The Idea of Property in Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera

By Israel Lira, Peruvian political theorist

Many theorists have treated the theme of private property, and almost always have been divided in two stances mainly, in defense of these or in favor of its abolition. In the first group liberals and conservatives can be found who address this issue from an idealist (subjective) vision, as a right of absolute and indisputable character (Varnagy, 2000:56–57). However, this liberal vision generated many problems historically, insofar as it was also previsible that, with the creation of money, the unlimited accumulation of private property would be generated (Locke, II:36) without work acting as a means, genesis of inequalities which determined the emergence of socialism as its main antithesis.

For Marxist socialism, of materialist (dialectic) vision, property is in itself a modern institution of the bourgeoise which deserves to be abolished as «ultimate expression and the most complete of that regime of production and appropriation of the produced which rests over the antagonism of two classes, over the exploitation of some men over others» (Marx, Engels, 1975: 50–55).

On its behalf libertarian socialism or anarchism, did its own thing declaring loudly and clearly that property was in essence a robbery and that in itself it was nothing more than the right of aubaine that the owner attributes himself over one thing, understanding this last one as a type of inherent tribute to the property that can be manifested in a form of lease, rental, rent, or interest (Proudhon, 1975:135–136).

On the other hand, we have fascism, which also had its considerations regarding property from actualist (objective) idealism, denying the vision that both liberalism and socialism had of it, but at the end defending it either way: «Nothing from socialism, because the Regime respects and makes you respect private property (…) but also nothing of indifferent liberalism» (Mussolini, 1934).

Around these deep-dives joined a fourth school of thought which far away from a vision of strict defense or abolition, advocated for a critic-realist approach, in it, National Syndicalism, that it is wrongly reduced to a mere form of fascism, nothing further from the truth as we will see, and that it derives from the thoughts of the Spanish lawyer and political, José Antonio Primo de Rivera (1903–1936).

History was unjust with the figure of José Antonio, founder of the Spanish Falange of the JONS: by the events that succeeded his death, reducing his thinking to a simple chapter of fascism and of the right-wing. However, and from the revision of his complete works, we can see that still in plain emergence of fascism, he did not doubt in distancing himself from, and establishing the consubstantial differences between his own national and syndical proposal, and what in a vision very ahead of its time meant the rejection of both stances from the left and from the right: «the right is the aspiration of maintaining an economic organization, even though it might be unfair, and the left is, in the end, the desire of subverting an economic organization, even though by subverting it many good things will get dragged» (Primo de Rivera, 1933:163); and even distancing himself from fascism itself which was rooted back then as a third position between Liberalism and Marxism: «In the world fascism prevails, and this… harms us more than favors us, because fascism has a series of accidents (…) that we do not want to assume at all» (Primo de Rivera, 1934:301).

The idea of property that José Antonio had, rescued many aspects of the initial criticisms elaborated by Marx, but was more in tune with the Sorelian criticisms of revolutionary syndicalism: «For that it had to be born, and its birth was right (we did not hide any truth), socialism. Workers had to defend themselves against that system, which only offered them promises of rights, but did not take care of giving them a just life» (Primo de Rivera, 1970:457). To that a criticism of liberalism followed, just as to Marxism and also another to fascism and thus from its conceptions of property.

The main ideas of José Antonio in this regard could be summarized in the property as projection and difference between private property and capitalism (or capitalist property).

For José Antonio, property is configured as a direct projection of man above his own things, it is to say, as an elemental human attribute, up to here there is no difference with the defensive vision, however, it continues, capitalism has been substituting this property of man for the property of capital, as a technical instrument of economic domination, in this last sense it comes close to the socialist vision a differs from the fascist one. In order to finally give its own sense, which moves away from all of them: «When one speaks of capitalism one does not allude to private property; these two things are not only distinct, but also one could almost say that they are opposed. Precisely one of the effects of capitalism was to annihilate almost entirely private property in its traditional forms» (Primo de Rivera, 1970:657). For traditional forms of property José Antonio understands the mentioned direct relationship between mand and his things (artisan property, of the small producer, of the small merchant) and as capitalism is perfected, it becomes more impersonal and ends up in abstraction, genesis of all the problems related to capitalism (the unlimited agglomeration of capital, proletarianization and unemployment).

For these reasons for José Antonio, private property, has nothing to do with capitalist property: «Work is a human function, just as property is a human attribute. But property is not capital: capital is an economic instrument, and as an instrument, it must be put to the service of the economic totality, not to the personal wellbeing of anyone» (Primo de Rivera, 1970:754). For the exposed above, capitalist property is exactly the opposite of private property, insofar as it uses the capital not as an instrument at the service of production, but instead as a technical instrument of economic domination which reaches the category of fundamental factor of production, and with its supposed own rights which elevate it even above that of work (Garrido, 2005:3).

Bibliography

VÁRNAGY, Tomás. (2000). «The political thinking of John Locke and the emergence of liberalism». In: The modern political philosophy from Hobbes to Marx. CLACSO, Latin-American Council of Social Sciences.

LOCKE, John. (1991). «Two essays about civil government». Editorial Espasa.

MARX, Karl & ENGELS, Friedrich. (1975). «The Communist Manifesto». Editions of Foreign Languages, Pekin. Chinese Popular Republic.

PROUDHON, Pierre-Joseph. (1975). «What is Property?». Orbis Editions.

MUSSOLINI, Benito. (1934). «Scritti e Discorsi di Benito Mussolini, Edizione Definitiva». Ulrico Hoepli Editore, Milano.

PRIMO DE RIVERA, José Antonio. (1970). «Complete Works». Chronological Edition, Compilation of Agustin del Rio Cisneros. National Delegation of the Female Section of the Movement.

GARRIDO, Jorge. (2005). «National Syndicalism as alternative to capitalism». Text of the conference pronounced by Jorge Garrido San Román in May the 7th in the headquarters of the Spanish Falange of the JONS of Valladolid.

Source:

LIRA, Israel «Opinion Column of 11.22.2018». “La Verdad” Newspaper