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[ad]Pierre-Joseph Proudhon is not the only one to ask the question of what is property. Many throughout history have asked that very same question, yet no one has managed to answer the question satisfactorily. At least, that is my conclusion after having read many treatises on property.
John Locke, in the second part of his famous 1690 work Two Treatises of Government, maintained God has created man more or less as a self-owner and through working his mind and body, through labor, he creates new value and has a right to the fruits of that labor. Whenever he mixes that which is unowned (unclaimed) with his own labor he gains a right to the product, be it a cleared field, a harbor, a backyard…
The Lockean concept of property is without question the most universally accepted concept of property, it was both a defense of status quo at the time of writing (at least regarding how property was defined) and is a guideline for governmental definitions of property and the origins thereof. The Lockean property rights theory is the one that has gained most following theoretically or philosophically, and is the one closest to the real world property privilege in state society.
However, the Proudhonian anarchist concept of “possession” rather than property is interesting. Rather than accepting the Lockean “absolute, unrestricted right forever” the possession right is volatile and temporary – it makes a more efficient use of resources possible through not making it temporally exclusive. At the same time, however, the possession concept might (depending on how it is interpreted) work at the direct opposite – through only allowing temporary “occupation” it might discourage or deter investments thereby making the use of resources monstrously inefficient.
The two concepts are fundamentally different and seem to be at two extremes. While the Lockean property concept, often championed by “the right,” distributes rights to property “forever and ever” and “without limits” to how they are used (except for regulation through state coercion) , the Proudhon possession concept is extremely volatile and temporary. Is there no Aristotelian “golden mean” or “middle way” between these concepts?
Such a “middle way” concept of property/possession should be able to abrogate the inherent problems with both extremes: it should not accept the problems of “absolutism” in the Lockean concept, and it should try to compensate the negative effects of a very volatile possession type of ownership.
I tried to establish such a concept in a thesis in political theory (2005) through launching the concept of “use-right” to resources. The use-right is a Lockean concept in the sense that the right is awarded through “mixing one’s labor” with that which is unowned, but it is not a Lockean concept in that it awards ownership only of the fruits of the individual’s labor – not the matter itself. Thus, the right is gained to the function rather than the physical object.
The right is enjoyed for as long as it is not abandoned, which makes it distinctly different from the Lockean concept – as soon as the owner dies or leaves it behind it is “for the taking,” while a Lockean property is owned “forever” if the owner does not award it to someone else upon his/her death. Also, a physical object can be “owned” by a number of people at the same time but for different (non-conflicting) uses, thereby ensuring efficient use of resources. For instance, a piece of land can be used for hiking, mining, bird-watching, berry-picking, etc. as long as any added use does not conflict with the uses already established.
Comments appreciated.
Nice article.
This is a difficult area for people to talk about, even many libertarians. Especially when you get into the minutia of finding precicely where this and that begins and ends. It’s like trying to find the exact defintion of reddish orange, it’s hard to nail down with lazer precision. But I’m glad there are people out there figuring this out 🙂
I think your use-rights paradigm is spot on. I took it and ran with it a little bit a while back and came to the conclusion that it applies to more than realty (which I remember to have been your initial proposal), but that the movable nature of goods (as opposed to realty) makes use-rights virtually identical to the “right” or Lockean concept of property when applied to goods.
A person does not homestead an object, a person homesteads certain relationships to the object.
Thanks, quasibill. I agree, the theory could be applied on all sorts of properties not only “land.” And I think the strengths of the theory actually are more obvious if it is applied generally on all sorts of objects that can be owned. It needs to be fine-tuned a bit, perhaps, but I believe it is definitely a beginning of something that could be both interesting and influential.
As for “owning” in itself, it must always be, as Jan Narveson says, a matter of who owns the right – a relationship between claimants, not between a person and the object. The object does not care if it is owned or by whom it is owned, and an object cannot be part of a relationship. Ownership regulates the relationship between people with respect to a certain object.
Sat. 08/06/07 12:33 EDT
Per Bylund wrote, on January 30th, 2008 at 1:05 pm:
“Ownership regulates the relationship between people with respect to a certain object.”
I think this is not quite right, and would like to restate it:
“Ownership is the relationship between people with respect to a certain object.”
I see property as a social construct, and ownership as its concomitant social relationship.
Responding to MMMark:
MMMark, the quote is taken a bit out of context. What I’m saying is that ownership is not a relationship between a person and the object that is owned – it is a relationship between people: owners and non-owners. In that sense the right to the thing (that right is here referred to as ownership) regulates how people can and cannot act with respect to the thing that is owned.
If I own a certain rock (and I therefore have the legitimate right to it) this ownership regulates my relationship with other people with respect to this rock. You may do as you wish as long as you don’t use the rock in a way I don’t approve of. In this sense it does regulate the relationship between you and me – it regulates who is in the right and who is in the wrong (with respect to this specific rock) when we act.
I wouldn’t say ownership is the whole relationship between the two of us with respect to the object owned. There can be many types of relationships between the two of us, still including the rock in different ways and to differing degrees, that doesn’t involve ownership enforcement. But the fact that there exists a right, my ownership of the rock, means I get to call the shots re: the rock – if you use the rock without my approval my right has been violated. But if you use the rock with my approval or in a way that I don’t mind (even though not explicitly approved) there is no violation.
Also, bear in mind that the sentence you quote assumes the use-right theory of ownership, which means there can be multiple legitimate ownerships of the same object. So ownership only regulates the relationship between individuals with respect to the object – it isn’t the whole relationship.