«Liberté! Sauvons la liberté! La liberté sauvera le reste!» Victor Hugo.

30/09/2007

Acquisition of Property


What is the conceptual basis of property rights in land, and how can such rights be justified ethically? This question is of immense philosophical importance, since property in land is a fundamental part of any society, land being the ground we walk and live on. Yet, there is no generally acceptable philosophical explanation to how property in land is rightfully acquired and therefore why certain areas should be considered someone’s rightful property. The probably most famous and influential of land property acquisition theories is the theory of Locke, as formulated in Two Treatises of Government.

This theory is based on the axiom of an originally unowned world1, which can be acquired through i) being the first to ii) mix one’s labor with the unowned matter (cf. Waldron, 1988:177; Olivecrona, 1974). It does however not provide a clear chain of arguments for i) why the earth is originally unowned, ii) why property rights are acquired for previously unowned matter through mixing property with non-property (i.e. work with matter), and iii) how much work is necessary to acquire property rights. Also, Locke’s theory contains an ambiguously formulated restraint in claiming that there should always be “enough and as good” left (Locke, 1988:288), for others to acquire, when ownership has been earned. As Nozick (1974:175-176) shows, this means in fact that there can be no property acquired at all, since each acquisition of property is part of the trend towards a situation where there is not “enough and as good” left.

There are many philosophers to some extent disagreeing with Locke. John Stuart Mill (1999:26, 37-38; cf. Macpherson, 1977:52-53) agrees that the foundation of property is production, but draws the conclusion that land, since it must be originally unowned, cannot become property. The theory of George (1979) identifies property in land as a legal entity only, and claims that land rent (increased value not directly caused by the labor of the owner) is a product of society and thus should be redistributed to society through taxation.

Still others, like Proudhon (see e.g. 1994:57), claim that property in land is possible only through direct possession and thus limited to what each individual can use. As we can see there is a huge disagreement on what property in land philosophically is or isn’t, and how it can be justly acquired—if at all3. Considering the view of “ordinary people” on property of land, it seems—judging from what their typical behavior imply—they agree with the Lockean property theory, but that is of course subject to interpretation. In this study we look into the philosophical complex of problems, and focus on the philosophical derivation of property in land from self-ownership as a starting point. It is thus the purpose of this study to analyze how property in (or ownership of) land can be justified from a characterization of self-ownership.

» Man and Matter: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Justification of Ownership in Land from the Basis of Self-Ownership [link], de Per Bylund