Common ownership

“ The common element of all of them will be the common ownership of the means of production and management by social institutions, with the object of satisfying the common need whether that be the need of the State, the Municipality, or Co-operative Societies, instead of private ownership of the: means of production and private production for the market to secure private profit. ”

“ He considers the remedies of an equal division of property and common ownership, and finds them both impracticable. Instead he urges that avenues to small ownership should be kept wide open, and that the acquisition of wealth suddenly and without effort should be prevented. ”

“ It is the public ownership of all the wealth, the mills, the mines, the factories, the railroads and land. Things that are used in common, must be owned in common, by the people and for the people under democratic management by the people, instead of the present system of private ownership for profits. ”

“ By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. ”

“ It is the common property of all until it passes into [45] individual ownership, to be used for agricultural or other purposes, under fixed rules, a specific proportion of the product, or its equivalent, being turned into the common treasury, to prosecute public improvements and for other public purposes. ”

“ Such property is managed, and the proceeds are allotted at the meeting of the married men, who, though of different settlements, are yet related to one another; for such common ownership always springs from the fact that their forefathers formed one family, which, growing too large, had divided for want of space. ”

“ From these premises it would seem unquestionable that each individual of the human family had an equal right to its benefits. The only difference that ought to exist should be that limited and bounded by the capacity of each to produce. No person could therefore ever acquire, under the rule of universal justice, an absolute ownership to any part or portion of the earth’s surface. If the chain of title to any claimed ownership is followed backward sufficiently, it will be found to have originated in an assumption in the first instance of ownership to something that belonged to men in common. ”

“ The natural-rights basis of ownership is by this paralogism preserved intact, and the common man is enabled to feel that the business men in the community add to the aggregate wealth at least as much as they acquire a title to; and the successful business men are at least as well persuaded that such is their relation to the aggregate wealth and to the material well-being of the community at large. ”

“ The twentieth century has witnessed significant changes in socioeconomic values that have led to reassessment of the common law rule. Businesses have evolved from small and medium size firms to gigantic corporations in which ownership is separate from management. ”

“ So I assert that private ownership, so called, is not a proprietary quality. It extends to and includes only the use; the absolute ownership of all land being, in fact, in the community composed of all individuals. ”

“ It is more than likely that joint-ownership, and not separate ownership, is the really archaic institution, and that the forms of property which will afford us instruction will be those which are associated with the rights of families and of groups of kindred. ”

“ It is not merely that the ownership of any substantial share in the national wealth is concentrated to-day in the hands of a few hundred thousand families, and that at the end of an age which began with an affirmation of the rights of property, proprietary rights are, in fact, far from being widely distributed. ”

“ The property is deemed by the law to be vested, not in its true owners, but in one or more determinate individuals of full capacity, who hold it for safe custody on behalf of those uncertain, incapable, or multitudinous persons to whom it in truth belongs. In this manner the law is enabled to assimilate collective ownership to the simpler form of individual ownership. If the property and rights of a charitable institution or an unincorporated trading association of many members are held in trust by one or two individuals, the difficulties of the problem are greatly reduced. ”

“ Whether, under favourable circumstances and the rare public spirit of private owners, much can be done, or to any wide extent, so long as absolute individual ownership in land and ground values is allowed, seems to me very doubtful. ”

“ Its creation (except where the corporation is sole) is the investing of two or more persons with the capacity to act as a single individual, with a common name, and the privilege of succession in its members without dissolution, and with a limited individual liability. The right and privilege, or the franchise, as it may be termed, of being a corporation, is of great value to its members, and is considered as property separate and distinct from the property which the corporation itself may acquire. ”

“ We can now acquire landed property from the government, and this creates the most absolute ownership that can exist; but here again comes the question whether governments can do what is impossible to individuals? ”

“ Therefore if, in accordance with the popular theory, we attribute the ownership of lands to ‘communities,’ we ought to add that we do not attribute it to corporations and that we are fully aware that co-ownership can not be sharply contrasted with ownership by individuals. ”

“ The kinds and quantities of goods and opportunities which any man can appropriate without admitting other men to some sort of partnership are limited indeed, and the point upon which I am insisting is that so soon as this partnership is entered into, whether for consumption or for production, absolute ownership ends, and a new relation with new ethical limitations begins, viz., the relation which I designate as proprietorship. ”

“ What this exactly means will perhaps be best made plain by the supposition that the land in every parish in England was owned, not by one or more private individuals, but by the males of one or more resident families, forming a corporation in which the ownership vested. The land of the community, in fact, resembled an entailed estate, which should be inherited by all the males of a family collectively, they being forbidden to alienate any portion of it. ”

“ In the preamble they say, 'that the members of the society have, in a spirit of Christian love, agreed to unite in a communion of property, according to the rules and regulations specified.' The members renounce all individual ownership of property, present or future, real or personal, and transfer the same to three directors, elected by themselves annually; that they shall conduct the business of the society, take possession of all its property, and account to the society for all their transactions. ”

“ But property passes through donation or inheritance to those who do not create it. Gift, in one case, makes it as really the new owner's, as labor made it the first owner's: in the other case, of patrimony, the law makes an ownership, which will be valid in each man's view according to the estimate which he sets on the public tranquillity. ”

“ In the case of a sole corporation, as a parson of a church, when he dies or resigns, though there is no actual owner of the land till a successor be appointed, yet there is a legal, potential ownership, subsisting in contemplation of law ”

“ Over against all the ownership rights which do and should accrue to such manager, social responsibilities on the part of the management arise and develop with every stage in the progress of the business. These responsibilities are obligations to coöperators in the business, and to the society more remotely affected by the business. These obligations fix the ethical limits of ownership, and define the duties incumbent on proprietorship. ”

“ When certain strong men found themselves able to garner a larger share of property than their fellows, they rebelled against the communistic ownership of property, and the state, with the system of private ownership, was evolved, came into being to protect the private owners in their private ownership against the community, or the mass, which possessed no private property. ”

“ Ownership, in this generic sense, extends to all classes of rights, whether proprietary or personal, in rem or in personam, in re propria or in re aliena. I may own a debt, or a mortgage, or a share in a company, or money in the public funds, or a copyright, or a lease, or a right of way, or the fee simple of land. Every right is owned; and nothing can be owned except a right. Every man is the owner of the rights which are his. ”

“ Distinction between ownership and use The right to exclusive ownership of anything of human production is clear. No matter how many the hands through which it has passed, there was, at the beginning of the time, human labour - someone who, having procured or produced it by his exertions, had to it as against all the rest of mankind a clear title which could justly pass from one to another by sale or gift. ”

“ In order to show, therefore, the invalidity of the presumptions by which the institutions of bequest and inheritance are buttressed, I call up the perception that ownership of the managerial functions which are essential to the administration of capitalistic enterprise is a concession by society, for which there is plain historical ground, but that ground is not sufficient to justify recognition of such ownership as a natural right. ”

“ There was no limit to the extent to which an individual might acquire the exclusive ownership of all the factories, shops, mines, and means of industry, and commerce of every sort, so that no person could find an opportunity to earn a living except as the servant of the owner and on his terms. ”

“ Of course, collective ownership does not imply that, after the state should have taken over the things referred to, each citizen would be entitled to an equal share of them as his own private property, to be used by him according to his desires. ”

“ The absence of proprietary rights is incomprehensible, and a living together in society without defined ownership of the means of living is held to be impracticable; ownership of goods, in the apprehension of the conservative critics, is involved in the presence of goods. ”

“ Another important class of cases in which a private person may create incorporeal ownership, is where an owner of things grants to another person an authority to transfer the title to them, or to use and enjoy them. ”

“ But the principle that the ownership of property is embraced within the power of Congress to regulate commerce, whenever that body deems that a particular character of ownership, if allowed to continue, may restrain commerce between the states or create a monopoly thereof, is, in my opinion, in conflict with the most elementary conceptions of rights of property. ”

“ This additional value evidently constitutes a product—a value created by the activity of the first generation; and if, by any means whatever, the ownership of this value be distributed among the members of society equitably,—that is, in proportion to the labor which each has performed,—each will legitimately possess the portion which he receives. He may then dispose of this legitimate and private property as he sees fit,—exchange it, give it away, or transfer it; and no other individual, or collection of other individuals,—that is, society,—can lay any claim to these values. ”

“ Previously in the world's history, saving a few quite exceptional aspects, the possession and retention of property was conditional upon activities of some sort, honest or dishonest, work, force, or fraud. But the shareholding ingredient of our new society, so far as its shareholding goes, has no need of strength or wisdom; the countless untraceable Owner of the modern world presents in a multitudinous form the image of a Merovingian king. The shareholder owns the world de jure, by the common recognition of the rights of property ”

“ These two kinds are equally effective as against the claims of outsiders, but the rights of those inside the circle of ownership differ. For example, the rights of one shareholder against another, or the rights of one member of a family as against another, are not the same as the rights against outsiders. ”

“ The language is general, so general that it includes everything, not excepting good will, dividend-earning power, and the like, for they are 'capable of private ownership.' They belong to the corporation. There is no good will in a share of stock over and above the good will which belongs to the corporation, and, if the corporation sells and conveys all that it possesses 'capable of private ownership,' it sells and conveys its good will, and there is nothing left of good will or anything else belonging to the stockholders. ”

“ Co-ownership and ownership by corporations.
It apparently attributes the ownership of land to communities. It contrasts communities with individuals. In so doing it seems to hint, and yet to be afraid of saying, that land was owned by corporations before it was owned by men. The hesitation we can understand. ”

“ Suppose you and a number of other men of your time, all having separate claims in a mining region, formed a corporation to carry on as one mine your consolidated properties, would you have any less private property than you had when you owned your claims separately? ”