Property as Ontology; Some notes on Use-Occupancy (Clarifications and Misunderstandings)
The ontology of Property; Possession and Domain
When we refer to property what are we talking about? There are many kinds of propert[ies].
Property in-itself, as in this square is red. It has a red property. Property for-itself being the mode of property in which it expresses itself, that would be the square. These are properties, red is a property-in itself, and the square is a property for-itself. The red expresses itself through the square.
But is this what we mean by property? I doubt it, so what is it? Proudhon gives us a few starting propositions:
1. Property pure and simple, the dominant and seigniorial power over a thing; or, as they term it, naked property.
2. Possession. “Possession,” says Duranton, “is a matter of fact, not of right.” Toullier: “Property is a right, a legal power; possession is a fact.”
The tenant, the farmer, the commandité, the usufructuary, are possessors; the owner who lets and lends for use, the heir who is to come into possession on the death of a usufructuary, are proprietors. If I may venture the comparison: a lover is a possessor, a husband is a proprietor.
We can summate Proudhon by simply putting this in a adage; Property here has a double meaning, property as possession, and property as domain.
This would mean for us there are two rights that could possibly emerge out of this kind of property understanding as Proudhon will tell us:
“The jus in re, the right in a thing, the right by which I may reclaim the property which I have acquired, in whatever hands I find it;” and
“the jus ad rem, the right to a thing, which gives me a claim to become a proprietor.”
We can therefore say, in the case of jus in re is a internal right, a right in-itself, what some may call a natural right. And jus in rem which is a external right, a right for-itself, what some may call a legal right.
Thus the right of the partners to a marriage over each other’s person is the jus in re; that of two who are betrothed is only the jus ad rem. In the first, possession and property are united; the second includes only naked property. With me who, as a laborer, have a right to the possession of the products of Nature and my own industry, — and who, as a proletaire, enjoy none of them, — it is by virtue of the jus ad rem that I demand admittance to the jus in re.
Jus in re refers to possessoire and Jus in rem petitoire, possession and property.
Proudhon calls his schema the balance, the realization, as he terms it action petitoire. We can translate this as Active Property (Active Ownership), which will tie into our understanding of Use-Occupancy later.
Some proponents adhere to a naturalistic petitoire (property), a natural right to domain (not to be confused with possession), what is the basis for this?
We understand it is simply true, liberty, agency, self-ownership, sovereignty whatever term we use is alienable, you cannot take away a persons conscious capacity to act, only constrain their capacity to express it.
Liberty is thus inviolable, indivisible, inseparable.
Equality likewise is of a similar natural basis, for equality as in mutual recognition is a necessity for society, without equality “there is no society” (social bond, recognition). If equality is a right, so is security because “in the eyes of every man his own liberty and life are as precious as another’s.”
These three rights are absolute; that is, susceptible of neither increase nor diminution; because in society each associate receives as much as he gives, — liberty for liberty, equality for equality, security for security, body for body, soul for soul, in life and in death.
You cannot increase or decrease these without destroying the basis for man, that being society.
However, property? Is it of the same essence, the same nature? Is property an inalienable right? A natural right?
I would argue no, property is foreign to the preconditional basis for social life. Property is an alien landing onto Earth, it is an external phenomenon. As Proudhon says:
“if the wealth of each was social wealth, the conditions would be equal for all”
If there is no property, there is only equal access to everything nature provides, an immediate realization of possession-consumption. Everyone has access, in a common sense.
However, property comes from another realm and begins to establish a right outside of society, that makes the access of a conditional nature, a barrier. We go from the immediate to the mediate.
Thus as Proudhon says:
it would be a contradiction to say: Property is a man’s right to dispose at will of social property. Then if we are associated for the sake of liberty, equality, and security, we are not associated for the sake of property; then if property is a natural right, this natural right is not social, but anti-social. Property and society are utterly irreconcilable institutions. It is as impossible to associate two proprietors as to join two magnets by their opposite poles. Either society must perish, or it must destroy property.
But how can we reconcile this anti-social nature to property? How can we make it such that property does not destroy society? Proudhon tells us the only basis for a possible and just property, is an equality of conditions. A mutuality of heterogeneous owners in association. That is the only way.
If the origins of property are the occupation and labor (homesteading) by the first person, then it must also be reciprocal for all others in society. One can thus only own and occupy, the opposite of what he cannot.
This is best framed in an adage from Ciciero who says the Earth is a theatre;
The theatre, says Cicero, is common to all; nevertheless, the place that each one occupies is called his own; that is, it is a place possessed, not a place appropriated. This comparison annihilates property; moreover, it implies equality. Can I, in a theatre, occupy at the same time one place in the pit, another in the boxes, and a third in the gallery? Not unless I have three bodies, like Geryon, or can exist in different places at the same time, as is related of the magician Apollonius.
We as persons can only be active at one place at a time, physically speaking we cannot be in several places at once, so this means by definition, everyone possesses and owns some part, or else they wouldn’t exist.
Existence implies occupancy of something.
According to Cicero, no one has a right to more than he needs: such is the true interpretation of his famous axiom — suum quidque cujusque sit, to each one that which belongs to him — an axiom that has been strangely applied. That which belongs to each is not that which each may possess, but that which each has a right to possess. Now, what have we a right to possess?
If this is so, what do we have a right to possess? The only answer could be what is necessary for labor and consumption. Not because of some transcendental moral right, but a physical one. The right of force.
Again, friendly reminder: possession is a fact, not a right. If possession is a fact, and equality is a condition for possession, the equality must also similarly be a fact.
We cannot share a theatre seat, I only have a right to what I occupy because that is what I occupy. As Proudhon reminds us “The doctrine of Cicero leads directly to equality; for, occupation being pure toleration, if the toleration is mutual (and it cannot be otherwise) the possessions are equal.”
Some still say a natural right to property is entailed because we as persons own/proprietor over ourselves? Known propertarian Destutt de Tracy;
“The sole basis of the idea of property is the idea of personality. As soon as property is born at all, it is born, of necessity, in all its fulness. As soon as an individual knows himself, — his moral personality, his capacities of enjoyment, suffering, and action, — he necessarily sees also that this self is exclusive proprietor of the body in which it dwells, its organs, their powers, faculties, &c… Inasmuch as artificial and conventional property exists, there must be natural property also; for nothing can exist in art without its counterpart in Nature.”
We are owners of ourselves, but this is wordplay at best and incoherent at worst. For again this is to mistake the qualities or properties of a thing in-itself, for a properties for-itself. The idea of the property of a square having four sides, is not a apt synonym for what we mean property as a right.
The fact that people have properties (body, memory, rationale, arms, legs etc.) does not illustrate a external right to domain.
The faculties or properties of the mind or body, not a domain, but trivially apart of his being. He is not a distinct proprietor of things, but he is the entire composition of these properties.
He is not merely having properties; he is these properties. Too enact sophistry upon this is not sufficient to assert a natural right.
We are thus conflating the innate qualities of man, the inalienable composition of forces that make him up, memories, intellect, strength etc. With the external acquisitions of nature and resources.
But some proprietors still make the argument this wouldn’t change anything, for even if we establish a distinction between the innate-acquired properties, that would still mean ever person has an inalienable right to property.
But due to their inequality in innate qualities (some stronger, smarter, faster, etc.) this would mean there is a natural right to inequality in acquired property.
Thus, being if our innate properties are inequal, so should our domains. But this is dubious as well, this conflates the just with the natural, vice versa. The conflations between as Proudhon states “property with possession, communism with equality, the just with the natural, and the natural with the possible.”
Lastly here is the argument that property as necessity thus allowing domain (I will illustrate this can only go as far as possession, not domain), the idea beginning from the belief in the human as sacred and so are all his innate faculties and properties. (No disagreement here).
For liberty to exist, it needs something to exert or execute it into the world, we as humans compose bodies, the body is the vessel for liberty. (No disagreement here)
Liberty also needs external material to act onto, nature if you will. As a result of my liberty and being I come to labor, occupy, and possess some external material. An outward expression of liberty, that one possesses as M. Cousins states:
I say, ‘This object is mine since it belongs to no one else; consequently, I possess it legitimately.’ So the legitimacy of possession rests on two conditions. First, I possess only as a free being. Suppress free activity, you destroy my power to labor. Now it is only by labor that I can use this property or thing, and it is only by using it that I possess it. Free activity is then the principle of the right of property. But that alone does not legitimate possession. All men are free; all can use property by labor. Does that mean that all men have a right to all property? Not at all. To possess legitimately, I must not only labor and produce in my capacity of a free being, but I must also be the first to occupy the property. In short, if labor and production are the principle of the right of property, the fact of first occupancy is its indispensable condition.
Thus, here we can see that if we base property based in the necessity of activity, we end at the premise that it is only legitimate on the condition of occupation and labor. As Proudhon tells us:
if the liberty of man is sacred, it is equally sacred in all individuals; that, if it needs property for its objective action, that is, for its life, the appropriation of material is equally necessary for all; that, if I wish to be respected in my right of appropriation, I must respect others in theirs; and, consequently, that though, in the sphere of the infinite, a person’s power of appropriation is limited only by himself, in the sphere of the finite this same power is limited by the mathematical relation between the number of persons and the space which they occupy?
Simply put yes, man needs labor and possession to live, his need to produce is his right to produce, and it is the result of the equal recognition of all others who realize their possession. This is necessarily a egalitarian stance and cannot justify a relational inequality of conditions like the propertarians wish.
So then how does this equality of conditions look or manifest in social relations; it does so through Use-Occupancy standards.
Use/Occupancy or Use and Occupancy?
One of the biggest misconceptions is seeing the tenure system of use occupancy, as describing two disparate and disconnected aspects of property, a dualism. Proudhon himself says in regards to this principle:
neither occupation nor labor, taken separately, can legitimate the right of property; and that it is born only from the union of the two.
Even Benjamin Tucker shares a similar sentiment:
It is occupancy and use that Anarchism regards as the basis of land ownership, — not occupancy or use, as Mr. Byington seems to have understood. A man cannot be allowed, merely by putting labor, to the limit of his capacity and beyond the limit of his personal use, into material of which there is a limited supply and the use of which is essential to the existence of other men, to withhold that material from other men’s use; and any contract based upon or involving such withholding is as lacking in sanctity or legitimacy as a contract to deliver stolen goods.
Use occupancy is not a dualism between Use or Occupancy, Use/Occupancy is not a binary, nor spectrum of two aspects of a separate property poles.
Use-Occupancy form two sides of the same coin, two poles of the same mono-substance of legitimate property.
Use-Occupancy is a description of two explicit criteria necessary for a legitimate and recognizable property. One may not only be a user but a occupant as well, and vice versa, which I will expand on later.
When we are describing Use-Occupancy, we can also see this as a synonym for Usufruct.
The meaning of Usufruct stems from the Roman terms; Usus and Fructus
Usus being ‘the right to use or enjoy a thing possessed, directly and without altering its fundamental qualities’
Fructus being ‘the right to derive profit/value from a thing possessed’ (Which will tie into our understanding of use and absentee later)
(This should not be confused with US civilian law usufruct which is roughly the claim ones usus is not legitimately owned and it still belongs to prior Neo-Lockean purchaser/homesteader)
When we couple the two together, we get something roughly meaning the ability for one to directly use a possession of theirs for labor intensive purposes while being able to reap the value of said possession.
So then what is Use-Occupancy?
We can see Use-Occupancy as a tenure system of property which sets a criterion of legitimate ownership on both the active occupation and labor (improvements made upon material) of the person[s].
USE: ACTIVE AND ABSENT
Another grave misconception in the Use-Occupancy schema even amongst the proponents itself, is the understanding of how use is ontologically defined. This leads to misunderstanding surrounding abstention, and what use means.
Use in the sphere of Occupancy and Use is often mistakenly thought (to nobody's fault) to be a nebulous and undefined thing completely indeterminate.
Usually, we may get something along the lines of questioning of what if I leave to get groceries, what if I go on vacation, isn’t the landlord technically USING his property?
All very easy and understandable misconceptions to have when understanding Use-Occupancy; however, one of the biggest factors in misunderstanding is the lack of understanding between active and absent use.
So, what is it exactly that Mutualists mean when we say use? We usually refer to the former; an active use.
Referring back to Proudhon where he refers to this as; an action petitoire. (Active Property, Possession). Also referred to as “action possessoire”.
those who do not possess to-day are proprietors by the same title as those who do possess; but, instead of inferring therefrom that property should be shared by all, I demand, in the name of general security, its entire abolition.
how could this division give to each a transferable right of property in a thing to which all had an inalienable right of possession? In the terms of jurisprudence, this metamorphosis from possessor to proprietor is legally impossible; it implies in the jurisdiction of the courts the union of possessoire and petitoire; and the mutual concessions of those who share the land are nothing less than traffic in natural rights.
As such this is all to say, that the legitimacy of property only has one basis if it were to be based in necessary cause.
One can have a million entitlements, you can own 20 bakeries, 10 studios, 1000 stock profiles, however you can only possess and be named a legitimate proprietor by One, physically speaking.
You can clear and cultivate a field to become a legitimate proprietor by means of 3 entailed necessary causes [1] occupation [2] labor [3] agreement/contract/ mutual recognition of a particular goal.
Mutualists have always been proponents not of use in the abstract, but a material use, an active use. But what do we mean by active use here?
Simply put, active use refers to the (a goal/end that is established through agreement grounded in occupancy [within the window for abstention on activity] and/or ongoing labor/improvement),
This would mean, that leaving your house for groceries would not be considered foregoing or leaving your possession to the wolves, and you’d still be the legitimate owner, why? You most importantly have assumingly an established and recognized goal of living there, making you the active occupant-user.
However, none of these make one the absolute or transcendent proprietor of a thing.
A dubious and usually misunderstand framing of the problem tends to conflate abstention with absent use, which will be touched a bit later.
There is an implicit assumption to mistake a difference in-kind for a difference in-degree even amongst mutualists.
However absent and active use form two heterogeneous and unbinding poles, the proprietor and possessor necessarily conflict, like apples and oranges. What is quite entailed by this absent use? As Tucker will tell us:
I believe that all vacant land should be free in Mr. Byington’s sense of the word, — that is, open to be freely occupied by any comer. I believe that all occupied land should be free in my sense of the word, — that is, enjoyed by the occupant without payment of tribute to a nonoccupant.
Tucker is explicit in this understanding of absent use; he even goes on further in his exchange with Byington to say:
He had put to me this question: “If A builds a house, and rents it to B, who thereupon lives or works in it under the lease, will you regard A or B as the occupier and user of the land on which that house stands?” I answered: “I would regard B as the occupant and user of the land on which the house stands, and as the owner of the house itself.”
The question of absent use related thus not at all to the sphere of time, presence, abstention or anything of this nature; the question is related to self-exertion and appropriation. Most importantly who is rightful in that appropriation, Use-Occupancy argues the active exerter, making rent invalid and a null social relation.
Tucker similarly argues that the goal of anarchic property is:
Yes, the object of Anarchism is, sure enough, to let every man “control self and the results of self-exertion”; but this by no means implies that a man may store upon another’s land the results of his self-exertion. If a man exerts himself by erecting a building on land which afterward, by the operation of the principle of occupancy and use, rightful becomes another’s, he must, upon the demand of the subsequent occupant, remove from this land the results of his self-exertion, or, failing so to do, sacrifice his property right therein. The man who persists in storing his property on another’s premises is an invader.
In another part of his letter Mr. Post virtually denies the equivalence of occupancy with possession by declaring that landlords, even those who rent land and buildings in their entirety, are occupants and users. If this be true, then the Astor estate is occupying and using a very large portion of the city of New York. But to assert that the Astors are either occupants or possessors is an utter misuse of language.
Here is the dubiousness and that which led Post in his critique of Tucker to claim landlords are users and occupants misunderstanding the framework, because what he is referring to here is the framework of absent use, not active use.
As mentioned, active use is a relation of ongoing self-exertion/occupation (usus) and the ability to garner the fruits of said self-exertion can only be grounded on this activity.
However, as Proudhon above shows the activity of one reflects the equal opportunity of all, property is only expressed fully in equality and mutuality. For men cannot exist in two places at once simply put.
The duplex landlord does not use, occupy, and improve (If he does improvements, he should be paid for those improvements alone) all the rooms and spaces he rents out, thus there is a implicit absent use here, by assuming transcendent entitlement to all other active users who possess those rooms. Lest we want to assert more than one person can be simultaneously occupants and users of the same things at the same time?
So thus, what is it that Mutualists refer to when we speak of vacant, absentee, absent use, rent etc.?
Absent use thus refers to the Proudhonian adage, ‘demanding something from nothing’ gaining the benefits and improvements on property as if one were the active user, while being non-established in a goal of labor/occupation, thus simulating an artificial usage, one grounded in abstract invasion and not physical occupation/labor.
SIDE NOTES and OTHER MISCELLANIOUS THOUGHTS
Absent use is not abstention, abstention in Mutualist Use-Occupancy merely refers to the absence of the active person, from their property, ie in the case of Grocery shopping, Vacation, etc. it does not become absent use until the person in question demands the fructus of the property while lacking the usus.
The subjective or socially indeterminate part of Occupancy-Use is not about defining use, rather how long until abstention (active person absence) becomes nullified, this is inherently up in the air and largely depends on the given context in which the active usage is surrounded and the time-preferences for those in association. (ie More urban areas may have shorter windows for abstention before allowing others to partake and occupy given space is in more demand there, whereas Rural areas may have larger windows since land is much more abundant and accessible).
2.1 I enjoy Wilbur’s position of cyclical use cycles which give us a rough estimate for how these kinds of things should be oriented as Wilbur states “All we need to establish is that something is being used according the natural patterns of some form of use. These use cycles are determined by the usual demands and conditions of particular kinds of resource use.” Cycles for use, depend on a abundance of factors especially in agriculture such as seasons, weather, climate, abundance etc. we can use these factors to inform as a social group how property abstention-use should be based, allowing a more logical form of property determination.
3. What about Hotels or temporary places of residence in that vain? Like any other they are businesses, you paying for a service, the disutility of providing a service, and the improvements, the housekeeping etc. ideally these would align with the Use-Occupant principle of active use, the employees and producers/providers of the services would be considered the legitimate owners and paid the value of their services assumingly.
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