Property is the origin and culmination of everything modern. Discussions around it are certainly not a new phenomenon, but it has become an increasingly controversial topic of late. Studies show that modern ownership has displaced forms of commons, while also testifying to the ongoing influence that this has on social segregation, predicated on racism, class, and gender inequality. The established idea of property seems to be responsible, at least in part, for a whole series of global crises that are becoming increasingly apparent, among them climate change. Karl Marx once wrote: “Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuaries, and, like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition.” Today, his statement seems more utopian than ever.
