Private property: A debt owed to society

Personal property is often used for one’s own purposes: the beloved racing bike, the little house on the outskirts of town, or the valuable record collection. This essay, however, focuses on private property that is used as capital. It can be used to generate profits (for example, in businesses), to earn income without working (such as through rent), and to shift costs onto others (such as environmental damage). This private property is real and, at the same time, a powerful fiction. For it obscures the fact that its value is based on the contributions of many people, including those of previous generations.

In fact, we are witnessing a daily redistribution from the bottom to the top and an enormous concentration of wealth. In Germany, the richest ten percent own about two-thirds of all wealth, while the poorer half of the population owns virtually nothing. Yet these people also go to work, care for the sick, look after children, shape their neighborhoods, volunteer, come up with good ideas, or write poetry. Many contribute to societal prosperity, yet few reap its rewards.

The reason this seems so natural to us is also because many forms of labor aren’t even counted as work. This applies to the people who, in the colonies and even today in the majority world, have produced, and continue to produce, raw materials and goods for our prosperity, often under coercion or exploitative conditions. And it applies to care work, which is primarily performed by women without pay: in the household, in raising children, and in caring for family members. It is often romanticized as a “labor of love,” as if it were not work at all, but simply a natural part of life. Digital activities on social media and other platforms are also typically framed as hobbies, games, civic engagement, participation, sharing, or communication – except that it is precisely through these activities that a few other people can become very wealthy.