The left doesn't want to abolish your property: it wants to manage it

The left and its fixation on private property

Every so often, socialism rediscovers its obsession with private property. But the target is never just any property — it's the small owner's: the apartment, the shop, the inheritance. The thesis running through the most skeptical takes on the official narrative is that the obsession isn't with property, but with other people's property — the kind that creates real independence.

The contradiction is striking. While the heavy hand comes down on small assets — through taxes, regulation, or threats of confiscation — the large fortunes of the IBEX 35 or the funds that buy public debt remain almost untouched. The explanation on offer is prosaic: the small owner doesn't depend on the State, and whoever doesn't depend doesn't obey. Big capital, by contrast, pays commissions.

The appeal to history seems inevitable. In the USSR, individual property was abolished, and the result was that the nomenklatura ended up dividing the spoils among themselves. Then came crony capitalism, which some describe as the same thing but with a tie. Some compare that era to the present: a caste that lives off the racket and hands out the loot to its own.

The analysis stalls at the same old point: whether the confiscatory impulse is pure envy or plain business. A small owner who accumulates nothing benefits whoever distributes the bag. The uncomfortable conclusion is that the modern left doesn't want to abolish private property; it wants to manage it itself. And there, the difference between your own house and someone else's apartment is considerable.