Abstract
In many critiques of neo-liberalism, analysts make reference to the commodification of everything, that is the growing tendency globally to turn every aspect of human experience and imagination into a form of private property that can be sold. In the following exchange between Julien-François Gerber and Rolf Steppacher and Patrick Nevling, the protagonists draw on anthropological theory about property, possession, and power to debate the relationship among concepts of property, possession, capitalism, and political systems. They take different positions about the ethnographic record, as well as concepts of the mode of production, the utility of the concept of political economy vs the separation of economic and political theory, the nature of property in socialist economies, the way to understand inequality, and the implications of building on economic theories favored by the alt-right. Yet both Neveling in his critique and Gerber and Steppacher in their response call for exploring alternatives to capitalism. We call on our readers to enter into this discussion. In struggling for social justice, how do we envision our future relationships to production, distribution, possession and property?