Transforming Post-Communist Political Economies (1998) / Chapter Skim
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4 Fuzzy Property: Rights, Power, and Identity in Transylvania's Decollectivization
4 Fuzzy Property: Rights, Power, and Identity in Transylvania's Decollectivization
Pages 102-117
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From page 102... ...
In no Western country undergoing the privatization of socialized assets has social production existed on anything like the scale of that in the communist states. Moreover, public enterprise in the latter instances operated in political, economic, and jural systems governed by totally different rules from those of liberal capitalism, making the creation of post-communist private property rights a wholly different proposition from the divestiture of public property in countries such as Britain, France, or the United States.
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From page 103... ...
but of mixes of these: different social actors hold different bundles of rights, and the definitions of the status of property are blurred and ambiguous.2 Among the tasks these investigations facilitate is a deeper inquiry into the very concept of property itself what it means, and how property regimes are socially produced. Such an inquiry should also explore the ideological aspect of privatization as a centerpiece of the transition, for the neoliberal project of transforming public into private property has more than a practical aim (ostensibly easing the creation of markets, not to mention the interface with global capital)
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From page 104... ...
I speak of "fuzzy property" partly to indicate that I view simplistic notions of private ownership ironically, and I leave the concept somewhat vague since property rights can appear indistinct for a variety of reasons. Different people may contest ownership of a single object, complicating the assessment of use rights, obligations, and claims to revenue.
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From page 105... ...
All members of the Aurel Vlaicu Agricultural Association signed over to it the land they received following passage of Romania's law on property restitution, known as the Law on Agricultural Land Resources or Law 18/ 1991. It was understood that the owners held and would retain ownership rights to the land placed in the association; they transferred managerial rights over cultivation in exchange for a payment from the harvest.
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From page 106... ...
We see clearly in this a systemic bias toward quasicollective property arrangements. Third, even once a person obtained undisputed title to a specific surface area of former CAP land, theoretically holding all the rights of use, enjoyment, and disposal not reserved for the state, that person faced serious contextual constraints on the exercise of these rights.
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From page 107... ...
Fuzzy property in this context consists of complexly overlapping use and revenue rights lodged in external conditions that give the holders of these rights incomplete powers for exercising them. The emergence of something more closely approaching exclusive individual proprietorship would require not so much clearer legal specification of who has what rights these rights are fairly clear already but modifications in the surrounding economy, modifications that would permit individuals to acquire the means of cultivation affordably and to dispose profitably of their product while outcompeting quasicollective associational forms.
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From page 108... ...
The whole village built it, after all." The other disagreed, however, saying that Ionescu had been the victim of a breach of the law. Law 18 had special procedures for auctioning off the goods of collective farms, he said, procedures that had been closely followed until the officers of the prospective association had interfered with the auction unlawfully.
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From page 109... ...
It thus resembles privatization of the industries that were built up during the communist period and were visibly the product of people's labor in that time, when collective labor produced collective products having no "owners." Land, by contrast, has prior owners; its privatization creates conflicts between those owners and others who feel themselves entitled to a share by virtue of their work in the collective (see Verdery, 1994:1105-6~. With the Vlaicu granary, that sort of conflict was not present, and this brought the question of public good more cleanly into view.
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From page 110... ...
" Although the liquidation commission had requested a legal aide from the county capital, none turned up. No one knew whether it was acceptable to suspend the bidding, but under the circumstances in which people representing an embryonic association suddenly realized it could not function without a granary it did not yet have the resources to buy that seemed the thing to do.
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From page 111... ...
Thus, the quasi-council could bid only as private individuals, which would mean they had no grounds for suspending the auction to consult with anyone else. The lawyer emphasized that the manner of the auction contravened the interests of the public and of the former CAP members since the lack of publicity kept potentially higherbidding participants from attending, and this reduced the proceeds from the sale that could be distributed to villagers.
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From page 112... ...
Whatever the reasons for the judge's decision may have been,ll the effect of her decision was to deny legal sanction to those who would have moved an object from an ambiguous status, subject to overlapping claims and rights on the part of individual owners and collectivity, into Ionescu's clearly defined, exclusive private ownership. By her decision, the granary remained the property of the association, belonging to all and managed by their representatives.
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From page 113... ...
Implicated in both are deeply held values concerning community and the definition of self in relation to work. To explain this, and to show why Ionescu's suit catalyzed so vigorous a reaction among his fellow villagers, I should say a further word on his personal characteristics.
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From page 114... ...
decided to dismantle their CAP buildings: they marked off with a tape measure separate sections for each family, the area corresponding precisely to the amount of work each family had given to the collective; each family then took the building materials from its section.~3 Similar procedures occurred elsewhere. The same connection between owning and working appears in villagers' opposition to Ionescu as "lazy," as "not liking to work." People drew a contrast between we who work and he who is lazy.
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From page 115... ...
The reasons for this preference, I have argued, relate in part to the benefits villagers saw in having a collectively owned structure they could use in the absence of proper storage facilities of their own; that is, the lack of a storage and distribution infrastructure directly affected their interest in the building. At least as important, however, were people's sentiments about work, self, and the acceptable appropriation of the fruits of their labor sentiments marshaled in revalorizing fractured lives and recreating meaning.
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From page 116... ...
Property understood collectively lacks the clear edges of an ideologized notion of exclusive private ownership; it is, in this sense, fuzzy. Second, the discussion suggests that post-communist ownership patterns generate these kinds of fuzziness because of the complexly overlapping rights, obligations, and claims that emerge from communist property relations.
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From page 117... ...
Rapaczynski 1994 Privatization in Eastern Europe: Is the State Withering Away? Budapest/London/ New York: Central European University Press.
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