Public Property

Corresponding to “private property”. The form by which the means of production are appropriated in common by the workers. The products of labor are also appropriated collectively and in common, and the people are on an equal footing and relationship in production.

Public property arose first in the primitive society. The public property in the primitive society was determined by the extremely low level of productive forces at that time. At that time, people’s capacity to resist nature and conquer nature was extremely limited, and individual people were incapable of carrying out production and activity, so they had to rely on the collective power, appropriated the means of production collectively and in common, labored collectively and in common, and appropriated the fruits of labor in common. At the end of primitive society, with the development of productive forces, the expansion of social division of labor and exchange, the improvement of the productive forces of labor, the emergence of surplus-produce and the prevalence of individual labor, the public property in the primitive society gradually disintegrated and was replaced by private property.

After the appearance of private property, it has gone through slave-owner private property, feudal landlord private property and capitalist property. The result of development of capitalist private property is inevitably an antagonistic contradiction with the increasing socialization of production, which leads to the fall of capitalist private property. In place of capitalist private property, there is socialist public property in the means of production.

Socialist public property is established through the expropriation of big capital and the socialist transformation of small private property after the proletariat overthrows the rule of the bourgeoisie by violent revolution. At present, socialist public property takes two forms: property of the whole people and collective property.

The common characteristics of public property in primitive society and socialist public property are: the workers appropriate the means of production in common; no one in society can appropriate the surplus-labor of others by virtue of his possession of the means of production; the workers are in an equal relationship in their labor; and the products of labor are appropriated by the workers collectively and in common.

Because the public property in the primitive society and socialist public property are the products of different stages of the development of the productive forces of society, there are essential differences between them. The public property in the primitive society was a product of the extremely undeveloped productive forces of society, while the socialist public property is based on the material basis of the socialized large-scale production. Therefore, the emergence of socialist public property is a qualitative leap in the history of mankind. For the first time, people have become the conscious and real masters of nature. Socialist public property has abolished the antagonistic contradiction between capitalist relations of production and productive forces, thus providing a broad prospect for the rapid development of the productive forces of society.