Funny enough, this thread jumped immediately to mind last night when I saw that the Killing Fields was on!

Just start this by saying that it's easy to regard private property on an individual level, from home-ownership to clothing. But these aren't commodities that would disappear in a post-PP society. Instead, the idea that these things are financially contingent, that a roof over your head and clothes to protect you from the cold should be only for those who can pay for them would be rejected and we collectively would see it as a fundamental human right to possess these things.

Anyway. To state that the possession of private property in the 11th century is different to how it is today is fundamentally wrong. Regardless of it has sold on down the line, it has come in to private possession through exploitative means originally. Considering we are challenging the very fundamental idea of private property you have to look at what moral basis it stems from, and most of those who had the temerity to move public land in to private lands did so under the heading of religion.

Your point about private property as a producer of freedom I genuinely find baffling. Given that private property is an extension of capital investment, you are essentially arguing that freedom is either bought or inherited, which I find very dangerous. It would suggest that those with more valuable property, take the Qatari royal family, possess more freedom because of it; which I don't necessarily dispute, but how can you regard that as a protection against tyranny? If anything it is an enforcement of tyranny, as you are allowing previously public spaces to be controlled and manipulated by non-representative bodies.

As for what abolishing private property leads to, all it really leads to is either communism or anarchy. That sentence alone will probably have plenty on here pissing their pants, but sit down for a moment and think about those ideologies as basically collective ownership. It doesn't have to be Stalin's purges or Khmer Rouge, it doesn't have to be toiling the fields all day or eating rye bread and drinking water for dinner. There is nothing intrinsic within the abolition of private property which dictates any of that, and history shows us many examples where anarcho-syndicalist communes have operated very functionally.

I understand I won't convince many/any on here, but I think it's good to think about these things, and to bring it back to the thread topic, I admire Brand for at least raising unpopular opinions and bringing them back in to public conversation. But the next time you have to pay for a piss at clapham junction, or your rent goes up, or you have to fork out £25 to go up the shard with some girl in the vague hope she'll sleep with you, remember that it's an absolute f*cking joke that someone makes you do that, and it isn't beyond the realms of possibility that we could live in a society where that didn't happen.

If punk ever happened I'd be preaching the law, instead of listenin to Lydon lecture BBC4

I kind of like the idea of a society without personal ownership, but that's the kind of thing that requires society to change, it can't be forced upon society - it has to embrace it and gravitate towards it - Typically one would imagine it would require technological breakthroughs of the kind that could produce a post-scarcity society (nanotechnology or other for of subatomic manipulation on a relatively easy basis).

Until then, value will always reside in possession, because possession are reflective of the limited nature of resources, on which our 'human life' is dependent. The necessity of ownership tends to be less established in more primitive societies, because the primary function of objects is to provide provision to the tribe, rather than to individuals (the prosperity of the tribe is more essential to the individual, than individual prosperity - the individual alone cannot prosper).

The classic problems of the 'Great' Socialist experiements is that they saw themselves as remaking a glorious perfect society, rather than progressing towards it - As Orwell said, the most important role that English Socialism could play would be to Humanize Socialism. Communism and Marxism, tends to be very academic and detached from the human beings its discussing (other than the suffering of the working classes).

Leftwing apologists often single out Stalin, but Lenin and Trotsky were great belivers in the idea of 'liquidation of disent' and of sacrificing others on mass to achieve an ambition.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
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I actually have to agree with Russell Brand on that one. The journalist was being an idiot, attempting to make a pathetically cheap point and not even succeeding very well.

Brand's still a bell-end though.

...we must expand...get more pupils...so that the knowledge will spread...

He does himself no favours by taking an aggressive attitude because that is what they are looking for rightly or wrongly.

Pride of South London
Upper Holmesdale Block P

No- there is a difference between being assertive and being aggressive it's not the first time he has lost his cool when put under the spot light.

I'm not having a dig at him, but it might help his perception considering the length of this thread which seems to be mostly negative.

Pride of South London
Upper Holmesdale Block P