"Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, no matter what
name it is called." ~ John Stuart Mill The Need For Plural
Property Column by Cristian Gherasim. Exclusive to STR The
communist regime was quick to define property as something
indestructibly linked to an abstract entity: the people.
Everything belonged to the people, and people’s property came to
explicitly deny the right to individual property. Belonging to
everyone, communist property was in fact owned by no one. After
the fall of communism, Central and Eastern European countries
became acquainted with new expressions like private property and
intellectual property. It may seem mundane, but this was a total
shift of paradigm for those that had thrown off the shackles of
nearly a half century of communist rule. But there was a
drawback. This new terminology lacked any liberal content. The
very idea of property was once again grossly distorted. It
created among the citizens of these new democracies the
unnerving feeling that something or someone wa