It does not prevent a compelling justification of the status quo, whatever that may be. The only thing political philosophy really rules out is lazy thinking, which can be either radical or conservative. If the main route to lazy thinking is the denial of contingency in human affairs, then perhaps the best antidote is attention to history. Such attention reveals considerable disagreement about the justifiability of property. Indeed, while the mundane nature of private ownership might make its justification seem an almost self-evident matter for many economists – such that it requires only a cost-benefit analysis and a functional explanation – the history of ideas reveals it to be a perennially controversial idea that divides political opinion violently. On the one hand, many claim that private ownership is a fundamental right and have identified numerous grounds for its legitimacy, including its importance for individual freedom and the wider benefits its existence ensures for the community as a whole. On the other hand, perhaps as many have argued that property is responsible for lamentable levels of poverty and inequality and is therefore unjustifiable as an institution.
In this book, I provide an exposition and assessment of some of the most promising attempts to justify private property and overcome the criticisms levelled against it. Through a truncated and selective tour of historical and contemporary philosophical arguments, I explore some of the most significant theoretical accounts of ownership rights. The selection of theories discussed reflects my judgement about what constitute important and influential philosophical arguments. Constraints of space mean that I cannot cover several important writers who have had interesting things to say about property, but there is an abundance of further reading available for those who wish to explore the topic further.1
By the end of our exploration of theories of property, I conclude that private ownership can ultimately be justified, though not via the arguments pursued by many of its most ardent cheerleaders. As I present my assessment of the theories at hand, I will focus on their weaknesses as well as their strengths and be clear about which arguments are incapable of justifying private property. The explication of political concepts – the way in which they are organised and presented to the reader – inevitably involves the normative commitments of the author. The first step in responsible normative theorising is to realise and acknowledge that we all bring our identities and intellectual baggage on the journey with us. There is no position of pristine detachment from the world available to us and no real ivory tower to which to retreat, though the fantasy of such a possibility does remain a source of comfort to some. To pretend that political theorising is some kind of objective science seems to me, however, to be rather naive and perhaps a symptom of a misplaced scientism that tasks philosophy with more than it could (or should) ever hope to accomplish. It does not, of course, follow from this observation that normative political theory is nothing more than the expression of mere unfiltered opinion, and nor is this book the unfurling of mine. The point is rather that while I offer accurate and robust accounts of each of the theories I consider – and aim to approach them with the scholarly obligation of interpretive charity – it will be obvious that I regard some as superior to others. This acknowledgement should not worry anyone who is encountering political philosophy for the first time, because its mode of inquiry thrives on profound disagreement, often about the most basic theoretical commitments. When you do disagree with me, the best thing to do is therefore to think about why I am mistaken and where you think my various arguments and/or interpretations unravel, and to do this you will often need to turn to the primary texts themselves, for which there is never any substitute.
Contesting concepts
Before we attend to the arguments of either defenders or critics of property, the first and most basic step is to make clear our object of study. We need, in other words, to establish exactly what private property is. We need to get a proper grip on the meaning of this key concept before we can justify (or criticise) it. This task is not a straightforward one. The distinction between conceptual explication (what property is) and normative justification (why property is valuable) is a potentially slippery one. There is a danger that any account of the conceptual character of property – no matter how stark or ostensibly anodyne – may end up smuggling in features that are highly relevant to its justification. This danger is well worth highlighting from the outset.
Perhaps all concepts are potentially capable of having a politically controversial definition. From the sheer contingency of both conceptual meaning (that ideas are changed and developed over time and are open to differing cultural interpretations) and the apparently inexhaustible possibilities for political contestation, it would seem to follow that there are no politically neutral concepts. For example, gorgonzola is widely accepted to be a blue-veined cheese exclusively produced in an established number of Italian areas (in the regions of Lombardy and Piedmont). Its character and geographical identity are defined and policed by a supra-national quality assurance benchmark which is rooted in cultural practices, enshrined by rules, and protected by a legal apparatus. The definition of gorgonzola is nevertheless contingent. There could, in principle, be new provinces added to the list of legitimate producers, or (heaven forfend) the manufacturing process could be changed. Although there would seem to be nothing inherently political about the conceptual meaning of gorgonzola, we can easily see how its definition could become hotly disputed. We can appreciate that were gorgonzola to be conceptually redefined as a cheese designated as creatable in Lombardy but not in Piedmont, there would undoubtedly be considerable uproar. Such a redefinition is nevertheless possible and always has the potential to be politically controversial. What is at issue in the definition of such social concepts is not a matter of scientific fact, but of cultural interpretation. There is no such thing as a politically neutral definition of conceptual meaning: even the most ordinary concepts are ripe for politicisation.
Though the contingency of meaning obviously broadens the scope of conceptual contestability, some ideas are evidently prone to perennial politicisation. One of the most famous examples is the idea of freedom. There have been long-standing debates about whether freedom is conceivable only as the predicate of an action and therefore whether the relevant obstacles to its exercise must be solely physical in nature. Critics of this familiar, ‘negative’ understanding of freedom (associated with the political thought of Thomas Hobbes) argue that it has normative implications that belie its ostensible starkness and neutrality. Such a definition of freedom is, after all, incapable of ruling out the possibility of merely threatened interference as a source of infringement worth worrying about politically. We can imagine a scenario wherein an absolute ruler seeks to dominate and control the behaviour of their subjects through fear, without actually acting to reduce their physical freedom.2 According to this negative conception, if there is no physical interference, the tyrant in question – no matter what threats have been issued – has done nothing to limit or curtail the freedom of his subjects. As Hillel Steiner (1994: 23) observes in his defence of the negative account of freedom, the great irony of the line in The Godfather when Vito Corleone talks of making his enemy ‘an offer he can’t refuse’ (to comply or be killed) is that the victim of the threat could, in principle, refuse compliance. The fact that there could be such a refusal supposedly reveals the victim’s freedom to be technically unimpeded by the threat. Putting aside the issue of its practical, political entailments, the negative definition of freedom also has theoretical implications through its crowding out of alternative understandings. It rules out, for example, a more demanding conception of freedom as a kind of existential condition, which would imply the existence of – and therefore the need for political attention to – potentially mental or cultural as well as material obstacles to its exercise. As long as the negative definition is accepted, discussions about the protection or value of freedom within a community thus proceed without heed to such potential obstacles. The example of freedom indicates just how porous the boundary between conceptual and normative analysis can be. Even the barest conceptual definition can have considerable political resonance.
Philosophical analysis of property likewise disturbs the border between the conceptual and the normative in ways that can be quite glaring. The question what is property? cannot be approached innocently. It is practically impossible to define the concept in uncontroversial, apolitical terms, even when the discussion assumes (as ours
