[lbo-talk] eminent domain

[Marvin Gandall]

John Lacny writes:.
>
> Fair enough, but this is not an issue that we will resolve in the courts.
> It
> is and ought to be a matter for local contestation. It's true that real
> estate interests routinely buy off city councils, planning commissions,
> and
> pliant neighborhood groups for nefarious ends. But I do not want to see
> the
> power of eminent domain eliminated generally. I can recall at least one
> incident in Pittsburgh where the threat of eminent domain against a
> transnational kept a factory open and saved hundreds of jobs. That is an
> option that we should have; the agenda of the left at the local level
> should
> include demands for democratic economic and residential planning. Lining
> up
> against eminent domain as such perpetuates a debilitating dependence on
> the
> courts that ultimately limits our ability to act in cases where we DO
> claim
> power.
>
> Further, I think it is important to maintain the principle that there is
> no
> such thing as absolute property right, and that private property rights
> are
> granted to fulfill public purposes. As I think you recognize in most other
> cases, opposition to eminent domain as such is regressive NIMBYism of the
> Louise Day Hicks school, and ought not be encouraged.
--------------------------------------------
I agree with John.

It's easy to sympathize with what others are are so passionately reacting
against - the use of eminent domain against small businesses and working
class homeowners on behalf of large realtors and retailers - but there is a
real danger here, it seems to me, of throwing the baby out with the
bathwater. You have the same problem as with "regulatory capture" - where
institutions and laws presumably designed to serve the public interest are
taken over by powerful private lobbies to advance and legitimize their
narrower interests.

But the idea is not to attack and defeat the principle of eminent domain any
more than to get rid of the regulatory agencies or or any other public
institutions and processes which have been corrupted by private influence.
The idea is to recapture them politically, however painstakingly and at at
all levels of the system. Ultimately, success or failure here as on other
fronts reflects the political climate of the times.

The most logical and foolproof way for critics to eliminate eminent domain
would be to press for an amendment to the the US Constitution - as
conservatives since James Madison have been doing - which would add the
acquisition and retention of  property as as inviolable right akin to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The same pressures to
constututionally entrench property rights have been coming from the right in
all of the other capitalist countries as part of their offensive over the
past three decades to narrow the scope of state intervention in the economy.
They have not succeeded anywhere because there is still widespread popular
and considerable elite resistance to a regime of untrammeled property
rights, and I think we have to be wary, in opposing the abuses of eminent
domain, not to end up on the wrong side of this debate.