Privatization

Definitions

The term privatization derives from the Latin word privare. This was one of the core terms at the foundation of history's first global empire, the Roman Empire, which (together with the Greek civilization) gave birth to the Western mind-set through the implementation of a public law for the first time centered on individuals and their rights. The literal meaning of privare ranges from “to bereave,” “to dispossess someone of something,” “to disseize,” “to take away,” “to steal from others,” to “to hijack something,” including all terms in between. Among the intermediate meanings are “to keep something for oneself (or for a defined group) by detracting it to others,” “to withdraw something from the common wealth for one's own [Page 1384]benefit,” “to take care for something by personal ownership,” “to occupy something,” as well as “to enjoy something for one self, by disregarding the enjoyment of others.”

Particularly in its passive form of privatus (i.e., the ontological status where the activity of privare is accomplished), the term today has two primary and closely intertwined meanings, making it one of the great “fundamentally ambivalent” and equivocal lead terms of humanity. It denotes:

• 1.
  the status of the good that has been detracted from common ownership, for example, a piece of land or a public resource like a creek or a wood, or a service formerly provided to the public by the government or other public institutions now passed on to private business; and
• 2.
  the person or group who has been bereaved or despoiled of something, that is, the one who is the victim.

It follows that privatization in principle means the process of transfer of ownership, sometimes also of permanent or long-term usership, of a formerly common or public good to individuals and/or groups operating for private profit, that is, its passage from public to segregated owner- and/or user-ship. As the specific double meaning of the term suggests, this process is in principle a benefit for some but at the disadvantage of others. Is it disputed whether this must always be the case, and what the circumstances are under which it may not be.

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