Private Property and Labor

Sometimes attributed to Marx is a shared ideal with Rousseau of a society without private property. However, that attribution is usually mistaken in several respects. To begin with, while Rousseau, perhaps for only heuristic purposes, there is no private property in an idyllic hypothetical 'state of nature', he does allow that in some social constructions, the institution of private property could have positive value. In other words, his denial is of a natural right of private property, though not necessarily of a convential one. In sharp contrast, and often overlooked, Marx does recognize one natural right of private property--of one's labor and its fruits. Furthermore, his Socialism does not abolish that; rather, it sublates it in collective ownership. Fundamental to his departue from Rousseau is that overcoming of private property is an episode in the self-making of humans, not an apriori or a pre-historical given.