The Right to Private Property

The right to private property is the social-political principle that
adult human beings may not be prohibited or prevented by anyone from
acquiring, holding and trading (with willing parties) valued items not
already owned by others. Such a right is, thus, unalienable and, if in
fact justified, is supposed to enjoy respect and legal protection in a
just human community.

1. Why Private Property?

The right to private property(1) is the social-political principle
that adult human beings may not be prohibited or prevented by anyone
from acquiring, holding and trading (with willing parties) valued
items not already owned by others. Such a right is, thus, unalienable
and, if in fact justified, is supposed to enjoy respect and legal
protection in a just human community.

In the development of classical liberalism there emerged in Western
political thought a shift of focus as to the prime value in
social-political matters, from the group–a tribe, class, state or
nation–to the human individual. It started with the effort to
gradually transfer power from a few or even one person as the source
of collective authority and power to more segments of society involved
in exercising such authority and power, leading, eventually, to the
sovereignty of the human individual. The way in which power is
diffused when individuals are sovereigns rather than groups is through
the fact that individuals have only a little and highly diversified
power to wield. In consequences, they aren't likely to impose
themselves on others by, say, starting a war, even when they disagree
very seriously. That, in essence, was the initial motivation for
moving toward individualism, which, when implemented via law and
public policy, is much more conducive to peace and, as a result, to
prosperity than is any form of collectivism. Thus classical liberalism
has had some considerable support on practical grounds–its usefulness
to attaining various widely sought after objectives.

A major reason, however, that individualism makes better sense than
its competitors is that the view that human beings are primarily parts
of a social whole is wrong. This last is a false notion. When invoked,
arguably it tends to serve as a disguise for certain special or vested
privileges of some members of society.(2) Generalizing such special or
vested interests, the values or goals pursued in their name, has been
a major source of political acrimony throughout human history. It even
continues to drive much of contemporary democratic politics.

There is, however, the problem that as far as its ethical
presuppositions and implications are concerned, individualism and in
consequences also classical liberalism have not fared all that well.
These views are constantly being charged with opposition to community
life and human fellowship, hedonism, materialism, and so forth. Even
though this is wrongheaded, without a solid moral case it is difficult
to show that to be true. The reason is that morality is extremely
important in human affairs. Most people do not confidently embrace a
political stance unless it manages to embrace certain basic moral
principles. Pragmatic reasons thus never suffice to establish the
soundness of political systems and public policies.

It is part of the point of this essay to show that private property
rights accord with certain basic moral principles. These are the
indispensability of human agency in any sensible moral framework and
the moral virtue of prudence. I will argue that individualism embraces
these principles and that the right to private property makes their
actual realization possible in human community life.
2. Individuality and Humanity

Human beings have, as one of their distinctive features, a significant
element of individuality. Notice, for example, how this comes through
in some thought experiments. If a friend dies, it is nonsense to
think, "Oh well, I'll just get another friend." You cannot just
replace a person with another if you regard him as he really is, most
basically, not just as some member of a class of people, such as
dentists or auto mechanics. (Even with pets it's difficult to replace
them because they become sort of humanized around us.)

On the other hand, with a cow, fly, rock and most other things in the
world, replacing them is no problem in one sense because they aren't
important individually. They're important in their relationship to
other things, whereas in the case of human beings it is everyone's
individuality that matters most, especially in those most significant
personal or intimate relationships. You fall in love with an
individual, not a banker–when you really fall in love, that is. (Some
people "fall in love" with a type, true enough, but there's something
perverse about that — it is somewhat sad to hear, "Well, I love him
because he's in uniform or has a big car.")

Even apart from such common sense observations there is the clear
evidence that whenever we consider human beings, we cannot avoid their
volitional conduct, actions they choose to bring about on their
own.(3) In intellectual discussions this is evident in the fact that
we criticize one another about what we think, holding our adversaries
directly or indirectly responsible for alleged misjudgments.(4)

It is a reasonable view, then, that human beings are first and
foremost individuals who cause much of what they do. Their actions
flow from their thinking and their thinking is the sphere in which
they are free, self-determined.(5)
3. Individualism: True and False

Now individualism is associated somewhat uncomfortably with classical
liberalism. The reason is that some have overemphasized the element of
individuality, making it seem that we are not also members of
communities, even of the human race. Such "atomistic" individualism
has made it seem that classical liberalism is tied to a misguided
social philosophy. An example of it may be found in the oft repeated
story, by economists, of Robinson Crusoe. If one models human life on
Crusoe's story and his interaction with Friday, it appears that we are
born capable of self-sufficient productive conduct and from the start
choose whether to associated with others. Yet this idea is patently
absurd, considering that all human beings are born helpless and grow
up in the company of others on whose support they vitally depend.

Yet it is not true that individualism is necessarily committed to
atomism. One can fully admit to the communal aspects of human life
while insisting that we are essentially individuals, as well. Such a
robust, what I have called "classical" individualism, also stresses
the importance of the private realm and insists that all bona fide
human communities must adhere to the terms individuals set for
themselves.

The crucial individualist ingredient of classical liberal social and
political theory stresses not some arid independence or isolation of
the individual human being but the fact that everyone can make what in
principle can be independent judgments as to the kind of communities
suitable to one's membership. Given human nature, the element of
choice must be preserved in every suitable human community. This is
the source of the classical liberal political principles that demands
that the consent of the governed be upheld in public policy as well as
personal relations. The criminal nature of murder, assault,
kidnapping, rape, robbery, burglary and so forth all make sense in
terms of this classical or moderate individualism first found in
Aristotle philosophy.(6)
4. Individuality and Privacy

The gist of individualism is, then, that everyone must consent to
being used by another. This is because each is important, valuable in
his or her own right. And if an individual is important as such, then
there is a sphere that constitutes the individual's realm of
sovereignty and others ought to respect it, the realm within which one
must make effective judgments about one's life. And indeed in
classical liberal, political, and legal theory there's a great deal of
emphasis on individual rights rather than rights of families or other
groups, bearing on this individualist element of the position. The
right to private property is, in turn, the most practically relevant
of those individual rights.

The term "privacy," then, underlines this emphasis of the importance
of individuals. The right to private property is really just an
extension, within the framework of a naturalist world view, of the
right to one's own life. It is when one('s life) engages with the rest
of the world in the unique way one will do so, and when another will
do this in his or her unique way, then privacy becomes important.(7)
It will then be possible to actualize and to protect who one is and
one's manifestation in the world–one's own art, productivity,
creativity, innovation and so forth. None of those, as well, may be
used by others without the individual's consent to whom they belong.

Socialism and Humanity

Now consider that one of the interesting things about socialism is
that in deep-seeded socialist theory there are no individuals. Marx
said it directly: "The human essence is the true collectivity of
man."(8) He also noted that human beings constitute specie-beings and
comprise "an organic whole" in the collectivity we call humanity.(9)
What is important about you and me for a consistent, thoroughgoing
socialist is that we belong to the human race, somewhat analogously to
the way a bee belongs to its hive or an ant to its colony, only in
this case the constituent parts are intelligent persons.

This is especially true of international socialism, but National
Socialism and even more restrictive, local forms of socialism,
emphasize the group as a whole and its plan, telos or destiny. Even
communitarians, as vague as their conception of a community comes to
(so that one cannot pin them down as socialists because they leave
room for some elements of individualism), speak mostly of concerns in
behalf of "us" and use the term "we" to designate the primarily valued
party when discussing public policy. The individual can then, at
times, be sacrificed if some gains are made for the group, collective
or community.
5. Classical Liberalism, Human Nature & Individuality

Yet, if we examine human life carefully, we notice clearly that there
is something irreducibly, inescapably, individual about everybody.
Just think about yourself. How do you insist on being regarded by
friends and others close to you? As a student? An American or Rumanian
or Hispanic? Or as a woman or basketball player? Is there not in fact
something unique that is the you that captures who you are? One's
identity isn't racial, ethnic, religious or even professional. It is
individual. As John Quincy Adams said in the motion picture Amistad,
ask not what someone is but who someone is to come to know the person.

It's in classical liberalism that this is acknowledged more than in
any other political philosophy. There's always been a little bit of
emphasis on individuality, of course, in various rebellious political
movements, but it's very difficult to maintain the supremacy of the
tribe or, later, the state if one admits that what is truly important
in a human society is the individuals who comprise it, as individuals.
Because then one can't reasonably say, "Well, we can do away with that
individual or with that group of individuals or their projects so as
to benefit some others, including some collective such as the state,
community, culture or race."

Indeed, with the recognition and acknowledgment of the supreme value
of the individual, the very definition of a "good" or "just" society
would have to emphasize the freedom and happiness of individuals.

In fact, a characteristic of the classical liberal political ethos is
that one scrutinizes a society for its quality, its goodness, and its
justice on the basis of how loyal it is to the mission of securing the
rights of individuals to their liberty and pursuit of happiness. This
is actually a very prominent movement in the world today. It's not
done consistently and purely, but all those human rights organizations
that go from country to country to check whether they adhere to
tenants of justice are at least rhetorically committed to the
examination of whether the countries treat their citizens as
individuals with rights. Are their projects respected or are they
neglected and treated with callous disregard for the choices of
individuals?

This is one of the reasons that in a largely liberal–or, for the sake
of avoiding confusion with American liberalism, a libertarian–society
membership in a class looses its moral and political significance. In
the United States of American, for example there are matters that may
make no difference to most people, but when they matter to even just
one, it is appreciated. I, for one, once worked as a busboy in
Cleveland, Ohio, and noticed that when paid, I could go back to the
same restaurant and eat a meal there. There was no frowning and
shaking of the head and saying, "Wait a minute, you don't belong
here." In much of Europe, in contrast, if you work in a restaurant you
don't get to eat there–it is not illegal now but it's certainly gosh.
6. Fluctuating Classes

In a more or less libertarian social-political society the divisions
that are based on incidental attributes–one's wealth, color, national
origin, ethnicity, race, and so forth–tend to be less significant
because one's individual worth trumps all these and classes, at any
rate, are always in a flux. Even racial and ethnic, not to mention
religious or economic categories tend to shift because there is no
widespread and well entrenched legally enforced barriers to either
entry to or exit from any of them.

Such categories and the behavior associated with them may still
prevail in certain special contexts. For example, a professor will
usually attain special respect in the classroom, but when one meets
the professor at a restaurant, one will not need to carry over the
behavior associated with that classroom status. No "Her Doctor,
Doctor," as, for example, in much of Germany, in or outside the
classroom. In most American schools, however, one says, "Hello
Professor," but outside the label isn't usually used.

All this can be a bit disturbing because it can sometimes spill over
into disrespect for people who in fact deserve respect. Rampant
individualism can corrupt into disrespect for all authority. The
corruption can but by no means need be generated by the notion that
individuals matter primarily as individuals, not so much as members of
classes. It is also evident enough that we are social beings, members
of the class of human beings, and there are some matters very
important about that, too.
7. The Moral Standing of Private Property Rights

Individualism does, however, underlie the regime of private property
rights. But why do we need a separate discussion of the merits of the
right to private property? What will such an inquiry yield?

There are at least two answers to that question. One is that when you
resist people taking something from you, by taxation, theft or any
other means, it is important to know, even if only implicitly, that
the resistance is justified. That it is a kind of self-defense, akin
to resisting someone assaulting or raping someone else. It is vital to
learn that one is in the right and is not doing something merely
willful or stubborn or prejudicial, that one is not just being a
recalcitrant, antisocial person, when one insists on the integrity of
ownership. This is a point widely contested by opponents of classical
liberal or libertarian legal orders.

When all things are considered, the most important questions about
liberalism and its various tenants is, "Is it true?" "Is classical
liberalism or, its purest versions, libertarianism, the way a society
ought to be organized?" And, in order to answer that question, one
must examine whether its various tenets can withstand challenges,
criticisms and so on. Individualism is one of these tenets but the
right to private property is the most important practical, public
policy element of it.

The second reason we need to examine private property rights is
whether system of individual rights, including the right to private
property, is a just system? Or is it, as many critics claim, just a
figment of some people's imagination?

One of the most prominent and oft-repeated criticisms leveled at
classical liberalism, especially by students of various configurations
of Marxism–there are about 300 versions now–is that this whole
emphasis on individuality is a kind of a historical glitch. It's only
a temporary phase in history which had its role but now can be
dispensed with.
8. Individualism and Historicism

The Marxists and many others, some who follow them without knowing it,
claim that in the 16th century the individual was invented, not merely
discovered or his existence politically affirmed, for the sake of
sustaining economic productivity. In order to create motivation for
wealth-creation, the individual had to be made seem significant. It's
a myth, but it's a useful myth. It's like telling someone that she is
beautiful when she isn't so that she will do certain things from which
certain advantages derive. According to Marxists, there was a period
of human history where the belief in the importance of the individual
had an objective historical function, not because it's true, but
because it contributes to certain crucial elements of capitalism.

There are people who look at history in this way, as if it is the
record of the growth of humanity from infancy to full maturity. They
then take it that the bourgeois epoch is like the adolescence of an
individual. It's a temporary stage and has its usefulness because,
typically, adolescents embark upon all sorts of useless ventures–such
as getting up at four o'clock to drive some place not because there's
something important to do as a sort of exercise to prepare for
adulthood. It trains them for the eventual serious challenges of
maturity.

When one treats humanity this way, so that it has these various
historical stages, individualism can be regarded to be one of those
stages. It's a somewhat appealing picture–it fits some images we have
of humankind. Ecologists encourage this, as do some moral visionaries
who see humanity as a big family or some other kind of collectivity.

Marx explicitly said that the Greek era was the childhood of humanity.
He, as I have noted already, and many of those who have been
influenced by his thinking believe that humanity is some kind of
organism, a being of which individuals are the parts. Humanity goes
through stages of organic development, the tribalism its first and
communism its final stage. And while the individualist stage in a
necessary one, it is certainly not the completed stage of humanity.
9. Individualist Alternative to Organicism

These challenges have to be answered because they are extremely well
developed, plausible enough, and with enormous influence in the world
intellectual community. It is a little like when one meets a friend
and asks them to explain some event such as their recent divorce and
they proceed to give you a very well worked out and sincerely held
rationalization as to how things happened. Now, in order to cope with
one of these rationalizations, one must get to the heart of the actual
situation and demonstrate beyond all reasonable doubt that the story
is a different one. One must show that one's understanding of what's
going on is more rational, coherent, comprehensive, and explains much
more than does theirs. Otherwise the deceptive story will be the only
viable account making the rounds, despite its conflict with common
sense.

Unless liberalism is able to identify a better story than what those
who champion the organic view advance, it will be defeated, at least
theoretically. And while that isn't always decisive, it certainly has
an impact on the confidence with which the position can be supported
and implemented.

Indeed, one of the advantages of anti-liberal doctrines is that so
many intellectuals are enchanted by them. They create elaborate and
smart stories around them, stories that are extremely appealing and
intellectually challenging. For one, such a story gives the
intellectual a privileged position. Only intellectuals are in the
position to grasp such a complex story, after all. Common sense does
not support it. (For example, Marx thought only communists could
really understand the truth of such a story, the rest of us having
been blinded by our class outlook.)
10. The Appeal of Collectivism

The idea, for example, that we are all mere parts of a large human
organism, humanity, has very a strong intellectual standing in our
time. A great many people make reference to humanity–as when they talk
about sacrificing oneself or one's private interests or one's
materialistic goals for humanity. And others refer to smaller
groups–the community or ethnic group or the race–as the organisms that
are of significance.

So it's almost a feature of the mainstream to think of us not as
individuals but as parts of some larger whole. "Don't you have
something more important to live for than yourself?" "Isn't there
something greater than yourself to which your life must be devoted for
it to be worthwhile?" Less loosely, some, such as the philosopher
Charles Taylor, argue that we all must belong to a group, by dint of
our very humanity, our nature as human beings. He tells us that
"Theories which assert the primacy of rights are those which take as
the fundamental, or at least a fundamental, principle of their
political theory the ascription of certain rights to individuals which
deny the same status to a principle of belonging or obligation, that
is a principle which states our obligation as men to belong to or
sustain society, or a society of a certain type, or to obey authority
or an authority of a certain type."(10) Never mind that Taylor cannot
give us any such theories–John Locke, for example, rested basic human
rights on ethics or natural law. What is important in what Taylor says
is not only that if you just live to make the most of your life,
you're not really living a significant enough life. A significant life
must not only fulfill a greater purpose and humanity's purpose is one
of the candidates. God's purpose is another candidate. Ecologists have
a biological purpose in mind. But a significant life but belong to the
effort to pursue this purpose and thus our lives, to be properly
significant, may be subordinated, by force, to such purposes.(11)

There's a very prominent tradition of selecting alternative wholes
larger than ourselves as the proposed beneficiaries of significant
human actions. And this can lead to the whole process of forcing
individuals to be used for purposes to which they do not consent. This
is the greatest source of coercive thinking in human history. Once it
is accepted that human individuals are part of a larger whole they, as
members of a partnership or team, have enforceable obligations to the
goals of that large whole. They belong to it.

Consider, to appreciate this, how in certain cases we treat such
wholes as ourselves. If something happens to one's ear, for example,
and yet one prizes one's appearance with an intact ear, then one takes
another part of one's body that's not visible and takes part of it so
as to replace the ear. The famous Welsh actor, Richard Harris, had his
nose destroyed in a fight, so doctors took a part of his hip bone and
replaced it, clearly because the nose was more important to an actor
than that little part of the hip bone.

Well, if humanity is the larger organism, then maybe a given
individual may not be so important a part of it as another. So the
less important individual can be sacrificed for the more important one
(or the goals of the less important can be sacrificed for those of the
more important). One may be an eye and the other just a useless thumb.
That picture is widely embraced because of the belief that humanity is
some organic whole.

If one recognizes collectivism as a misguided picture of human life,
one must carefully and effectively argue in response to these well
worked out and often honestly and sincerely meant doctrines. One must
demonstrate that it is indeed individuals who count for the most in
the human picture. It needs to be proven, some of the widespread
opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, that notions such as
"individual rights" are universal and not stuck to some limited
historical epoch.
11. The Right to Private Property

One reason that it must be shown that the social regulative principle
of a right to private property is sound and that it ought to be
respected and protected in human community life is that it is a vital
conceptual or logical implication of the individualist story. If
individualism is indeed sound, so is the principle of private property
rights. When the right to private property is not respected and not
sufficiently protected, then there is something wrong with a
community.

This means that it is not quite fit for human inhabitation, given the
individuality of every person and how respect for this is a
precondition for his or her flourishing.

There are many different ways in which private property has been
supported in the history of political economy. Most prominent has been
the claim that there should be legal protection of the right private
property because this facilitates productivity–a point that's in
agreement with Marx, only universalized beyond a given epoch.
Protecting this right helps society get rich–not only in the 16th
century but always. Both Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill tended to
argue along these lines: It's a good thing to have these rights
because if we act in terms of them we will have greater prosperity.
Many economists today argue a similar point. Indeed, that is one
reason many governments engage in privatization, so as to encourage
economic growth.

All of this is vital but it isn't what is most important. What needs
to be shown is that the individual has these rights regardless of
what's done when simply exercising them. Even if individuals waste
away their lives, they have that right. It is theirs to waste away,
not someone else's, because they are the important element of society,
not some outsider, not some other being such as society, the
community, the tribe or the ethnic group. It is this element of
liberty, the right to choose how one lives, that is most central to
human community life, even if, indeed because, as a matter of one's
personal life it is equally important to make the right choice, to
choose to do the right thing.

That is exactly why the right to private property is vital. When
effectively protected, it secures for human individuals a sphere of
personal jurisdiction, the right to acquire and hold the props, as it
where, with which to order one's life. Moral virtues such as
generosity, kindness, courage, moderation, prudence and the rest are
all imperatives the practice of which engage one with the natural
world. If one is not in charge of some of that world, at least
oneself, one cannot conduct oneself virtuously. So the right to one's
life, liberty and property are necessary conditions for a morally
significant or meaningful life in human communities.

It needs to be noted here, as a significant aside, that even if we are
essentially individuals, this doesn't mean we are not also naturally
members of societies. But, as moral agents and as candidates for
membership in some human communities or societies, we are morally
responsible to take into consideration and never neglect the fact that
we must judge those societies as to whether they do adequate justice
to our individuality, most generally, and whether they best serve our
flourishing.
12. No Carte Blanche to Communities

From this it follows that we must always keep in focus the question of
whether we ought to live in a given community. Do we–ought we to–want
to support this kind of public policy, this kind of a legal system?
What is the standard by which we make that kind of decision when we
have the chance? At the most basic level of community concern must lie
the issue of what principles should govern human communities. The
right to private property is one of those principles.

Very often we don't have a direct practical option to act on the
choice we make about basic principles. But at least we can think about
them so that when we do get a chance to make a significant decision,
then we will know where to stand. We owe it to ourselves, to a life of
integrity, not to forget about that issue, ever. That is the highest
duty of citizenship!
13. Property Rights, Individuality and the Moral Life

So what does the right to private property do in connection with the
essential human element of individuality?

Well, as already suggested, the right to private property secures for
one a sphere of sovereignty. See, if we are individuals, required,
morally, to lead our lives by our judgements, it is crucial that we
control the elements with which our lives are lived. Indeed, it
becomes the most crucial thing.

The question, "How ought I to live?" becomes the foremost question to
which you then seek an answer. While we aren't moral theoreticians and
ethical philosophers and so on, that question still is always near the
forefront of our minds. No matter what you do, even reading these
lines, the question will arise: "Should I sleep or should I pay
attention? Should I consider this point or should I just glide over
it?"

All of those are questions having to do with your ethical agency, with
one's governance of one's life, with one's sovereignty. One's feeling
that one is doing the right thing becomes crucial if one is indeed the
master of one's existence.
14. No Private Property Rights, No Full Moral Agency

Now, without the right to private property, without having some props,
some elements of reality that are under our jurisdiction, our ethical
decisions cannot be effectual. Consider for example, if it turns out
to be true that a good human being ought to be generous. Well, if we
do not have the right to private property how are we going to be
generous? Are we going to be like politicians and bureaucrats and
expropriate what belongs to others and give this to the poor and
needy? That's not generosity. That's theft.

In short, then, in order to have a effective life of moral virtue, for
example the virtue of generosity, we must have the right to property,
to hold and then to be free to part with values, on your own terms.
15. Moral Individualism

Although collectivism has some currency, especially among
intellectuals and social theorists, so does a particular version of
individualism. I have in mind the sort that pertains to moral
responsibility.

Few people ever quite let go of the idea that some things they and
others do are good and some bad things and that those doing them are
responsible. When others judge our lives, or when we reflect upon
ours, we say, "I did or didn't do the right thing." Moreover, we can
go on to consider what we did with what belongs to us–use it well or
badly.

Without our sphere of sovereignty, that's manifest in the actual world
where we live our lives, we would not be able to act on most moral
principles, especially those that involve allocating resources. Are we
stingy? But one has to be stingy with something. If one is a neat
person, one has to be neat within some sphere that one keeps orderly.
If a slob, one will need something that belongs to one that one isn't
taking good care of. If those items don't belong to you, if you always
have to ask permission of society or the clan or the tribe of the
nation as to what to do with these things, the you are not the
effective agents in the disposition of them. And you are then not an
effective moral agent either. You cannot take pride in what you
achieve, nor feel guilt for your failings. You are basically just a
little bit of a cell in this larger organism.
16. The Virtue of Prudence

Prudence is one of the virtues identified in classical Greece. I want
now to discuss it in a little more detail than thus far.

First, in the modern era prudence has been demeaned because the task
of taking care of oneself and one's own has been deemed to be
instinctual ever since Thomas Hobbes argued that we are all driven to
preserve ourselves. But Hobbes rested his case on extrapolating the
principles of classical mechanistic physics to human life, a move that
is not at all justified. Human beings must choose their conduct,
including whether they will serve others' or their own well-being.
Prudence, as the ancients saw it, is the virtue one needs to take
decent care of oneself.

Later Immanuel Kant argued that since prudence is a motivation that is
aligned to one's own interest or inclinations, it is not a moral
virtue. Only motives that are totally indifferent as to one's own
interest or inclinations can have moral significance, even though we
can not know whether we are ever so purely motivated.

Neither Hobbes nor Kant had it right. Prudence is a moral virtue,
though not the only or highest on. In any case, a prudent person acts,
among other ways, economically. Such a person realizes that one must
reserve for the future, put resources away for a rainy day. Such a
person isn't reckless in the disposition of the resources over which
he or she has control.

But now if we have no right to acquire or hold things then we can't be
prudent. We then don't have the decision-making authority to allocate
resources in accordance with standards of prudence. On the other hand,
if we do have this authority, then we can choose to act prudently.
17. Prudence and Justice

If in fact it is a moral virtue to be prudent, but it's politically
impossible for one to act on that virtue, then there is a basic
conflict between ethics and politics. Then the political sphere is not
properly adjusted to the ethical sphere. Then our ethical agency has
not been done sufficient justice by the legal system in which we act.

And, indeed, that is one of the things that is so frustrating in
societies where one does not have the right to private property. Not
only that one is going to be thwarted in one's efforts to acquire
life's necessities, but that one cannot act responsibly. Here what
happens is a version of the tragedy of commons.

The tragedy of commons is a problem usually associated with managing
the environment. The reason is that most spheres where there are
environmental problems are public. The atmosphere, oceans, rivers,
large forests and so on are spheres wherein no one is individually
responsible. To put it another way, everyone is responsible for the
management of such spheres but no one has a clear idea what to do
about this responsibility because the limits imposed by private
property rights are missing.

When you have a distinct or definite sphere of jurisdiction, however
complicated it may be–with various layers of responsibility and
delegation–then when something is done wrong, it can be traced to the
agent or agents who did it. And when things are done right, again it
can be traced to the agent or agents whose responsibility it was to do
them right. Without the right to private property this is impossible.

This is one of the reasons that no society can completely abolish
private property. It is impossible to act in any sort of responsible
way without some sphere of personal jurisdiction.
18. Moral Responsibility and Private Property

So the right to private property is the concrete manifestation of the
possibility of responsible conduct in a community where there are lots
of people who need to know what they ought to do and with what they
ought to do it. We are talking about a life lived within the context
of the natural world. If our bodies are non-existent and we are just
living in an illusionary material world, then these matters are of no
significance. There is an assumption underlying the right to private
property, and indeed many other elements of classical liberalism or
libertarianism, namely, that we have a task to live properly in the
midst of a natural environment, a natural world. We are not just
living a purely immaterial life. Food needs to be grown and
distributed, production has to occur. All sorts of concrete, natural
tasks need to be carried out in order to facilitate our human lives.

If this natural life turns out to be either illusionary or
insignificant, then some of these things loose their importance. Then
politics might indeed be subject to different principles, ones that
facilitate different goals, different aims from prosperity,
flourishing, or other kinds of earthly success. It's not easy to
imagine what that would be. Yet, in a philosophical discussion of
these issues, one has to contend with the fact that there are
alternative basic ideas that are proposed concerning the basic
elements of human living. Liberalism has to stand the test of being
compared with these alternative pictures.
19. Naturalism and Politics

The naturalist approach, in the sense we are preparing and forging
ways of living within the natural world, is, I am convinced,
demonstrably sound. The alternatives tend to be very vaguely and
confusedly supported.

There are doctrines in the world that say that all individuality, for
example, is a myth. There are Eastern religions that contend that the
natural, individual self is an illusion and that in truth, we're all
just part of the universal consciousness.

In order to test this, one has to have some criteria by which truth
needs to be determined. The naturalist approach rests on the
application of criteria that are universally accessible, available to
all human beings with their rational faculties intact.
20. Commerce and Property

Private property rights, of course, makes for the institution of
commerce. If you trade goods and services, if you sell them, if you
produce them, if you hoard them, if you save them, you have to have
some level of jurisdiction over them. If I wanted to trade you my
watch for your shirt, then it has to be my watch. Or I have to have
delegated to me the authority of someone whose watch it is. And it has
to be your shirt; otherwise there would be no ability or justification
in engaging in this trade. I can't sell you this; this belongs to this
hotel. But if it belongs to nobody, then I can't even ask the
permission of the hotel whether I can sell it or even give it away. So
commerce, as well as charity and generosity presuppose the institution
of private property rights. Without that institution, these activities
cannot be undertaken smoothly, without confusion.
21. Moral Standing of Political-Economic Systems

One of the questions that arises in the discussion of political
philosophy and political economy is whether they have moral standing.
When the Left criticizes classical liberals morally because the
liberal or libertarian polity makes profit-making possible, what is
the answer?

It's not enough to just say, "Well, we just like to make profit." A
murderer can just say, "We just like to kill people." That is no
justification, clearly.

There are those who argue that a social science such as economics
requires nothing from morality–indeed, it is entirely amoral, purely
positive or descriptive in its central thrust. But this is a mistake.
All human affairs, including economic ones, are permeated with moral
issues. In economics, for example, there is the moral (or as Rasmussen
and Den Uyl have called it, the meta-normative(12)) element of private
property rights.

If one does not own anything, no trade can ensue and all the talk of
supply and demand must be abandoned in favor of what collectivists
tend to support, a sort of share-and-share alike "economy." But to own
something means to be in a distinctively normative relationship with
others. They are prohibited from taking what belongs to one. They
ought not do so and will be penalized, furthermore, if they do.

So the amoral stance on the market economy is doomed to failure. What
is needed is a moral or other normative justification of the
institution of private property rights.(13)

To do that we must analyze human nature as it is manifest in the
natural world. Will such an analysis support the institutions of
freedom and free markets and give them a stronger moral standing in
human society than alternative ones possess?
22. Morality and Public Affairs

Now there are some who would dismiss all this because there are cases
in human community affairs involving innocent helpless persons, one's
who meet with natural disaster and may find themselves without any
voluntary help when they need it. And that is certain a possibility,
even if not a likelihood in a free society. James Sterba, for example,
has been arguing for decades that because such cases are possible, the
people who find themselves in them have a right to welfare that the
legal order may protect. These positive rights, whereby others are
required to work for such persons–or part with goods they have worked
for in order to support them–come about because it would not be
reasonable, Sterba argues, to demand that such people respect private
property rights. It would be more reasonable to expect of them to
strive to obtain the goods they need–ones Sterba calls, in a
question-begging fashion, surplus wealth. (As if someone is justified
in identifying what constitutes surplus–a term from classical Marxism
that makes no sense outside the Marxist framework.)

If one recognizes, however, that an individual's life is his or her
own and he or she does not belong to anything or anyone outside of
memberships to which he or she consents, then even the most dire needs
of others does not support any institutional arrangement that fails to
recognize individual rights–to life, liberty, and, yes, property (that
one comes by without violating the rights of others even if one does
not strictly deserve the property for some kind of service rendered or
other achievement–for instance, come by because others want to
purchase some talent or other attribute one naturally has). Just as it
is unjustified to use others as a shield against natural danger,
regardless of how little use one may make of them, one may not use
others against their will, including wealth they own. One must find
ways around this prohibition, as indeed most do when they engage in
trade rather than theft in the effort to acquire their own wealth.

It is reasonable to demand this of everyone, even those in dire
straits. If, however, in desperate circumstances such people do not
honor this prohibition, there can be some measure of forgiveness, even
within the purview of the legal authority (as per some cases that have
been subject to unusual judicial discretion). But such exceptions, as
hard cases in general, make bad general law.
23. Law and Common Sense

Let me go back to where we started. When somebody robs another who
resists, the latter has a common sense idea of doing the right thing,
that the resistance is not merely some immature, capricious and
willful conduct. It is not as if one were simply engaged in feet
stomping and crying, "I want it! I want it! I want it!" No, one senses
that there is right on one's side, not just an arbitrary wish and
desire.

That is one reason it is vital to consider whether the free system can
be given justification. What has been said here is by no means a
thorough defense of the right to private property, but it does furnish
some hints as to how such a defense would have to be presented if the
issue ever arises, which is quite often in our world. First, this
right, if protected, preserves one's moral agency in this natural
world in which community life occurs. Furthermore, it punctuates the
fact that striving to prosper is a morally valid goal for human
beings. So, the moral virtue of prudence, of taking the requisite
actions to care for oneself and one's intimates, supports the right to
private property as well.

One thing that respect and protection of private property rights makes
possible is the pursuit of wealth. Oddly, however, that is a criticism
many offer against the system of free market capitalism that is built
on the legal infrastructure of private property rights. They say, as
we have already seen Marx do so, that private property rights–if they
are protected, maintained, developed as law–encourage a hedonistic,
narrowly selfish life, one that is concerned exclusively with
acquisition of worldly goods. As he said, "the right of man to
property is the ? right of selfishness." Freedom is supposed to make
too much self-indulgence, including pleasure, possible.

So another question that arises here turns out to be, "Is pleasure
justified?" For even if the right to private property could be used
for purposes quite different from obtaining pleasure in life, if
pleasure is something loathsome and this right somehow encourages its
relentless pursuit, perhaps it is an institution that is much more
harmful than benign.

We cannot enter this topic at length but this much should suffice for
now. If we are indeed natural beings in this world, one of our
important values will be pleasure, the good feelings we experience via
our bodies. This is so even if there are higher goods the attainment
of which may require giving up some pleasure.

So, now, if wealth brings with it the possibility of pleasure, then
wealth itself is a worthy good, provided it is not stolen but created,
produced, and that it is not chosen as the highest good if a higher
one can also be identified.
24. Abandon the Divided Self Idea

If one has a completely different view of human nature, whereby only
the spiritual side of human life is of significance, then one will
embrace a different system of values and probably also champion
different institutions. We have a powerful tradition in most
civilizations whereby there is an uneasiness about facilitating the
flourishing of the human body. And that is often what stands, at a
most basic level, against the free society!

One reason underlying that stand is the lack of a clear, unambiguous
and benign acceptance of our earthly selves. We often think ourselves
to be so unique, so extraordinary that we believe we must be partly
divine or otherworldly. St. Augustine said it well when he cried out,
"How great, my God, is this force of memory, how exceedingly great! It
is like a vast and boundless subterranean shrine….Yet this is a
faculty of my mind and belongs to my nature; nor can I myself grasp
all that I am. Therefore the mind is not large enough to contain
itself. But where can that uncontained part of it be?"(14) And he then
answered, as have millions of others, that it must be somewhere apart
from nature.

Business, too, has a bad reputation because of this, as well as the
free market place, because if our natural selves are somehow inferior,
than servicing it with the vigor with which people in business do must
be misguided. People who pursue profit or material wealth, would then
be pursuing trivia. They would be mere hedonists. As the title of one
of my articles put it, "Praise Mother Teresa and then Hit the Shopping
Malls." In other words, we live a schizophrenic life. We embrace the
value of prosperity, economic success, wealth on the one hand but then
we deny it on the other.

Yet, if in our lives we embrace our bodies, minds, emotions,
sensations and so on, then we suggest by this that a more integrated
view of how to live and how to protect our values is right, not one
that tears us into warring pieces.

The private property rights system rests, in part, on such an
integrated understanding of human life, not the schizophrenic one. It
rejects the idea that each human being is divided, a view that much of
our literature embraces. It places us squarely on this earth, even
though it is by no means hostile to anyone who chooses to look
elsewhere for fulfillment, quite the contrary. (Indeed, the right to
private property has made religious pursuits extremely fruitful as
well as abundant, especially in the United States of America where
churches can purchase their own land and welcome parishioners where
they will not be disrupted by their foes.

The divided self idea started with Plato, at least with a certain
reading of him, where he takes our minds to be divided from our bodies
and where the mind is supposed to hold the rest of ourselves in check,
rule it firmly. Major writers, especially theologians, have ever since
stressed this drama and it is reflected in our society's institutions.
Victor Hugo made note of this point:

On the day when Christianity said to man: You are a duality, you are
composed of two beings, one perishable, the other immortal, one
carnal, the other ethereal, one enchained by appetites, needs, and
passions, the other lofted on wings of enthusiasm and reverie, the
former bending forever to earth, its mother, the latter soaring always
toward heaven, its fatherland–on that day, the drama was created. Is
it anything other, in fact, than this contrast on every day, this
battle at every moment, between two opposing principles that are
ever-present in life and that contend over man from the cradle to the
grave?(15)

As a result of this, sadly, we are often apologetic for pursuing a
satisfactory, happy life here on earth. And then we find it difficult
if not impossible to defend the political regime that most clearly
enhances such a life, having to accept it when others maintain that,
well, it is a mundane, materialist life that such a regime supports.

All of this must be seriously rethought. Without it the best
socioeconomic system human beings have ever identified will fail to
flourish.
25. End Notes

1. Randy Barnett prefers the term "the right to several property" in
The Structure of Liberty (London: Oxford University Press, 1998). One
reason that it is useful, at least in the context of political
philosophy and moral theory, to keep with the terminology of "the
right to private property" is that this right is tied to an important
element of classic liberal social and political thought, namely,
individualism.

2. This is what public choice theory, within contemporary political
economy, has helped identify. See, however, Harold Kincaid
Philosophical Foundations of the Social Sciences: Analyzing
Controversies in Social Research (London: Cambridge University Press,
1996), in which the author argues that the individualist stance in
modern economics is mistaken and that we ought to deploy a more
holistic approach. Kincaid and many other critics of what they dub
"liberal individualism" claim that individualism is atomistic. While
some may, certainly not all individualist fit this description. Nor is
that the only version of individualism that gives rise to liberal
politics. A good case in point is John Locke, among the early
liberals, and many others such as Ayn Rand, Eric Mack, Douglas B.
Rasmussen, Douglas J. Den Uyl, Fred D. Miller, Jr., and the late David
L. Norton, in our own age.

3. Exceptions are individuals crucially incapacitated. Political
theory and law are not devices for dealing with exceptions, however.

4. I develop much of this throughout Tibor R. Machan, Classical
Individualism, The Supreme Importance of Each Human Being (London:
Routledge, 1998), especially in Chapter 13. "Individualism and
Political Dialogue." Any kind of professional, including scholarly and
intellectual, malpractice alleged in the course of political or other
disputes implicitly rests responsibility with the interlocutors,
blaming or commanding them for what they ought to or ought not to have
done or said.

5. For more on this, see Edward Pols, Acts of Our Being (Boston, MA:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1982) and Tibor R. Machan,
Initiative: Human Agency and Society (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution
Press, 2000).

6. "To [Aristotle] the Individual is the primary reality, and has the
first claim to recognition. In his metaphysics individual things are
regarded, not as the mere shadows of the idea, but as independent
realities; universal conceptions not as independent substances but as
the expression for the common peculiarity of a number of individuals.
Similarly in his moral philosophy he transfers the ultimate end of
human action and social institutions from the State to the individual,
and looks for its attainment in his free self-development. The highest
aim of the State consists in the happiness of its citizens."6. Eduard
Zeller, Aristotle and the Earlier Peripatetics, trans. B. F. C.
Costelloe and J. H. Muirhead (London: Oxford University Press, 1897),
pp. 224-26. This idea is developed further in Fred D. Miller, Jr.,
Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle's Politics (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1995). The difference between the atomistic and classical type
of individualism is discussed in Tibor R. Machan, Capitalism and
Individualism, Reframing the Argument for the Free Society (New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1990).

7.A very important beginning had been made on this line of analysis by
William of Ockham who regarded property rights as securing "the power
of rights reason," that is, a sphere of personal jurisdiction that
made reasoning about what one ought to do possible. This was extended
more elaborate in John Locke's idea that one has the right to one's
person and estate, something that, if protected, makes choice among
other persons possible. An even greater advance on the precise
identification of the nature of private property had been made in
James Sadowsky, "Private Property and Collective Ownership," in Tibor
R. Machan, The Libertarian Alternative (Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1974).
Karl Marx, too, got it nearly right when he wrote that "the right of
man to property is the right to enjoy his possessions and dispose of
the same arbitrarily without regard for other men, independently, from
society, the right of selfishness." Karl Marx, "On The Jewish
Question," in Robert C. Trucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader (New
York: W. W. Norton, 1978), p. 26. Only, Marx's warped view of human
nature prompted him to consider only the most wasteful and pointless
way the right to private property might be exercised.

8. Karl Marx, Selected Writings, ed., D. McLellan (London: Oxford
University Press, 1977), p. 126.

9. Karl Marx, Grundrisse, trans. D. McLennan (New York: Harper
Torchbooks, 1971), p. 39.

10. Charles Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences (London:
Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 188.

11. The concept "belong" can be used to refer to membership as well as
to being a part of. Membership in human communities embarking on
various purposes can be voluntary but being a part of is something
ontologically pregnant ? one is part of something sometimes whether
one likes it or not. Taylor seems clearly to mean by "belong" "being
part of," so that one can be compelled to adhere to the purpose at
hand.

12. Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, Liberty and Nature
(Chicago, IL: Open Court Publishing Co., Inc., 1990).

13. For more on this, see Tibor R. Machan, "The Normative Basis of
Economic Science," Economic Affairs,Vol. 18 (June 1998), pp. 43-46.

14. Augustine, Confessions, Lib. X, chap. 17. 8ff

15. Victor Hugo, La preface de Cromwell, Maurice A. Souriau, ed.
(Geneve: Slatkine Reprints, 1973).