of private property. The two words, poverty and property have shared an exclusive conflict for eons, recorded as a “consequence of ownership” (Codex Regularum, Sancti Patres). According to the early Franciscan Order, private property which manifests itself through the pursuit of material wealth, acquisition of land, control over human and non-human entities are contrary to the gospel, contrary to spiritual well-being of the individual and eventually deeply detrimental to society. Indeed their world was small, minimal and primitive back then, however spiritually enlightened and guided by social and biocentric concerns.

Almost 800 years later, we still presuppose property and ownership in fundamental ways that are sovereign and legal. We believe, that in order to use something legitimately one needs the ‘authority’ to ‘exclude’ all others from it. Millions of visible signs that are warning us, to ‘stay off private property’. To cite Immanuel Kant, for the most sophisticated justification of private property as “the legitimacy of law itself rests on this belief… in so far that human freedom remains inconceivable without the exclusive ownership of external objects.” Private property is in essence a pillar of liberal democratic society. Private property also equates to personal freedom and economy. Private property symbolizes identity and superiority, by construct a legalized system that divides people from people, and from Nature.

In 99% cases, private property in the real world is created by removing ‘something’ from a community. While there can be no doubt that collectively as a species we have ‘removed’ or demarcated the entire world as property, equally obvious is the extreme inequality of wealth, staggering rise of refugees, resource scarcity, the homeless and index of global poverty. Takes an unknown German squatter to tell us that “there is something innately damaging in the mere act of owning something”. What new maxims may we learn from “highest poverty”. The question I pose, based on the abolition of slavery and racism, is whether human beings can also abolish private property? I sure want to. Especially as a continuation, in favor mutual aid in an age of scarcity.

The argument presented by Saint Francis, and later by Saint Thomas Aquinas and again by Martin Luther, referred as the “Absolute Poverty of Christ” can be understood in many ways, yet essentially as a calling for radical social and political change. “Jesus was an undocumented migrant…” (Jacob Blumenfeld). Francesco d'Assisi drew a scathing theological critique of medieval property regimes and then existing laws, duties and rights. Mostly celebrated as a patron saint of the beggars, homeless, widows and convicts, the life of Francesco d'Assisi is also symbolic of ecological virtues surrounding all non-human entities. He and St. Catherine of Siena are known patron saints of ecology and of animals. Existing cannons of that time written by them, condemned all frameworks of possession and material wealth. Such saints are ‘coronized’ even today as “Celebrants of poverty.” (encyclopedia Britannica)

The origins of property (or 'dominion') have little foundational ethics. The right to property, eventually established as law is directly connected to the Catholic Church - Rerum novarum as “essential for human dignity”. While Pope Leo XIII sanctified the law as late as 1891, much of the habitable earth had already been claimed and converted into private colonized property. What makes human being imply ownership upon another person or animal or piece of land or the entire world is a vastly different debate. Hardly matters then, if property existed before the “Fall of Man” or after. But the ‘Fall Of Man’ from back then is not-so-different from society today where millions of people feel a kinship, so similar to the spiritual ascent of Saint Francis.

A spiritual disruption, which resonates with disenfranchised people. The criticism and denunciation of capitalist super-wealth and corresponding forms of tyranny. All of us who challenge, criticize and vilify the billionaires, the 1%, the ruling elite and the immense private power of this techno-industrial civilization. A precise question we should be asking ourselves is about our own ‘deal’ with private property? If our use and abuse of property is necessarily indistinguishable and hence unquestionable?

Franciscan monks of that age were also representative of existing destitution, which extended over Europe for centuries. Assaulted by plagues, food scarcity, devastating crusades, generational serfdom and religious totalitarian darkness, the European dialectic surrounding poverty is ironically rich. Accounted for in ‘Highest Poverty’ written by Giorgio Agamben, the exemplary case of Franciscan monasticism shaped public sentiments, and was able to collectivize and challenge existing laws surrounding property and rights of common people. The old christian doctrine of “ora et labora” (pray and work) however communist it may sound today, was no good for millions of medieval folks, who were more akin to a set of anarcho-socialist tendencies that we may resonate with today. Especially with millions of people who are currently squatting, occupying, breaking in, illegally settling or migrating, together symbolize inequality, alienation and disorder (of many) and conversely a preposterous rise in private wealth and power (of a few). Property and poverty seem inversely proportion however inseparable, forever embedded within each other.

While nations like Germany, Spain, France and Italy share a common squatting culture since the mid 1960s, urban occupation and the number of squatters clearly surged during the last 20 years, as captured in the following figures. Approximately 284,000 in Germany, 355,000 in Spain and 382,000 in Italy (OECD 2022). The figures exclude foreign immigrants and asylum seekers, which officially shows up as 1.6 million yet contested to be thrice that figure.

Whatever numbers, be they natives or foreigners, the surge points to three things clearly. One, that poverty is on the rise within most European nations. Two, that vast numbers of private property which remain unused and not lived in, become contestable grounds for occupation, restoration and reuse. Third, the property regime is a giant obstacle for common use and achievement, for all those who do not own some property, deprived of material security, be it in the form of a house, an apartment, a computer, a car, a machine, a bank account, an insurance, a mobile phone etc etc. The legitimacy of the state, the army and the police is also vested in protecting property above all else. Without that justification, all three three can be eliminated, on grounds of being harmful as well as source of global poverty.

The flip-side of occupation and settling into foreign land has devastating consequences, yet again related to property and poverty. Settler colonial occupation of the ‘New World’ back then or the current genocide occurring in Palestine, both equate to destruction of existing property, mass eviction of people, always executed in favor of the occupying foreigner. The nature of settler colonialism manifests as a violent passage creating new private property. One with an infinite tenure. The criticism of private property becomes even more validated by this violent legacy. “Kill The Indian, Save The Man” 18th century pioneer slogan or "We are fighting against animals" (Yoav Gallant, Israeli Defense Minister). The colonial imperatives which aim to control occupied land also have ‘real estate’ written on the deal in big letters. The political, military and legal mechanisms that enable all such events also legitimize private property, never-the-less at a great cost numbering millions of dead or dispossessed and uncared for people. “Without private property and extraction there is no settler colonial society.” (Ward Churchill)

Take the case of mass housing projects funded by private equity. Projects which lead to the continuous extraction of rent as part of a ’Rentier economy’. While a Rentier corporation or nation may extract resources and rent at a global level, it is very different from the traditional figure of ownership, such as a land baron, landlord, serf, indentured labor etc. Hundreds of thousands of unoccupied rotting apartments built by the property regime of China, framed upon disastrous policies and immeasurable waste of resources. The more private houses and colonies they build, the worse it gets for the planet. The more land, resources and technology they invest to build a house, the more expensive it becomes to own and maintain one.

Private property, greed and law begin to upend each other. This disaster is made clear, by the land defenders in British Columbia, who have been recognized as “land owners” by the Supreme Court Of Canada, however a new set of rights assigned to transnational gas and oil corporations such as Coastal Gaslink Canada totally violate private property agreements, of a land belonging to the indigenous Wet’suwet’en. Be it private or indigenous land, within many regions of the world we see violent downhill struggles, between those who claim ownership versus those who are squatting versus the ones who are extracting and getting really wealthy. By any means ‘extractivism’ would devour land and property and by design sacrifice or evict the living. In this context of property, mining and the green energy transition are complicit in the acquisition and destruction of “common and natural property”. No irony then, rich folks from Canada and America have no problems, even less and less moral boundaries, when slave labor and imperial violence is applied widely across Congo, to mine all the cobalt, vital for green colored energy. The Congolese do not own Congo.

The transition between the image of a Franciscan monk to that of a modern squatter alongside the last of the indigenous, converge like three virtuous soldiers or three marginalized heroes of “highest poverty”.

“Property rights, in my view, are not conditions of freedom or justice, but deficient, dysfunctional, and harmful ways of interacting with other people and the natural environment.” - Abuse Of Property by Daniel Loeck. The author sets up a compelling narrative which eventually points to the possibility of human existence beyond private property and existing laws. His social critic of property is aimed at the urban population. Societies in overshoot which cannot function without private means of production and ownership anymore.

Daniel Loeck, like Giorgio Agamben, provides a clear and rational argument against private property as much as “national and settler colonial property” both of which can completely disappear. Not so much through some revolutionary takeover but more as an “evolutionary upgrade”. This is deeply problematic for all those who love the notion of “their beloved country” or believe in fixed borders, regional sovereignty, forever nationhood etc. Check what property (and history) are you sitting upon? Without private property the “entire rationale of modernity would be unthinkable” (Highest Poverty, Giorgio Agamben).

Mass urbanization during the last 150 years has eventually given rise to thousands of privatized “Gated Communities”. From New Delhi to Managua to Santiago to San Diego to Johannesburg, extreme concentrations of wealth, big construction subsidies and horrible development policies managed to create massive exclusive spaces, for housing, business, work, relaxation and entertainment, whereby the working class population has been pushed out, into the harsh, dirty and polluted, outlying parts of the city or within huge slums or as entirely homeless. Gated communities in essence are mini fortresses or enclaves, where the specter of poverty has been effectively deleted, in order to protect private wealth and property. Is how the poorest people of New Delhi guard the biggest mansions and bastions of wealth and urban prestige.

The concept of property, historically applied to everything, feels more like a ‘linchpin’ that frames our distorted relationship with the entire world. “Ties human capacity and worth, to one fundamental system based on one’s ability to own and dispose over things… which also becomes an inscription of racial status, be it for the savage, the native, the slave, the working class and so on.” Dr Brena Bhandar (SOAS, colonial foundations of modern law). According to Brena Bhandar based in Canada, “property laws also impact racial hierarchy within a settler colonial society. This is especially true about housing and urban structures in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Mexico, Australia, Argentina and Chile to name a few.” Bhandar insists that emancipatory acts by common people spread across hyper-urbanized worlds manifest as resistance, against the huge mobility and power of capital (based on private property and the security apparatus). She goes on to explain the formation of small “equitable public structures”. Systems of scale, which are resilient to incoming shocks and better at crisis management. The last pandemic shows, at the end of the week a city of 5 million may starve or break out in chaos, unless urgently resupplied.

The “equitable public structures” are small and local, that emerge from the slums and working class neighborhoods, created by those sentenced to poverty, without property. ZAD, operating within France is one example. This is especially true about people who are part of the housing crisis, which is occurring in almost every big city as of now. The property regime, banks, real estate and the government are crushing or caging up those on the margins of poverty and those with very cheap property.

Folks like Brena Bhandar, Jacob Blumenfeld and Daniel Loek speak of a realignment, a major shift of emphasis, in terms of our current understanding of wealth. Towards the fact, that wealth which is socially produced, is but privately appropriated. The degree of which has gotten horribly wrong. Is why the richest 27 people on the planet own as much as the 3.9 billion poorest people (Oxfam 2023).

I must confess that the Franciscans failed in their mission to decentralize ownership and abolish private property. Over time, things only got worse, by what Friedrich Nietzsche characterized as our “extreme slave morality”. Like the early Franciscans, we can withdrew from law and current society, but we cannot establish an alternative, a new space, a new way of using human potentiality available in the world.

What can we use or build or claim territory over without ever owning it? The question points back to the old Franciscan ideology, much like anarchist collectives and practices that have survived within techno-industrial society. More than 55% of human beings live within small private properties, inside mega-cities spread across the world. Such an urban overshoot, as an ecological disaster points to the possibility of collapse, taking out all existing property laws and the regimes which manage such unsustainable structures. “Urbanized death traps” that we live inside, based on private property and law. For now, the war actualizes itself within public infrastructures, over access to basic needs, including general access to land, water, air, parks etc as well as “public duties” such as transport, education, healthcare, sanitation etc.

While such ideal conditions are at best achievable for less than 20% of the world’s population, the rest are squashed and exploited, disproportionately harder based on their lack of private property and corresponding social status. While an average European city with less than 5 million people is still able to ‘provide’ for, the case with cities such as New Delhi, Bangalore, Cairo, Jakarta and Los Angeles is close to ‘game over’. Each passing year exacerbated further by property regimes, climate change, population and rising scarcity of basic resources. The most densely populated wealth generating cities of the world are in effect dual spectacles, of property and poverty.

Of such disparity and obscene wealth, makes us concur with a horrible fact, that just 27 people are able to ‘take out’ a major part of the available resources of the world, leaving out the rest of humanity. What a system we have arrived at! Not so much about these super-wealthy people, but more so about private property which is a clear obstacle for common people to live better or even succeed. Even if the super-wealthy and powerful are taken out of the picture, the abolition of private property is doubtless a higher need for us as a species.

The old trans-religious maxim of “wealth as an offense to faith” has been totally kicked out of the window, by existing society. Instead our techno-industrial affirmations have pushed us into alienation and hyper competition. Consequent rise in mental illness, depression, exhaustion, burnout and limitless acceleration. How we love to bitch about the billionaires now. A type of poverty, so ironic in a world made of privatized wealth and property. One that privately defeats our potential for self-realization. Ability to find new meaning. Happy to discover a whole new meaning of poverty, I’ll never buy a house and still pledge for the old Franciscan logic, the socialist minimalist spirit. One that binds us with each other as human beings, and with Nature.

🌴🦜✅⛱️☺️

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