Since this keeps
coming up in other places, I thought I would post this
relevant bit from the Manifesto here:
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.
Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.
Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?
Unless you own a mine, railroad, corporate mega-farm, or other monopoly of "commanding heights" of public resources that would probably be better off nationalized in the commons, you get to keep your stuff. This nonsense about the shoemaker, baker and candlestick maker having their little bit of earth appropriated is nonsense that has been smeared around for 150 years. The people who spread that kind of propaganda are usually billionaires like
Pere Koch. <---link to actual Koch smears of Communism.
