Property as an economic and legal category. Kinds and forms of property in the modern economy.

The problem of property is a central problem of the economic theory and practice. Economic structure of society is characterized with the appropriate productive relations, which are based on the definite type of property.

For their realization it’s necessary to have at least two subjects and an object which creates these relations.

Appropriation is the economic connection between the people that determines their relation to things as own. C. The term “appropriation” includes a necessary element that is called “expropriation”. It’s possible to appropriate only things which have been expropriated from another subject, thus appropriation and expropriation are coupled categories. The relations of expropriation appear when products of labour are created by one person, and are appropriated by another one.

As each fact, property has its form and content. Content is a body of thing and process elements. Form is a structure that organizes the content that is correlation of the content elements. The form is always determined with the content.

The essence of property answers the question: who appropriates the material conditions, and, consequently, the effects of production. According to the content there are two kinds of property: labour and unlabored. The character of property is determined by its content.

The form of property shows, in what way appropriation of money profits happens – separately (individual or private appropriation) or collectively (united appropriation).

Property as a legal (juridical) category is expressed in the system of regulation, holding and utilization. C. Marx pointed that a right is an official confession of the fact. It doesn’t express property relations of themselves, only reflects them, that is legally fixes it in the definite laws, in the Constitution of the country. Relations of regulation have the highest level of the relations. Only the owner can regulate, and it’s expressed in the unlimited appropriation of the money profits. Holding is a partial, temporary appropriation and regulation from the name of the owner. Holding relations are negotiated through the lease. Relations of utilization are shown in the direct using of means of production by the establishment workers.

The fundamental features of the third stage in the development of property relations:

- in the majority of countries many key branches of industry (extraction of energy resources, iron and nonferrous –metals industry, atomic energy, etc), military -industrial establishment, central banks, general conditions of production (rail and pipeline transport, electrical network), social sphere institutions (public health, education, etc.) became state-owned;

- common, joint property (state property) is used for the national economic and social tasks solution, that is impossible for the solution by the private and corporate capital;

- the state uses its property to provide sustainable development to the national economy and to create normal conditions for vital activity of all the people.

On the modern stage of the development of society there are all three types of appropriation in the developed countries. They are: private property (labor and non-labor ); common equity (economic associations, joint-stock companies, industrial cooperatives, joint enterprises, corporations); common joint ( state and municipal) property.

Pure capitalism in its classic form has stopped to be an across-the-board system. Leading positions belong to the collectivized property in its two types – shared and joint, which promote strengthening of the social order to better usage of the top achievements of the material and spiritual culture. At the same time the world experience shows that private property is irreplaceable for the efficient organization of the small business, which is a starting mechanism for any market economy, the motivation of human activity.

Denationalization and privatization: the stages, forms, methods and problems.

Denationalization and privatization, is the deformation of property relations for means of production. The total nationalization (the part of the state sector in the former USSR exceeded 90 %) has separated a worker from the property and power. The latter were monopolistically concentrated in state possession. It caused hypertrophied centralism in the economy regulation and provided authorities with the right to solve all the questions of economic development: structural, investment, financial and tax policies; regulation of prices and wages, to decide on suppliers and consumers what and how many to produce. The centralized decision making on all the micro- and macroeconomic levels disrupted material incentive and lead to intensification of contradictions in the society.

The state having become a monopolist in economic and political powers in fact tried to realize not the common, but mainly departmental interests. The management methods were also adequate – the methods of strict hierarchical subordination.

In these conditions property in fact was formally communal and less reflected nation-wide features. Relation to nation-wide property as to somebody else’s and impossibility to command the produced product disrupted interest in quality of labor increase.

It’s possible to escape the negative influences in economic and other spheres of life, eliminating the causes of these phenomena, which are hided in the monopolistic position of the state and its institutions that had become full owners of the production resources and the results of the labor of the society. Hence the necessity of denationalization and privatization of property the creation of mixed economy, in which the market subjects (state, cooperative, joint-stock, private and collective enterprises), will be equal.

Denationalization and privatization are interconnected, but not equal terms. Denationalization as the opposite to nationalization must reflect the complex of measures, directed to disruption of state monopoly on property, reduction of state - owned sector creation of mixed economy in forcing the processes of self regulation of economy. Changing the functions of state in the regulation of economy results in that the state doesn’t take part in problems solving on a microeconomic level, but solves only macroeconomic problems.

Privatization is a payable or non-payable transfer of the prevailing part of the state property to individual or collective private owners. Privatization cannot be identified with denationalization however they have some common features. Denationalization not always means transformation of state property into the private one. State property can be of different types of collective property. The purposes of privatization are also different: the return of state property to the people with the help of which and for the funds of which it was created; transfer of inefficient state enterprises to real owners who take risk to lose their capital and thus interested in increase of effectiveness of its usage; mass creation of real subjects of market competition which act in accordance with real market demand. It should be emphasized that privatization in any case doesn’t mean full liquidation of state property. The main directions of privatization are ‘small’ and ‘big’ privatization, land privatization and privatization of accommodation.

‘Small’ privatization is realized either by selling for cash using tenders or auctions to individual, group, private owners of state enterprises of trade, services, not big industrial, transport, building enterprises, not finished constructions; or by leasing with further redemption of these sights by the collectives working on them.

‘Big’ privatization is realized by means of incorporation of state enterprises. Joint-stock type of business is directed to deprive the state to command the means of production and its results, as well as into forming of a new owner and creating a collective owner.