Political philosophers are likely to recognise this way of looking at the world. Though political philosophy takes different forms, the perspective Amis ascribes to the artist – that of looking at the social world and asking why? – captures one of its most enduring modes. For a great many political philosophers, it is a concern with the justification of social and political norms, traditions, institutions, and practices that defines their field of scholarly inquiry. We see this concern with normative questions throughout the history of Western political thought, from the writings of Plato and Aristotle to those of John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas. Political philosophy involves looking at the world and asking why it is organised the way it is and not some other way. It routinely subjects seemingly ordinary and everyday institutions to an intense level of scrutiny and its practitioners experience intense excitement and wonder, though it can occasionally feel like insanity or stupefaction.
In modern, Western liberal democracies, few social institutions are more ordinary and everyday than private property. The extent of its ordinariness is appreciable not only in the way in which people go about their daily business (how so much of our lives depends on the distinction between the things that are yours and mine), but also in the habitual assumptions of certain academic disciplines. Some scholars – in fields where there is a marked reluctance to acknowledge the inherent contingency and unpredictability in human affairs – accept the existence of exclusive ownership rights as an almost natural phenomenon. As such, they regard the institution as requiring only a descriptive and functional explanation rather than any critical interrogation or normative justification. The attitude of many economists towards property can seem, for instance, to parallel that of a doctor giving an account of a human heart to a layperson: they often appear interested in showing its purpose as a natural part within an organic whole, as though it were fulfilling a kind of evolutionary requirement. The hugely influential analysis of property by the economist Harold Demsetz (1967) typifies this naturalistic approach. Demsetz presents the institution of private ownership as an almost necessary feature of successful economic life, as a sophisticated system that requires an explanation only in terms of the efficient social function we can ascribe to it. For Demsetz, ‘a primary function of property rights is that of guiding incentives’ (1967: 348) to generate economic advantages from human behaviour. His is a descriptive cost-benefit account of private property deployed to vindicate its existence, so that economists can then more confidently embed it as a necessary feature of their analytic framework. Given his approach to the rationality of private property as he encountered it in the world, it is unsurprising that Demsetz elsewhere complains of a ‘nirvana fallacy’ within discussions of social institutions, wherein scholars seek to judge them against allegedly idealised standards. Although political philosophers often and increasingly seek to anchor their work in analyses of real world phenomena – eschewing explicit abstract utopianism in favour of addressing urgent social problems – they know that the very idea of a nirvana fallacy places undue restrictions on their theoretical imaginations. The notion of an unavailable nirvana encourages us to defer uncritically to the institutions that surround us and thus allows them to appear as natural features of the world rather than contingent human creations that we can reform, improve, or reject.
We can juxtapose a critical, historicised role for the normative political theorist to the naturalistic tendency we often find in much modern economics as well as other broadly positivistic social sciences. Political philosophy can acknowledge the contingency that characterises all social practices and institutions and invite us to interrogate the world around us in the manner of Amis’s artist: it provokes us to ask probing questions about the character of our civic life. In the case of this book, the question we will address is why private property? Asking such radical questions does not, of course, in any way rule out conservative conclusions. 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