Ownership and Socialism

You don't know how desperate I've become
And it looks like I'm losing this fight
In your world, I have no meaning
Though I'm trying hard to understand
--John Waite

Am starting once again Mises' (1951) Socialism. An important point made early relates to ownership. There is economic ownership and legal ownership. They are not necessarily equivalent.

In economic terms, ownership is the power of disposal. In the case of first order, or consumer, goods, the individual who can direct consumption of the good owns it. Thus, a thief who steals bread from a supermarket owns the bread from an economic standpoint because the thief is in control of its disposal. This state of ownership is true despite the fact that the thief does not have legal title to the bread.

Under the auspices of Natural Law, rightful ownership equates to individual property rights. Broadly construed, property includes an individual's life, his/her wherewithal to produce, and the fruits obtained from production. Natural Law declares that property is the dominion of the individual who can dispose of it as desired as long as the individuals does not forcefully interfere with the pursuits of others while doing so.

Socialism endeavors to expropriate property from the individual to the collective. It seeks to do this by empowering an institution, government, as a 'legal' agent for expropriation. Direct and forceful transfer of property from individual to states, as well as forceful limitations placed on the rights of individual property owners, are means of socialization.

From Mises:

"If the State takes the power of disposal from the owner piecemeal, by extending its influence over production; if its power to determine what direction production should take and what kind of production there should be, is increased, then the owner is left at last with nothing except the empty name of ownership, and property has passed into the hands of the State." (p. 56)

Reference

Mises, L. 1951. Socialism: An economic and sociological analysis. New Haven: Yale University Press.