Dreptul de proprietate: între individualism și colectivism
Property right: between individualism and collectivism

Summary/Abstract: According to the relevant legal literature, public property and private property are the two typical – indeed, the only – manifestations of the same subjective right. For this reason, public property rights are stereotypically defined, in a manner analogous to how we define the right to private property, as the interfusion of the three classical elements (powers) of property – usus, fructus, and abusus – which are understood to be exclusive, absolute and perpetual. Moreover, it is claimed that the private appropriation of goods does not boil down to individual property, and that the collective appropriation of goods is mediated by the State, which is the legal expression of the community’s collective will. These ideas are not free from criticism. The three powers of property coalesce to define an act of exclusion, and one which necessarily presupposes an individualistic slant to the legal construction of property. By giving account of itself in such a way, this species of subjective right cannot, while also remaining true to itself, be private in certain cases, and public in others. The exclusive right to property, precisely because it is conceived to be exclusive, presupposes and individual owner. In doing so, it precludes any form of collective ownership. Therefore the legal framework within which public property is currently defined reveals a powerful internal contradiction, which is not without practical consequence. For these reasons, the right of public ownership, being what it now is, cannot truly be a means to the collective appropriation of goods by the community. And this is because any form of collective ownership cannot be compatible with „all” the exclusionary and discretionary powers afforded to the individual proprietor by the private right of ownership.

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