Due to the nature of rights, ownership of private property is a myth. Only guardianship of personal property, maintained through compacts, exists.
Private Property
In general, anarchists, regardless of type, reject private property. They consider it theft. I disagree. It is not theft. It is a myth. If we accept the definition of rights that I have presented in previous articles, then ownership of private property, as we generally perceive it, does not exist at all. Instead we have guardianship of personal property. Indeed, considering the definition of rights addressed earlier in this text, it is clear that there really is no such thing as private property. When people think of private property, they think of perpetual ownership. For instance, if I own a house, it is mine, until I decide to sell it or give it away. But suppose I rent out that house. Do I have a right to have it back? Recall that a right is that which is voluntarily maintained, in the absence of others. It is a condition of the moment. And at the moment that I have rented the house out, it is not in my possession. I must get it back, from the tenant. But then this is not something which is voluntarily maintained, in the absence of others.
Personal Property
This brings us to personal property. Anarchists generally consider personal property to be property which is in use by the person. If I am living in a house, it is my personal property. If someone else is renting it out, it is their personal property. However, if I am in possession of something, it is my right to decide when and if to give up possession, and under what conditions. In the case of a rental property, the landlord has made an agreement that he will transfer use of the property to the tenant, but only if he agrees to pay a certain amount per month and agrees to return use of the property at the end of the lease. If the tenant refuses to leave, at the end of the lease, he is in violation of the agreement.
That does not mean that the tenant can simply be kicked out. That would be a violation of his rights and a violation of the NAP. Since the tenant did not use physical force against the landlord or his property in order to move in, it would be the landlord that would be violatig the NAP by using force to remove the tenant. The landlord could however simply refuse to pay utilities, and the utility company could refuse to provide new service to the tenant in violation of the occupancy agreement. This would not be a violation of the tenant’s rights or the NAP as there is no right to have someone else provide utilities for you.
Exception
There is one exception which should be mentioned. If there was something which we could not lose possession or use of, then we could say that we truly own it. Such a thing exists. It is our own body. Our body is ours, and ours alone. Of course, body parts could be lost, but we cannot detach ourself from our body, at least not as far as science is aware. Therefore it is something that is truly ours.
Contested Ownership
There is a more practical reason to reject private property. A fundamental flaw in the concept of private property is determining legitimate ownership. Given the nature of human history, theft exists in the history of essentially everything that we possess. Land of course has been stolen time and time again. Furthermore, if there is validity to perpetual right to ownership, of things we produce, or things produced by things we own, then we must ensure that at no point was theft involved in the course of history which brought our possessions to us. That means that if something was produced on stolen land, it did not legitimately belong to the producer, and therefore does not legitimately belong to the person who currently possesses is. Therefore if we accept private property as legitimate, either nobody owns anything, or everyone owns everything. That is just the nature of the history of theft in this world.