Private property: indebtedness to society

Personal property is often used personally: the much-loved racing bike, the house on the outskirts of town or the valuable record collection. However, this impulse is about private property, which is used as capital. With it, you can make profits (for example in companies), earn income without doing your own work (for example through renting) and pass on costs to others (such as ecological damage). This private property is real and at the same time a powerful fiction. Because it conceals the fact that its value is based on the contribution of many people, including that of previous generations.

In fact, we are experiencing an everyday redistribution from bottom to top and an enormous concentration of wealth. The richest ten percent own around two thirds of all wealth in Germany, while the poorer half of the population owns virtually nothing. These people also go to work, care for the sick, take care of children, shape their neighborhood, volunteer, have good ideas or write poetry. Many contribute to social prosperity; few reap its fruits.

The reason why this seems so obvious to us is also due to the fact that many contributions do not count as work at all. This applies to the people who, in the colonies and to this day in many parts of the world, often under duress or exploitative conditions, produced and produce raw materials and goods for our prosperity. And it applies to the care work that women in particular do unpaid: at home, during education, in caring for relatives. She likes to be transfigured as a “labor of love,” as if she were not a job, but simply an affection. Digital activities on social media and on platforms are also preferably framed as hobbies, games, engagement, participation, sharing or communication — except that few others can become very rich with them.