Communal ownership vs common ownership in sociological perspective

Abstract

The sociological perspective in ownership analysis adopted by the author is neither the only one nor a dominant one in sociology. It refers to Stanisław Kozyr-Kowalski’s ownership theory according to which ownership means a free (i.e. unpaid) benefit from an object, no matter what the legal property status of the beneficiary. Communal ownership is a form of common ownership of which two sociologically valuable theories are presented in the paper. One, known as the property rights theory, makes a sociologically significant distinction between communal property and public (state) property. While the former is a property of resources that any member of the group can use without limits, the latter is a property of scarce resources, the use of which is regulated by specially nominated bodies. The other theory presented in the paper is Florian Znaniecki’s theory of municipal ownership. Its merit lies in emphasising the fact that common ownership means making group values freely accessible to its members. Using municipal ownership as an example he shows that fees charged by the city officers or municipally run institutions do not serve to multiply the profit of the city but only to cover the costs of services performed for the town dwellers. The principal weakness of both theories, according to the author of the paper, is closing the analysis on the level of public ownership (general or group), neglecting (i) the process of actual privatising its elements by private economic subjects, (ii) the process of monopolising its elements by smaller groups of city dwellers. Both are analysed in the last part of the paper.