Estates and Property

Property is important in the scheme of political history as it is ultimately the spoils of victory. As such, property is synonymous with the first estate, the nobility and political life, and is objected to in the second estate, the priesthood and pious life. The notion of “having” is not merely a human extension of oneself, but dates back to first life:

“The plant possesses the ground in which it roots. It is its property, which it defends to the utmost, with the desperate force of its whole being, against alien seeds, against overshadowing neighbour plants, against all nature. So, too, a bird defends the nest in which it is hatching. The bitterness fights over property occur — not in the Late periods of great Cultures, between rich and poor, and about movable goods — but here in the beginnings of the plant-world. When, in a wood, one feels all about one the silent, merciless battle for the soil that goes on day and night, one is appalled by the depth of an impulse that is almost identical with life itself.” (2.10.4)

Property in its purest sense is land, but in all forms of property, there is an endless transference of possession, silent wars and struggles for possessions, all because property is evidence of a strong life and the absence of property is evidence of a weak life, not as a consequence, but as an expression.

Against the idea of property, the second estate sees it for what it is: evidence of firm rooting in the landscape, like the plant defending its soil, and a failure to liberate oneself from such sinful desires. Property is also opposed by the as-yet mentioned third estate – the city intellectuals. Marx proclaiming property as theft is a materialistic, late-stage equivalent to the priest renouncing the worldly. It is the Buddha regarding all desire as the cause of suffering and the stoic renouncing control of the external.

Property in early times is highly fixated on. In the Odyssey, when Odysseus arrives home, his first action is to turn around and count his treasures in his ship. The Iliad is a war over the body of Helen, as women also are the spoils of conquest. In India, Arabia and Persia, feudal conflicts or desire for conquest meant the conquest of cattle. But when the culture ascends to its height, property as power and property as spoil polarise into politics, law and conquest, versus trade, economics and money respectively.

At the same time, its negation separates priesthood and learning. Property and the opposition of property is a tension premised on the existing facts and the pursuit of truth. The Greek philosophers operated in schools of the Orphic style. The Pythagoreans were a religious cult through and through. The university in the Islamic golden age was an extension of monastic brotherhoods, each student provided with cell and clothing and food, and equally Western universities, particularly in northern Europe, were modelled with catholic hierarchism and codes of conduct to be part of the learned community and often these universities evolved out of monastery sites.

What we have here is the growth of nobility and priesthood in the early period out of the landscape as living symbols of Time and Space. Noble property conquest divides into politics (and law) and economics, whilst out of priesthood detaches science. These two newer elements become the foundations of the third estate that exists in accordance to money and intellect within the rising cities. The two old estates are progressively de-sanctified and pushed out of the scene of politics, unless, as in certain instances to be discussed, they learn to adapt their race-sense to the coming times.