Talk:Expropriation

Businesses

The last comment, "Businesses would do well always to remember that doing business is a privilege, and not a right -- and to conduct themselves accordingly." could be viewed as a political statement, and is certainly a philosophical one as it involves "rights" and is clearly biased toward a particular point of view. Also it contributes nothing to the stub or the definition/explanation of Expropraition. So I have removed it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.9.247.204 (talk • contribs) 07:13, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the removed text may not have been philosophical. 14th ammendment protections just don't seem to apply outside of the United States, and almost all other countries in the 'western' world have far stricter laws about corporations needing to serve the public interest. Given that expropriation results in an immense loss of capital, and almost always an accompanying loss in wealth, I fail to see how such an important warning is necesarily biased: Perhaps simple rewording is in order? I would like to nominate "Well thought-out multinational investments frequently acknoledge that in many countries, doing business is officiallly considered a privilege, and not an basic right." as a more neutral replacement that preserves the necessary portion of the warning without the antiestablishment overtones. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.162.81.229 (talk • contribs) 19:14, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Redirect

This previously pointed to eminent domain, but expropriation is not the same as eminent domain so I removed the redir and created a stub. - FrancisTyers 22:14, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

How, specifically, is expropriation different from eminent domain? After reading this and the other article I don't understand the difference, and in fact eminent domain seems to indicate they're the same thing. - Brian Kendig 22:30, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Expropriation doesn't necessarily refer to the state. - FrancisTyers · 06:53, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

This article seems to focus on government expropriation - that's the same thing as eminent domain, right? It seems to duplicate a lot of information that's already in eminent domain. Would this article be better off merged into that one? - Brian Kendig 17:51, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps the information on government expropriation would be better in the eminent domain article. - FrancisTyers · 18:19, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I disagree that expropriation and eminent domain are the same thing - eminent domain is a term which is relatively specific to the US and so to merge expropriation and eminent domain would be a little disingenuous. Eminent domain also goes towards the assumption that the State has a legal right to appropriate the property (compensation aside) whereas expropriation is more commonly used in the context of illegality. Just as a State has a legal right to appropriate land which falls within its territorial boundaries through eminent domain, so may States or private individuals/companies expropriate property which they exercise no legal or jurisdictional control over. The end result may be the same - that property which belonged to you now belongs to another- but they are conceptually different. User:80.229.171.230 01:06, 10 January 2007 (UTC)LawStudent

So Expropriation is either theft, robbery, or eminent domain. Which is it?

This article needs to be redirected to one of the three.Equinox137 (talk) 05:32, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I modified introduction per sources to explain what is the difference between expropriation and such things as eminent domain, ordinary robbery, or theft.Biophys (talk) 02:05, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

This seems fine to me. I personally don't see the difference between taxation and theft, but if I were to redirect the former to the latter, it would be POV. I think it's a similar case here. Socialists and communists see a difference here, that other people might not easily understand (myself included). Gigs (talk) 01:51, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Globalise and neutralise

This is not a particularly impartial statement deprives, reasonable expectations, reliable returns. Oh, my heart bleeds for those poor owners!

"Such expropriation thus deprives the owners of their reasonable expectations of reliable returns from such a proven business."

The article currently also unnecessarily focusses in the United States¹. - FrancisTyers · 09:02, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

It appears to me that eminent domain and expropriation are synonyms, the former term being used in the USA and the latter term used outside the USA. Some dictionaries have only the latter term. Several european languages have the term expropriation Afog (talk) 17:25, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Hull

The last paragraph of the article refers to Hull. Hull requires some disambiguation, the best I can find is John Hull. I have left it and hope someone with knowledge of the subject may be in a better position to provide the disambiguation required. Keith D 13:18, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Is this article serious?

I'm tempted to just delete the whole first section.

Expropriation from dictionary.com:

1. to take possession of, esp. for public use by the right of eminent domain, thus divesting the title of the private owner: The government expropriated the land for a recreation area. 2. to dispossess (a person) of ownership: The revolutionary government expropriated the landowners from their estates. 3. to take (something) from another's possession for one's own use: He expropriated my ideas for his own article.

In fact, Marxists, anarchists and others on the far left--and even moderate economists using the labor theory of value--have long used "expropriation" to refer to the process of taking profit from your laborers (if you are the owner of capital). This usage is consistent with definition number 3 from above. Since obviously the socialist critique predates the first socialist state, I assume that this leftist meaning is *older* than the one used to refer to expropriation by the government, and is in fact the original meaning of the word in a political context. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.108.27.115 (talk) 23:49, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Recent edits

This has nothing to do with eminent domain and not necessarily done by the State. For example, a classic example of expropriation (an "ex" on their jargon) were bank robberies by Stalin and his comrades to provide the financial support for Bolshevik Party.Biophys (talk) 21:25, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Trotsky

Trotsky actually opposed redistributing all land if it included small patches and communal land, arguing that this would be economically worthless and politically devastating. The article however initially implied the opposite, that Trotsky wanted to seize all land for the state regardless of the economic and political ramifications. In fact Trotsky argued that some large scale land should initially be handed to Communes.

He argued that eventually any exploitative type of labor (which in Marxist theory automatically applies to wage labor) should be outlawed but that is a far future proposal, namely after the Dictatorship of the Proletariat has been well established for a long time and other means of living in a system of economic surplus are available i.e. making is pretty much pointless for anyone to need "wage slaves" or have to enrich themselves by such means in the first place. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.220.21.67 (talk) 05:09, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Merged with Eminent domain

Having read this talk page as well as various legal sites, I've redirected Expropriation to Eminent domain, as "eminent domain" is nothing but the US term for what in most countries in the world is called "expropriation". The fact that expropriation also is a term used in Marxist writing is totally irrelevant and doesn't mean that expropriation means anything different than what Americans call eminent domain. In Britain it's called "compulsory purchase" and in Canada it's called "expropriation". Marx wrote in German and thus used the word "Enteignung", Trotsky wrote in Russian and used the word "Экспроприация", French writers used the word "Expropriation". Thomas Blomberg (talk) 16:23, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

It is precisely the point that this word means not taking property by the State (eminent domain), but from the state, as in the case of 1907 Tiflis bank robbery, for example. There are many other such examples as well. If you suggest a merger, please start a discussion here and wait for consensus. Thanks. Biophys (talk) 21:45, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

To put it simple, armed robbery and eminent domain are different. Note that there are now at least three reliable secondary sources that use the term exactly in this meaning.Biophys (talk) 21:56, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I made it a disambig. page (in part to keep interwiki links), but it should be a full-scale article - compare with German version.Biophys (talk) 01:43, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

If this is going to be a disambig, those references will have to go per MOS:DABENTRIES (bottom of the section). Why don't we put this back to a stub instead? --JaGa^talk 18:24, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I can not do it because of my topic ban. But you or anyone else is very welcome to revert to any earlier version and fix it. I think something like German version is the way to go.Biophys (talk) 21:23, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Cross-language references (to German or Russian) may be misleading here because usage may be different in different languages even if the word sounds the same and has the same original meaning. Do you have any evidence of the use of the term expropriation to describe a politically motivated robbery in the English language? - BorisG (talk) 02:42, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure about the robbery (although famous "Russian" word "ex" is an abbreviation of "expropriation"), but "loot the looters" and confiscation of private property by communist states, yes, please see sources currently quoted in this page. There are no sources about "eminent domain", however.Biophys (talk) 05:32, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

What page do you mean? If you mean disambig page, then the only one source attached to this particular meaning is Radzinsky, but this is no good because it is a translation from Russian. It is quite natural to translate экспроприация as expropriation, but I am not sure that the word is widely used in English in this sense. Loot the looters etc yes, but is the word expropriation used to describe this? - BorisG (talk) 12:47, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but that comes too close to boundaries of my topic ban. Please check, remove or insert any sources you wish. I agree with anything you do in advance.Biophys (talk) 16:24, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

My question was genuine. I simply don't know about the usage of this word in English. I guess the only way to find out is to ask a Marxist (of former Marxist) who is also a native speaker of English. BTW I don't think Marxism (in general, not in Russia) is close to any boundaries. Cheers. - BorisG (talk) 17:16, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

(Outdent) I was thinking of restoring the stub, but BorisG's question is valid - and I'm not in a position to answer it. But there's another question here - what about Eminent domain vs. Nationalization? I'm not sure we should redirect to eminent domain when at times the term is used in the nationalization sense. --JaGa^talk 06:33, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the preceding point. I don't think eminent domain and expropriation are the same thing. While I think that nationalizing an industry could be a form of expropriation, I don't think it could be justified as the exercise of public domain - or at least not during peacetime.OckRaz ^talk 07:48, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Big problems here

In non-U.S. areas, expropriation can denote a just redistribution of wealth after political change. There does not need to be sinister, one-sided connotations with revolutionary Marxism. I've thus attached {{npov}} to the article. I've also removed the socialism and Russia categories from this, which is just a very, very narrow view and offers an erroneous and lone, even ridiculous connotation itself. To get a broader view, start here: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=expropriation&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C50&as_sdtp=

Agree. The article is currently a one-handed attempt to associate expropiation with communism and Soviet russia. Expropriation has existed since the antiquity and has been practised by most political colours. -Chiton (talk) 20:58, 29 September 2012 (UTC)