Silke van Dyk, Tilman Reitz und Hartmut Rosa
Alternativen zum Privateigentum
Property is not a uniform concept. It encompasses a wide variety of forms and structures that shape how we live, produce, and relate to one another — and who gains access to resources, spaces, and decision-making power. In capitalist societies, these arrangements are defined by the dominance of private property. It is therefore no coincidence that utopian visions and political debates centre around alternatives to private property occupy, whether as blueprints for post-capitalist societies or as reform proposals within existing structures.
Such alternative imaginaries are by no means purely theoretical. They surface in everyday political and activist struggles, most visibly in current campaigns for the socialization of housing and energy provision.
In this dossier, we bring together contributions from the SFB that examine these alternatives from multiple angles. The aim is not only to deepen our understanding of capitalist private property and its mechanisms, contradictions, and limits. Some contributions also present concrete counter-models and explore both their potential and their failures: from commons and municipal infrastructure to socialization and cooperatives, as well as socialist and non-Western conceptions of property.