Alienation and Appropriation

Abstract

Possession, ownership and property are categories that enable a given distribution of things to persons and groups in a society to be identified at any particular moment. In a sense, the totality of such bonds existing in a society simply is that distribution—or better, what the observer or social scientist describes as the distribution is an abstract ‘map’ to which corresponds, ‘on the ground’, the aggregate of possessory relations. In addition, since what is described is a set of prescriptive assumptions of varying force and precision, such a description would imply a prediction, of varying reliability and exactitude over time, of what the distribution would be in the future. It would therefore define the relations to persons within which new objects would enter society through production, from nature. However, the social distribution of things is also always changing because they are continually passing from hand to hand. Many of these movements are merely interchanges of equivalents that would leave the overall pattern of distribution unchanged. Others are regular one-way movements that communicate directional flows to objects passing through society, even though at any moment the distributive map remains much the same. This may be because property is continually flowing from one generation to another as society renews itself by the replacement of its human parts; or because an inflow of things—say, subsistence items — is balanced by its outflow through consumption; or because accumulation is evenly spread, so that only the material volume of society expands.