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We should first of all see the reason why the hell such as that of our modern world has existed until now.
For this purpose, we shall trace the origin of "private property" so that we can ascertain the source of the difficulties prevailing now over the whole world. And then, from a theoretical point of view, we shall see how the principle of "private property" has developed in our history.
Concerning as to why the concept of "private property" has come up, we must not stop at the level of phenomena but go as deep as the power "MAYA" which gives rise to this world. In this study, we can find how this animating power begins to take root and develops those phenomena according to the several stages its structure has.
This concept incidentally includes not only material things but also all things which can be defined as useful according to our desires.
1. The Scene at the Beginning
The first stage is the world of inorganic matter.
Those souls belonging to this world are given direct material desire, under which they try to make themselves emerge as tangible matter, and then they struggle to preserve themselves and grow by taking in others.
They come into being because they want to. Material is the veryexpression of their desire.
The second stage is the plant world.
When life develops into organic matter, the desire to support and develop their own organic bodies is brought about in souls, under which they look for indispensable things such as water, air, sustenance, co-existent relationships, and so on.
The third stage is the animal world.
When life develops into animals, in addition to the survival instinct,the desire to preserve their own species comes out forcefully in souls. Under the former they seek surroundings essential for their existance. Thus, in their sphere of interest, they are secure in theirfood and places to live in. Under the latter, the sexual desire, they yearn for a mate to make their descendants prosperous.
In this case, on accomplishing their goal of having offspring, the uniting relationship will be over. Even if they remain united, it doesnot mean the relationship of possession based on the material desire but that of cooperation for fulfilling their offsprings' survival. And when they become old enough to survive by themselves, they begin to live a life independent of their parents. From then on under survival or sexualdesires, even those that have relationship of parents and children or that of brothers and sisters have to fight with one another.
As for those that live in a group, the cooperative relationships for their survival and reproduction as a group are organized, and a leader that can conduct the group will be sure to appear. Under these circumstances, even if the leader behaves like a tyrant, it is almost necessary because he must rule the group so that it can satisfy its own desires, and we must say that it is by no means an act controlled by material desire as is often the case in the human world.
This shows us that the most important thing for them is just maintaining and reproducing themselves as a group, and that it does not matter whether an individual can lead a happy life or not in the group.
The last stage is the human world.
The human race is the same as the lower creatures in having land and houses and personal estates, in utilizing nature, and in keeping virtual relationships such as marriage, family, relatives, and community according to survival and sexual desires.
But as poductivity grows, and as they come to recognize more and more incentives not only inside the intuitive domain but also inside the reflective one, the strong desire to possess as much as possible begins to appear in this world.
In this case, the character of those things hunted under the material desire proves to be totaly different from that of things under the others, which is because they are defined as slaves under the material desire, and chained to it.
To start with, when productivity is so low that a community cannot get more than necessary, its survival and reproduction emerge as the top priorities over the desires of individuals or families. Therefore, under the conduct of the leader who can embody the will of the community, the members live their lives helping one another. And undercertain conditions, individuals must endure misfortunes in order that the community should survive.
At this phase, we cannot yet confirm the possession of "private property" based on individuals' or families' material desire. Only personal estates having subjective evaluations such as ancestral bones may be owned. And others will be shared with members under the survival and sexual desires in the community. That is, the members lead a cooperatve life collecting plants, hunting animals, and sharing them with one another so as to satisfy their needs. The tools for these are also common property.
When living in a certain place, land remains common. Even the land around the living place may not be monopolized by the dweller. Mountains, forests, plains, and fishing grounds also remain common.
Houses are built by either the family or the community's members according to the survival desire, and not regarded as private property according to the material desire.
Next, the members have babies in order to create heirs to their community. So in circumstances where supposed spouses are limited, even parents or children or brothers or sisters will have to be partners.
As long as the desire for the reproduction of the community is put before others, it won't matter whether the babies' father is identical or not. In the community, a mother will bear babies and raise them, and her surroundings help her.
In this way, they bring up the new generation, from which a youth who has the ability to embody the will of the community and lead it will become one of the community leaders.
In an ordinary life, females have many things to do. But in such arduous activities as hunting or fishing, males have an important position. They divide work according to the nature of the sexes, and practice a cooperative life helping one another.
When a person gets old enough to retire from social activity, that person will be supported by the emotional attachments of his or her surroundings so long as the survival desire of the community is satisfied. But once the desire fails to be satisfied, the aged person, as is the same with babies, cannot help being a victim of reducing the number of dependents.
It may happen that under the survival and sexual desires they invade other communities and rob them of crops, water, personal estate, realestate, women, and so on. But this will soon stop after the desires, prevailing at that time, are fully satisfied. We must say that theinsatiable plunder caused by the material desire does not appear yet at this stage.
2. The Appearance of "Private Property" Derived from the Material Desire
As the productivity of the community grows higher, with the survival and reproductive desires being satisfied and taking on reduced significance, then the material desire of individuals or families assumes increased significance.
That is, while productivity is very low, even if individuals or families have desires, they have been suppressed under the supreme order that the community's survival and reproduction should be given the highest priority. But now that those are satisfied, the strong material desire activated by higher productivity appears in insatiable persons.
In this phase, the trend in the world, which has been prevailing since then, that people are eager to obtain all things, to control all relations, to exploit all functions, that is, to dominate the whole world considered useful is brought about under the material desire, which, as we'll see later, is the base of the virtual power that gives rise to "political power in the state."
Therefore, the content the state comes to manifest is totally dependent on the desire of ruling persons or classes in the state.
Under these circumstances, as productivity grows higher on account of the highly-developed skills caused by the transmission and accumulation of knowledge, and as traffic among different places becomes more frequent because of the large population supported by its high productivity, the phenomena of "State" will develop and vary according to these conditions. And especially when they insatiably seek the abstracted useful objet, money, the nation-states we now have come about. Money now seems to be the only means to control the whole world.
Under these nation-states, all things being defined as useful are dominated and chained as slaves either in personal ownership or in state ownership.
To begin with, when productivity gets high in both agriculture and livestock farming, there arises a gap between rich and poor among blood-related groups. This is because once they can get more than enough for their survival through the help of advanced skills, the gap is created by those groups that seek surplus actively and those that don't.
Accordingly, as agriculture develops enough to produce a surplus, the desire appearing in those groups begins to consider land very useful as the means for production and tries to monopolize it by establishing exclusive rights. And then, as the groups seek new land and try to get as much as possible, it may happen that they rob other groups of their land by using one trick after another. The common land for all members in a community is also transformed into several pieces of personal land divided among members.
In due time, the clan community, consisting of powerful groups, will try to rob other communities of their land in accordance with their material desire. In this case, those conquered, who have been considered useless because when productivity is not high enough to produce surplus they cannot be exploited by the conquerors, come to be regarded as slaves for earning surplus once productivity gets high enough to be exploited.
Houses are also built luxuriously in accordance with material desire.
As for movable items, those plants and livestock, which were common to the community, are regarded as objects for which one should strive for the purpose of accumulating surplus (that is, power) to satisfy the desire.
Tools are also privatized from common use, and highly developed.
With regard to human relationships, when a strong material desire appears, even those who have such close relationships as a spouse, a lover, a member of a family, a friend, and so on will be regarded as the "means" to carry out one's purpose or to seek profits. Thus, all relationships will be controlled and dominated to satisfy the insatiable desires one happens to have.
In an earlier stage, it will supposedly not go to such an extreme. But, as is the case among groups or families, they will try to take advantage of other groups or families, and dominate them in order to satisfy their strong material desire.
Thus they create a discriminatory system in their community. And when they begin to invade other communities, they produce slavery.
At this stage, because of the fact that the subject of desire appears by blood-related group, powerful groups will virtually appear as a ruling class in a clan or a tribelet community. Then, in order to justify and stabilize the system they have built by force, they will come to control religious authority, which will become an integrating power when the united tribelets' power is formed. But so long as authority is guaranteed by the force of the ruling groups, it is by no means stable.
Now, when the united power appears, the strong material desire to dominate all things will appear inside individuals.
As productivity grows higher, and as the population grows due to high production, the previous system of control based on blood-relation does not work as well because it fails to control all things directly as before. The old system then collapses under the strong desires individuals begin to have, from which a new system of control is created.
The new power comes from those who have close relations with the means of production. They establish private troops to protect surplus raised through high productivity. And with its power, they begin to rebel against the old system. This force turns out to be the power which not only destroys the old system but also creates the new system of control, and it will have to go a long way to found an integrated country based on the new system.
That is, those feudal lords who have gained power in various regions, trying to control their land and their people directly, begin to produce a new system of control different from the old one, and come to block by force intervention from the former power.
At this stage, the new system is founded. And trying to dominate all land, all houses, all movable property, all people, all human relationships, and so on according to material desire, they spread the net of power over their territories.
The tendencies which would deny such a system would surely be suppressed severely. No matter how high a position a person has in a power structure, the deeds and the thoughts against the feudal system lead to the death penalty for him or her.
Incidentally, when such a society based on the feudal system develops, the desire to continue possessing one's own "private property" permanently makes "the eldest son inheritance system" inevitable. They think that the eldest son should inherit the family estate because he has the right to represent the will of his father.
But we must admit that this system is a phenomenon derived from the desire to control the estate permanently by making his descendants continue to prosper. From this point of view, marriage is consideredthe most important means.
In these circumstances, spouses, being considered as mere tools for satisfying desire, might be discarded when they prove to be useless. And because whether or not the baby the spouse conceives is the heir's becomes a serious matter, they inflict a severe penalty for violations, especially on adulteresses.
In this way, the desire to possess all things in both time and space will make feudal lords plunder the territories of other lords, and after sundry conflicts among feudal lords, victory will leave the most powerful lord to virtually integrate a whole country and to obtain the supreme right over it.
At this point, the system of control, having belonged to only his territory, becomes that of this newly integrated country. That is, being based on the direct exploitation of agricultual surplus, this feudal system has not only the inheritance system as mentioned above, but also a strict hierarchical status system to preserve this feudal order.
Even in such a strict feudal order, as commerce develops, the monetary system under which money can replace all things as a means of accumulating power will undermine the feudal system and will make it give way at last.
That is, as transportation develops with the help of more advanced technologies, and more and more goods are handled over a wider range, those merchants taking part in trade soon become well off, allowing commerce to develop all the more.
Because of the merchants' nature, they try to seek money insatiablyby investing their capital only in the distribution process. Then, demanding the freedom of economic activities and the liberalization of internal markets, they begin to confront the feudal powers.
As for the feudal lords, they cannot ignore trade because it prospers their own territories. And they themselves also seek money to satisfy their insatiable desire in spite of the fact that they have to conserve the feudal system due to the same desire, contradictions are bound to appear.
In the case of farmers, if the exploitation by feudal lords doesn't become severe and they begin to pay their taxes with money, the high productivity made possible by progress in agricultural techology and the improvement of plant breeding will emancipate them from their position in the feudal system by buying freedom with money.
In this way, when the trade among countries flourishes and merchants become active, the strong desire to pursue money appears, and gradually causes the system to collapse. But even so, we cannot say that this is their turn to establish a new system of control due to their desire.
At this step, their only role is to help the new system come into being in a transitional stage. For merchants are always trying to profit by only moving merchandise and, so long as their activity is permitted, they can fulfill the desire under whatever system the country has. Moreover, under certain conditions, they can obtain huge profits with privileges from political powers in certain countries.
The collapse of the feudal system will be accelerated by the feudal lords' desire for money, and this endless desire will lead them to create a transitional country.
That is, reconfirming the privileges that have belonged to the feudal powers, the feudal lords are in time forced to acknowledge and protect the rights of those merchants and independent people who have gained more and more power while the monetary system undermines the old order. And then, being unable to secure armed forces under the feudal system, they begin to adopt a mercenary system. At the same time, as the salaried workers in the political organization, bureaucrats are also hired.
When all people begin to be handled by money in such a way, they become madly busy in making money by developing gold or silver mines inside their own countries, in accumulating a trade surplus, in protecting and encouraging the industries which make goods for export, and so on. And especially in certain conditions, they obtain colonies by force, plundering precious metals and so on, or making themselves bases which can supply raw materials or markets for their goods.
As I mentioned above, in such a milieu of economic activity, there appear the independent farmers, who were chained in the old hierarchical order but have emancipated themselves from it by producing surplus and accumulating money. But, in their turn, they themselves likewise begin to seek money insatiably. In other words, with the expanding market, they begin to manufacture goods such as woolen fabrics and cotton fabrics by themselves, trying to get more and more money ( that is, power ). And, though in the feudal order they only repeated the scale of production which was needed every year, in this system they begin to increase it in accordance with the expansion of the market.
On the other hand, at the same time as the indepenent farmers with the means for production appear, the failing poor farmers who have lost their land become labor, and formerly powerless masters and artisans also begin to earn wages by selling their labor, while masters of means own their factories and increase the scale of their enterprises.
In this way, in order to have the zeal of material desire transformed into money, commerce must first be developed, which requires that people first make industrial products for distribution. Therefore, people appear who process matter in order to create utilitarian value, and increase the scale of production accumulating surplus value from it. And when efficient machines are invented with highly developed technology, they push them to manufacture ever higher production.
Once those internal and external conditions are realized, industrialists begin to take power quickly. And under their material desire, a new system of control appears in the world.
That is, as the desire for money is takes root strongly not only in the mind of merchants and lords but also in that of industrialists, they support the colonial policy of lords actively so as to secure raw materials for processing and markets for selling their finished goods. They also demand freedom of economic activities and the equality of human rights to the previous feudal powers and the privileged merchants.
Gaining power in this way, industrialists literally push the feudal system off the stage, so political powers cannot but depend upon them for help to survive. As their growth comes to show the strength of the state, the powers in it start protecting and nurturing them more actively.
On the other hand, as the capitalists also rely on their states' initiative for satisfying their material desire, they carry forth with colonial policy with the help of the state's force, and they compel the state to enact a free trade policy or a protective one as well.
As we have thus seen, their material desire for profit comes to replace that of the feudal lords, defining the virtual content of their new state.
Therefore, as the industrialists grow, the existance of the previous privileged merchants cannot be allowed. And there comes about the necessity for them to "liberate" the people from the fetters of the previous order and to enslave and overwork those poor people again with low wages who cannot live on without earning money after they are set "free".
So, the new state provides the people with the system of guarantees about individual "freedom" such as "freedom of property," "freedom of contract," "freedom of choice," and so on. But we must recognize that this takes into consideration only the freedom of the capitalists' economic and political activities, because it is introduced partly as a concomitant to their material desire.
There also appear a new world view, a new system of ethics, or new thought which justifies its new system.
As we have seen above, it happens that wars of aggression are brought about to secure raw materials and markets, and in the worst situation, native people are brought as slaves. But when capitalism develops to a high level via industrial revolution, those capitalists who organize the monopoly of large scale enterprises force their state to conquer nudeveloped countries very aggressively because of their strong desire to expand their enterprises abroad, and then to colonize them or keep them by force.
At this stage, where several capitalist countries have appeared via the industrial revolution, those states which represent the internal capitalists begin to compete with one another for raw materials or markets, and finally bring about wars.
Though these conflicts appear among countries, in a virtual sense, they can be taken as those among the capitalists in their respective countries. This is because when capitalists grow as the substantial accumlation of capital leads to the strength of the country itself, the country and the capitalists join hands and make inroads into foreign countries.
In this situation, the state will take an initiating role. That is, trying not to be left behind other countries, or to make internal capitalists into big ones, it goes to war.
World wars break out in such a way, producing defeated countries and victorious ones. And from that time on, the capitalists begin to compete with one another under the initiative of victorious ones.
As a matter of course, those capitalists inside the victorious countries, having gained the advantage in their economic activities over the world, can accumulate capital. And investing the huge capital throughout the whole world, they try to get more and more profit.
Now, when capital concentrates in this process, the big capitalists, whose sphere of activity covers the entire world, begin to compete not under the initiative of their respective countries, but beyond the frameworks of their countries. Due to their insatiable desire for money,they scramble for more profit, trying to dominate all things with the power of money.
That is, when their power is not sufficient to survive global competition, they have to depend on their state for protection. But once they come to have much capital and earn considerable profit, it sometimes happens that the framework of the country itself becomes a barrier for them because of possible restrictions by it.
At this stage, due to their material desire, capitalists themselves begin to clash with one another directly. In this conflict, the capital that can gradually continue to prevail in competition will survive in the long run, and will come to control the whole world.
In order to reach this stage, capital has to be concentrated to an extreme extent, and the economy needs to be substantially developed as well. The entire world must also be linked with various kinds ofcommunication and transportation.
In the previous era of imperialism, the state itself made inroads into other countries by force, seeking abundant raw materials and markets in colonies, But at this stage, capital itself penetrates the framework of the country, breaking it into economically inferior countries without using force, whence it gets raw materials and labour with little cost, produces many goods at low cost, and then sells them in the world open markets.
As they continue to compete with one another in such a way, the conflicts among them can be regarded as that of squeezing colonies by capital, as opposed to the previous ones carried out with force under the name of the "state." It is due to desire for profit (money) that they make the native people work as hard as a kind of slave, take so many raw materials, and destroy their environment by contaminating it with pollutants or by exterminating nature.
Incidentally, when the world is covered with capitalism and more and more capital is concentrated, although each state has fostered its own capitalists and has encouraged them to accumulate capital, at this stage it comes to be supported by capital, which leads to the collapse of the concept "state" we have used until now. And the abstract formof capital itself (or money) becomes the supreme power, whose conflicts cause wars to take place among the forces supported by competitors, and in certain situations, it might happen that the force itself rebels against the supporter, capital.
The country which is predicated on capitalists' material desire may endure the rebellions of labor, which is looked upon as a slave work force.
In slavish conditions where they cannot satisfy their survival desire adequately, they try to fulfill their desire by revolting against capitalists rather than wait for Death to visit them. Their energy is concentrated on one point and it destroys the power system based on it.
However, if they can destroy the slave state controlled by the material desire of capitalists, then the power-oriented people representing labor will appear and build a new state with a new system of control according to their own material desire. Taking "the interest of the party" ( that is, their own profit and power ) to be the top priority, as is the substantial content of the new state, they try to nationalize all the estates in the country, control all the people in it, and interfere in all their relationships.
However, even if they introduce state ownership instead of private ownership, both systems can be said to be essentially the same thing so long as they are predicated on the material desire to control all property. Even if private ownership is prohibited by the new system, the powers in it can control or possess much property under the pretext ofthe "party's interest." Furthermore, it becomes possible for them to subordinate the people and control every thing in the system.
Therefore, those power-oriented persons among the party's members keep competing with one another for supreme power. Due to the slavish desire for control, they regard as useful not only their neighbors and friends but also their lovers and family members, trying to control these relationships. And they take advantage of even a small chance, making it a step for obtaining the supreme position.
In such an autocracy, a gradational system of power develops, and the hierarchical power system comes into being. To make matters worse,in the attempt to conserve its own system, it begins to interfere with other states by undertaking political maneuverings.
That is, however large the number of victims in a revolution may be, and however successful they may be in accomplishing their revolution, once the super power in the new system plucks the fruit, it is distorted, and the "revolutionary government" is soon absorbed into the hierarchical system. If there is any political power which is absorbed into it and which shows trends against the super power, it is to be completely supressed.
This is because even if it holds up the same "party's interest," it has to submit to the discriminatory system, in which only those standing at the summit can exert the supreme power over the surbordinated parts. Therefore, the states absorbed into the hierarchical system almost cannot exert the supreme right, which is supposed to be given to the independent states so long as they did establish their own political power, and they have to obey the supreme power.
But it may happen that the system built by force also will meet revolt, being overthrown by the same force in a different form.
So far, we have seen in this study how the marvelous power "MAYA" begins to have the roots of "private property," and then develops it into various phenomena according to the structural stages life itself has, in the course of which there is the step where the material desire appears in human beings, engendering the several typical systems of control with different forms and content in chronological order. Thus, we now understand that the material desire in us human beings is the virtual power which gives rise to such systems of control as describedin this study.
Therefore, taking this into consideration, it is not at all enough to only abolish the present systems of control. In order to do away with them, at first we must eradicate material desire, which gives rise to them. And to realize that goal, we should begin with that of ourselves. We have to change ourselves. Otherwise, even if we could eliminate the present frameworks of country or systems, or even if we could emancipate our society and families from their fetters, so long as we individuals continue wanting "power" due to our material desire, in due course we, trying to dominate all things possible, will make a new "state" or a new "system," replacing the present ones. Even if we are opposed to them now, so long as we remain the personification of the desire, we will give rise to a new system of control.
Therefore we must defeat our insatiable material desire. We should become "human beings" before insisting on our isms. We must lead a life as "human beings," escaping from the dark stifling world, and starting our universal revolution by doing so.
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