Private property is the attitude of self-centeredness that immoral ruling classes peddle to the masses; it exists outwardly for these immoral ruling classes as the fetish of money which they reverence and worship. The power of private property, the culture of Satan, is real, but we absolutely do not need it. Those who take it for themselves against the interests of community will die with it; private property is the vestment of death. Those who live by money will die by money. This is what Jesus meant when he said, "Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs, and he will give you all you need from day to day if you live for him and make the Kingdom of God your primary concern" (Matthew 6:32-33; Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation copyright (c) 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.)
Absolute Need
Private property is what we keep for ourselves beyond absolute need and in contradiction to the development of society. What we need depends on our bodily maintenance requirements, abilities, time, energy, services we can perform for the community, and what the community can do for us--the community allots resources to us democratically according to our abilities and its abilities. Private property creeps in when this mechanism of democracy (unity and struggle of individuals and community) breaks down. Private property causes violence, waste, and suffering. Whatever resources we have beyond absolute need must be put democratically into service for development of community life. Rresources withheld from this service become
comforts of Satan or private property and end up as waste and pollution. Every year at a certain time the dump bin, at the rear of the building in which I used to rent an office, would fill up with brand new clocks all smashed with a hammer. Evidently it was cheaper for the owner of the clock shop on the first floor to dump clocks rather than pay inventory tax or whatever on them. If the owner gave away the clocks then this would
decrease the number of paying customers. This is an example of what private property is all about.
Attitude of Perfection
The proper attitude toward life should be that we are we are moving away from self toward perfection or union with God, which is Universe, Nature, and Life. This is the fundamental direction of development in this cycle of perfection. Self-centeredness of private property is reactionary and contrary to community life and to the fundamental direction of development in this cycle of perfection. Embracing self-centered attitude of private property means turning our backs to development. The correct attitude is that we contriubte to society according to our abilities and get back from society what we need. This order is the good soil in which community life grows and prospers. Community life can not prosper and grow with the self-centered attitude of private property.
Sharing and Rights
What we absolutely need from society are resources both for maintenance and pursuing our career. When we contribute toward the development of the community according to our abilities, the community democratically distributes to us the resources we need. (The trend toward computerized credit and debit systems is natural and will be used by the Workers State to manage the requirements of democracy--recording what each contritubes according to their abilities and allotting to each what they need.) These resources become a right for us and an obligation for society. The resources community allots to us, however, are never private property. Only when we set aside for our own use that which we don't absolutely need in opposition to the interests of community do we become owners of private property. Large sums of money which scientists, engineers, and artists get that they put right back into creating new and better things for the community are not private property. The community allots these resources democratically to these people and rightly so. But if these same people squander their money and do not create better things for the community, then these resources end up as private property. Reactionary ruling classes that go into other countries and set up cash-crop infrastructures that facilitate extracting wealth from those countries but do not have the best interests of the local communities in mind become owners of private property which leads to waste, devastation, and suffering for these communities.
Usury Money
Money was originally meant to be a medium of exchange; it solved the problems of barter. Money has been made into coins usually of precious metals or paper backed up by precious metals. Nowadays most money is not made of precious metals, nor is it redeemable for a fixed amount of precious metal. It has become the fetish of immoral ruling classes who print and control money and use it to enslave the people by regulating the availability of goods-usury money. Usury money hides the theft by the owner of the business of the natural abundance which the worker produces; the surplus which workers produce falls into the hands of business owners. There's nothing business owners or capitalists hate more than universal natural abundance out of their control.
Effects of Private Property
Alienation
Ownership of private property is a form of alienation from God (Universe, Nature, and Life). That is why Jesus Christ said that wealth and the Kingdom of God (development) do not mix (Matthew 6:24, NLT). The direction of all development is toward union with God.
Suffering and Death
Jack Fischel once told me the story of the man who came to an American Indian chief looking for property. The chief gave the man a stick and told him to draw a line around the land he wished starting from sunrise until sundown. The man in his greed began at sunrise to circumscribe as large an area of land as possible before sunset. But before the day ended the man died from exhaustion. Private property leads to suffering and death. It is a contradiction against nature. It is of the culture of reaction, turning back on the road toward God, which is creation, development, and life. Private property is the sin of excess that each of us in our heart or conscience knows is wrong. It persecutes and kills higher development in us and those around us. Private property and its supporters crucified Jesus Christ. The "this world" that Jesus referred to when he said that his kingdom was not of this world (see John 18:36 NLT) is the world of private property--immoral leadership and their followers place possession ahead of development in service to the people.
Capitalism and Private Property
Capitalism is the purveyor of private property; it seeks possession or control over resources and is antipathetic to community. The capitalists as a group possess the primary resources needed by the people to pursue their careers and maintain themselves. The average worker is forced to come to them to work in exchange for an average wage which covers living expenses. This is wage slavery. Capitalism is exploitation by capital or the accumulated goods or resources of community. Capitalists as Imperialists and Globalists, scour the planet looking for natural resources and cheap labor to further enrich themselves and not necessarily to further the development of communities they deal with. All that is produced with the resources of capitalists is disposed of according to their dictates and not democratically by the workers of the communities who produced the goods.
Private Property vs. Democracy
Democracy suffers whenever and wherever the flag of private property is waved. Nature says produce for society according to your abilities and get back from society what you need. All of this should be determined democratically by the community. Capitalists, in return for a wage, appropriate all that the workers produce--they determine the
distribution of the resources of society. When they act in their own interests, and not in the interests of the community, then this is private property. Capitalists try to convince workers that they can have democracy without having control over what they produce--bourgeois democracy. Real democracy, the next step for workers here, is when workers of the community control what is produced and decide democratically how to distribute it. Those who control production control the country. If we are to be a democracy, (rule of the people, by the people, and for the people) the people of the community must control production.
Immoral Ruling Class
In every society there are those to whom workers entrust with leading the way to higher development of society. When these leaders use the resources of the people to develop beautiful, useful, and good things for the community, then there is progress. But when these enslave the people, waste resources, and are the cause of suffering and death, then we have an immoral ruling class. In their quest for private property, immoral ruling classes waste community resources and contradict what is in the best interests of the
communities where workers live.
Controlled Scarcity of Capitalism
Nature says: Follow my order and I give you universal abundance. Scarcity is natural and acceptable only in the first stages of a higher development that comes gradually first to a few and then to more of the people until it becomes established for the whole of society. When things are scarce, they are more expensive. Capitalists attempt to control scarcity to get a good profit for their goods; they create artificial scarcity by dumping excess products and by controlling the availability of money. The example of clocks
mentioned above is a microcosm of what happens all round the world: waste, devastation, reaction caused by reactionary capitalism. Capitalists waste and pollute in their quest to maintain their profits. The people we have supported by our labor have neglected their responsibility to pioneer development of community life and are instead wasting precious resources, enslaving the people, irreparably damaging the environment, and causing suffering to the people of the planet. Jack Fischel, my teacher, told me that when Karl Marx was once asked why people stole; he responded with the question: Did you ever see anyone foolish enough to steal a pail of water from the river? When things are natural and abundant for all to use, then the thought of stealing or private ownership doesn't enter our minds. We have the science and technology to produce the necessities of life for all
people on the planet. There is no reason why we cannot have natural abundance and balanced development for all the people on the planet. The scarcity we do have is caused by immoral ruling classes and their culture.
Ownership and Violence
Ownership implies violence and force to keep what we own separate from others. Capitalism, the purveyor of private property, breeds violence and wars.
Solution
Democracy the Next Step Forward
If private ownership is backward movement away from development of community life, then democracy is forward movement toward the development of community life. Democracy in the workplace, where the community determines the distribution of what is produced, is a movement toward genuine democracy and progress and must be the next step for workers here in the USA. This is the essence, the shinning pathway forward, the narrow gateway, the next step of development for our society.
Leaders, Pioneers of Development
Leaders, pioneers of development, must be careful that they act in the best interests of the community. The community must rid itself of private property and the reactionary leaders who encourage it. It must replace corrupt leaders with leaders who bring democracy, fellowship, sharing, and justice to community life. Leaders who are pioneers of higher development help us attain oneness with creation, knowledge, and love. They use all
resources that come their way to create beautiful and useful things that bring delight to and satisfy the needs of community. Buddha, Jesus, Ann Lee (founder of the Shakers), Harriet Tubman and others are such pioneers. Having attained higher development, they lend a helping hand to the people to bring them along the pathway forward. These are the kinds of people we must get to guide our communities forward.
Revolution
We must revolutionize our government and our culture. We must establish a Workers State where the workers have control over the forces of production and distribute its products democratically. We must expand our notion of justice to include all our brothers and sisters across the planet. We must stop the owners and politicians who are not pioneers of development in service to the community, who exploit the resources and people around the globe, who have replaced leadership with hunger for private property and the power of possession. We must move in the direction of a global command center to coordinate a just sharing of planetary resources. We must overthrow corrupt and immoral governments and establish a new one that meets the needs of the community life in our country and around the globe. We must set our house in order and become responsible citizens of the planet. We must remove those who pollute and waste its resources. We must become a one-world family.
Private Property and Unity with God
The objective of all development is unity with God who is Creation, Knowledge, and Love. God has nothing to do with private property. All things on the planet, with the exception of self-conscious humans, are one with God. The human race is on its way toward cosmic consciousness, alignment with the laws of Nature, and communion with the Life throughout Universe. This is why we must continually rid ourselves of attitude of private property as we move forward toward harmony, balance and communion with God.
Natural Universal Abundance
Community development naturally yields universal abundance, like the universal abundance spoken of in the Garden of Eden mentioned in the Bible (Genesis 1:29-31 NLT), that period of human development when we roamed the planet as communal hunters and gatherers, which lasted quite a bit more time than the relatively brief period of recorded history (see Leaky). Working as a team, we were able to supply our needs (food clothing, shelter, implements, etc.) in a relatively short part of the day. With natural universal abundance there is no thought of ownership or private property. For example, no one tries to steal the air from the atmosphere. If there were enough homes, food, transportation, creative outlets for everyone, then there would be no need for private property. The community life portrayed in the TV series Star Trek shows what life could be like without private property, a life with natural universal abundance.
Next Step
Why don't we have natural universal abundance? What changed things? Besides the artificial scarcity which capitalists use to exploit workers, the higher development the community is moving toward requires a special environment of leisure, freedom, order, and love beyond that available on the average to community members. Workers provide for this special environment; leaders stand on the shoulders of the community to pioneer a higher development for community life. Parents do something similar to this when they work to provide a suitable environment for their children to develop in. Down through history slaves, serfs, and workers have facilitated this favorable environment for development. Society has taken steps of development towards greater and greater democracy, freedom, leisure, and love. Now it's time for us to take the next step.
USA, Pioneer of Global Workers Community
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We workers in the USA are in a special position. The rulers of society have transferred many sweatshop jobs to third world countries. To a great extent the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the instruments and machinery we use are produced in third world countries. These countries support us. We must use this support to create something better for the world community--a higher development, higher consciousness, a more perfect alignment with nature, a more loving community life. We must revolutionize our culture and life itself. We must pioneer a global Workers Party and State based on communes, communities and cooperatives. Perhaps it is the destiny of the USA to establish the first Global Community.
Summary
True democracy, democracy in the workplace, is a natural development that brings universal abundance to all the people of this planet. Capitalism and the private property it waves in our face exploits workers around the globe and keeps them enslaved by controlling the distribution of production and money. The people must rise up and overthrow these immoral ruling classes, seize power, and distribute the products of labor to the people of the community based on their abilities and their needs. To do this
requires steps of development. The first step for workers in the USA is a Workers State. We must gain democratic control of the means of production, the factories, banks, all places that have employees. Nothing moves without workers. We gain control of production by withholding our labor. Because the workforce has been globalized, we need to organize workers on a global scale for worldwide work stoppage. We need a global Party, Command Center, and Community.
