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Anarchists have a well-earned reputation when
it comes to property.

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“Oh they’re smashing the Starbucks!”

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“Oh my Go-”

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“Gangster.”

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“Ohhhhhhhhhh!”

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Acts of targeted vandalism and sabotage are
often used by liberals, politicians and corporate

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media outfits to paint a picture of anarchism
as nothing more than mindless hooliganism.

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But these small-scale acts of property destruction
represent more than just surface-level outbursts

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of misdirected rage, or a ritualistic rivalry
with Starbucks windows.

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They gesture towards a broader assault on
the philosophical and legal underpinnings

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of the state and capitalism itself.

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Early anarchist forebearer Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
summed up this tension more than 175 years

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ago, when he penned the phrase ‘property
is theft’.

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All power structures are rooted in ideology.

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A shared belief in this ideology is what keeps
the structures of power in place.

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Under capitalism, the edifice of social control
is built on the collective illusion of private

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property, and the sanctity of the so-called
‘free market’.

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Any moves taken to challenge this logic will
therefore provoke pushback from the system’s

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indoctrinated cheerleaders, and will certainly
catch the attention of the repressive and

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recuperative functions of the state.

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But as the saying goes... you can’t make
an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

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And you definitely can’t overthrow capitalism
without messing with people’s stuff.

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So.... what is property, anyway?

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And what do anarchists have against it?

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Property is a legal concept, used as a means
of delineating ownership and control.

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It’s rules are so ingrained into the fabric
of our daily lives that it’s easy to forget

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that they are fluid, changeable, and that
they have assumed many different forms throughout

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human history.

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From the stateless Anishinaabe peoples of
the Three Fires Confederacy, to the vast state-managed

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enterprises of the Soviet Union, differences
in baseline conceptions of property have fundamentally

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shaped the specific character of social relationships,
the development of culture and the operation

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of power and authority in their respective
societies.

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In most parts of the world today, national
and cultural distinctions exist mainly as

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localized variations of a single, global capitalist
economy.

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The dominant ideology of this empire is a
consumer-fuelled individualism – a worldview

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that sees a corporate-dominated system of
private property as synonymous with freedom

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of choice... or even liberty itself.

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Of course, things haven’t always been this
way.

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Capitalism first emerged in Europe, where
the growing wealth and power of rich landowners,

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merchants and financiers gradually began to
unravel and displace the existing system of

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feudal social relations.

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Before this, much of the
lands and natural resources needed for human

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survival were considered a commons, meaning
that they weren’t actually owned by anyone.

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Even in the Christian agrarian societies where capitalism first took root, it
was widely understood that the earth and the

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entire bounty of nature belonged to God, and
were merely administered by his representatives

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on earth, the Church and the monarchy.

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The shift to capitalism was made possible
through large scale commodification.

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This process, also known by Marxists as primitive
accumulation, essentially amounts to state-sanctioned

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theft.

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In a cruel parlour trick, things without monetary
value are legally transformed into commodities

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that can be owned and traded.

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Yellowknives Dene anti-colonial theorist,
Glen Coulthard describes it as “the violent

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transformation of non-capitalist forms of
life into capitalist ones.”

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The great enclosure began in earnest at the
end of the 15th century, as acre upon acre

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of the British Commons was broken up and commodified
into individual parcels of land.

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This was, incidentally, around the same time
that Spanish and Portuguese merchants began

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their invasion and pillage of the new world.

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As part of their genocidal colonization of
the so-called Americas, European settlers

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imposed this new system of private land ownership
onto Indigenous nations with a very different

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conception of property – one in which people
belonged to the land, not the other way around.

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The same colonial process of commodification
was then applied to fellow human beings.

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Over the following centuries, European slave
traders kidnapped millions of Africans, reduced

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them to the legal status of chattel property
and sold them to the owners of massive agricultural

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plantations.

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The massive volume of wealth extracted from
this stolen land and labour cemented the power

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of the emergent capitalist class, and was
used as a springboard for subsequent wars

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of conquest.

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And with these new waves of Euro-American
expansion came the enclosure of new lands,

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the creation of new markets, and the spread
of capitalist social relations all across

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the globe.

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Conceptions of property and ownership have
evolved over the years.

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In its hardwired pursuit of constant growth,
capitalism has been forced to constantly adapt,

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contort and reinvent itself.

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Technological advances have revolutionized
the manufacture and transportation of commodities,

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while property relations have become muddied
through the rise of publicly owned corporations,

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investment vehicles and financial debt
instruments.

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And the logic of the commodity form has continued
to colonize new frontiers, from intellectual

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property, to genetic blueprints, to information
itself.

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This has resulted in a world where nearly
everything imaginable has been transformed

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into property, and its ownership increasingly
concentrated in the hands of a shrinking pool

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of unimaginably wealthy individuals.

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This hoarding of resources by a small minority
finds its natural reflection in the explosive

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growth of abject poverty among the world’s
majority.

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In the Global South, oil and mining companies
hire paramilitary death squads to displace

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entire villages, swelling the populations
of favelas, shantytowns and mega-slums well

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beyond their natural limits.

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Meanwhile, in the so-called ‘developed world’,
millions of people are homeless, while ten

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times that number of homes sit vacant, silently
accruing value for real estate speculators

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and investment trusts owned by the managers
of public sector pension funds.

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These levels of entrenched inequality are
backed up by the massive application of state

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violence, and the internalized sense of collective
helplessness that this violence has produced.

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But this fatalism has limits, and many see
the regime of property for what it is – a

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social war – and act accordingly.

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Around the world, anarchists have been at
the forefront of urban squatting movements,

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breaking into empty buildings and transforming
them into social centres and collective housing

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projects.

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In more rural areas, communities of displaced
peasants have occupied private or state-owned

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lands and defended one another against the
threat of eviction, while Indigenous groups

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have taken up arms, halted development projects,
and forced colonizers off their territory.

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Anarchists have honed their
forgery skills, creating counterfeit government

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IDs, state currency and travellers cheques
for armed resistance movements around the

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world.

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While other anarchists, like the Greek comrades
of Revolutionary Struggle, have carried out

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armed expropriations, robbing banks to fund
their attacks on the state.

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Crews of anarchists have bloc’ed up and
swarmed grocery stores, liberating enough

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food to feed their entire block, while others
have broken into fenced off lots to build

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community gardens and autonomous parks.

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The struggle for anarchism is above all a
struggle to replace the alienated and exploitative

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social relations of capitalism with new relationships
based in solidarity and mutual aid.

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This means de-commodifying our lives, and
all of the things that we need to live well.

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It means seizing back the commons... and everything
that they’ve stolen from us.