PRINCIPLES FOR A FREE SOCIETY PRIVATE PROPERTY

Principles for a Free Society PRIVATE PROPERTY
By Nigel Ashford
Private property
“Private property creates for the individual a sphere in which the individual
is free of the state. It sets limits to the operation of the authoritarian will. It
allows other forces to arise side by side with and in opposition to political
power. It thus becomes the basis of all those activities that are free from violent
interference on the part of the state.”
Ludwig von Mises
What is private property?
The human institution of property divides objects into things which are
exclusively owned, whether by an individual or a group like a married
partnership, an enterprise or the state. Whilst some objects, such as the
air and the sea have not historically been divided into separate property,
technological progress has made it possible to apply the institution to an
ever wider range of objects. The rights which owners exercise over their
property do not merely apply to tangible things; the right to sell one’s
own labour, and to the fruits of that labour is no less a property right
than the ownership of land or of a factory. The rights of ownership are
inalienable; they transcend the time and space of the property of others.
The owner of property remains the owner regardless of whether his
property is located inside that of someone else. In a free society, property
rights allow the individual to freely acquire and dispose of property, and
to the unhindered use of that property.
Private property is as old as human civilisation itself. The institution of
property marks out humanity from the other species who live on the
Earth. Adam Smith wrote “nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures
and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that is yours: I am willing
to give this for that.” This contrivance of man has been a key factor
in his civilisation; the two have grown up together. Our earliest knowledge
of the acceptance of a person’s right to own and dispose of property
comes from the Mediterranean area — a right which made possible a
great network of trade between many port and sea-based communities.
Naval commerce flourished beyond the reach of local rulers. The first
recognition of the link between property and freedom was made in
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ancient Greece. We know that the framers of the Crete constitution had
“taken it for granted that liberty is a state’s highest good and for this reason
alone make property belong specifically to those who acquire it,
whereas in a condition of slavery everything belongs to the rulers.”
The roots of the idea of private property were never firmly established
by the ancients. The Spartans, who long resisted the development of
commerce in the Mediterranean, did not recognise individual property
and permitted and even encouraged theft. Plato and Aristotle yearned
for a return to Spartan practice and the might of Imperial Rome was
later to crush the emerging centres of private property with the sacking
of Corinth and Carthage. The ancient world is littered with examples of
the birth pangs of new civilisations based on a recognition of private
property, followed by decline based on government and military attacks
on private property. The Islamic jurist Ibn Khaldoon described this
process as it caused the rise and fall of Egyptian civilisation. “At the
beginning of the dynasty,” he wrote, “taxation yields a large revenue
from small assessments. At the end of a dynasty, taxation yields a small
revenue from large assessments.”
It was not until governments turned from the direction of the use of property
to the protection of the property of private people that the foundations
for modern trade and exchange were laid. The first modern spokesman for
this institution was John Locke, who declared that “where there is no property
there is no justice” since property rights were the source of all other
rights. Injustices are an infringement of property rights. Locke made the
claim that “every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has
any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands,
we may say, are properly his.” This was not merely a political theory, but
also an attempt to describe eighteenth century England and Holland,
nations under whose authority property was respected to a greater degree
than anywhere else. David Hume went further a century later and his
History of England attributed England’s greatness to the respect for property
rights there. Hume also made a famous observation on how the absence of
ownership depleted society’s resources. In The Tragedy of the Commons,
Hume famously observed that common ownership had ruined land through
overuse as no-one had a commercial interest in its long term preservation.
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Without property rights, there are no human rights
The freedom of the individual to use his own knowledge and skills to
pursue aims that are distinct from others is dependent upon the institution
of private property. Without the private ownership of property, the
aims of every individual would be controlled by the state. Some say that
human rights take priority over property rights, but this is based on a
misunderstanding. Property rights are not the rights of property, but
human rights to property. In fact since the most fundamental human
right is the right to own one’s own body, property rights are the source
of human rights. The individual is morally entitled to the fruits of his or
her own labour. The rights that the authors of the American Declaration
of Independence enumerated, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness, are all dependent upon property rights, including the right to
own ourselves. The right to own property is recognised by the UN
Declaration of Human Rights in Article 17.
Free speech requires private property
Where there is no private property, there can be no free expression.
Without the right to hire a meeting hall, for example, or to express one’s
opinion in print or on the internet, there would be no free speech. Our
freedom to speak is dependent upon private ownership, of our person and
of the material resources in society. In 1930s Britain, the government
owned radio broadcasting. The BBC, on orders from the government,
stopped Winston Churchill broadcasting his views about the threat from
Nazi Germany. State suppression of private property always and everywhere
means suppression of free speech. Private property underpins our
civil liberties and political freedom; without any claim to ownership of
property, individuals can be silenced by those in authority. There is no free
speech in communist countries because there is nowhere to speak from.
A sphere of independence for the individual
The unhindered use of private property creates a space for the individual
in which he can live, make his own choices and determine his own destiny,
while enhancing his sense of identity and self-worth. Without that
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space, he would be subject to the arbitrary will of others, and therefore
unable to plan for the future with any certainty. This institution of private
property enables people to live side by side, on a planet with scarce
resources without impinging on the rights of others. It is a unique institution
that makes society possible, simply by assigning control over
things to a particular person or group. It solves disputes about such matters
that may otherwise only be settled by violence and subordination to
the strong. As such it is inseparable from civilisation and of man’s
humanity to his fellow man.
Where there is no property, there is no justice
The principle of property is the opposite of a society where might is
right. Justice, which government must enforce if it wants to ensure
social co-operation between men, cannot exist without private property.
Because property establishes our rights, over our body, our labour
and our possessions, an invasion or violation of those rights is an injustice.
These rights simply cannot be defined let alone protected unless the
rights of the individual to legitimately acquire, use and dispose of property
are respected. A judge or a jury could not determine who was right
and who was wrong if plaintiff and defendant owned no property. Our
concepts of murder, theft, and even fraud and libel depend upon
notions of ownership and the rules that govern and delimit the transfer
of that ownership between one another. Ideals of a fair trial, the presumption
of innocence, and the judgment of our peers would be meaningless
if we were not free to own, use and exchange property. Without
justice society would disintegrate into anarchy.
Private property gives people a stake in society
Private property is the foundation of a free society as well as the just
society. The wide (as opposed to equal) distribution of property in a free
society creates incentives that encourage social stability and individual
responsibility. This distribution of property makes society more stable
because it gives people a vested interest in keeping society free, as they
own a part of that society. The fact that people care more about that
which they own means that a free society is tended to by millions of sep-
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arate hands, avoiding the dereliction and decay that is the fate of societies
that do not divide up land, housing and capital into private ownership.
Private ownership also connects people to the consequences of
their actions. If they neglect that which they own, it is they who must
pay the financial price. It encourages the good stewardship of scarce
resources which would otherwise be wasted or spoiled if there were no
private property rights, or if those rights were periodically attacked.
Private property is essential for moral as well as economic progress
Private property is a prime mover of economic progress because of the
incentives to work and invest that it creates. Security of property, therefore,
is an essential condition for economic progress. Back in the fourteenth
century, Ibn Khaldoon described this process. “Attacks on people’s
property remove the incentive to acquire and gain property. The extent
and degree to which property rights are infringed upon,” he wrote,
“determines the extent and degree to which the efforts to acquire property
slacken.” David Hume identified the rules of property as the motor of
economic progress. These he determined as the ‘stability of possession,’
the ‘transference of property by consent’ and the ‘performance of promises,’
by which he meant the honouring of contracts. The restoration of
property rights is therefore a key element in economic reforms to boost
economic performance. If all three of Hume’s rules are recognised, property
will be owned by the best stewards and not merely by those to
whom the state has transferred its property. By making social co- operation
a necessity for economic progress, private property brings mankind
closer together and shapes man’s work so that it benefits his neighbour.
Private property benefits those who do not own as well as those
who do
Private property is often misunderstood as benefiting only its individual
owners. In fact, the benefits to society of the private ownership of property
are far greater than those which accrue to the individual. If a
landowner is to receive an income as a farmer, he must feed those who
do not own land and who may live in far away cities. He must also cultivate
the countryside, and be a good environmental steward if he is to
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secure his income into the future. If he is a poor farmer, he will not be
able to earn an income and so be forced to sell his land to a better steward
of the land. Whilst private property does confer gains on its owners,
the gains to society are greater as the institution enables millions to work
and live who do not own the tools of their trade. By transmitting prosperity
around society in this way, it allows individuals to accumulate
capital and one day go into business for themselves. In the long run, the
proportion of mankind who can live on the proceeds of the ownership
of property alone rises as private property is protected.
The role of government is to protect private property
It is important to remember that a society based on private property
is very different from the crony capitalism which has replaced communism
in much of the former communist world. The corrupt transfer of
property from the state to the mafia could not take place in a society
where private property was respected because individuals who live by the
use of force may not own unjustly acquired property in a free society.
Private property is not a social privilege, but an institution which
ensures that its owners are stewards who can serve society better than
their peers. The role of government is to protect private property, not
only in known objects, but in the new frontiers of intellectual property
in cyberspace. The private ownership of property is a human right,
essential for democracy, vital for personal identity, a source of political
stability, and efficient at producing wealth. The benefits of property are
the benefits of civilisation.
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Reading
Tom Bethell, The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity throughout
the Ages, New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1998.
Samuel Blumenfield, Property in a Humane Economy, La Salle, ILL,
Open Court, 1978.
Jim DeLong, Property Matters, New York, Basic Books, 1997, chapter 3.
Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, London,
University of Chicago Press, 1988, chapter 2.
John Locke, A Second Treatise on Government, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1960 (1690), chapter 5.
Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom, New York, Knopf, 1999.
Questions for thought
1. Why is private ownership of property desirable?
2. Should the state be able to tell you what you can do with your own
home?
3. Can private property rights protect the environment better than
state ownership?
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