Ryan - Property

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Property

Concepts in Social Thought

Series Editor: Frank Parkin Magdalen College, Oxford

Concepts in Social Thought

University of Minnesota Press

Minneapolis

Copyright 1987 Alan Ryan

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by the University of Minnesota Press 2037 University Avenue Southeast, Minneapolis MN 55414.

Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, Markham.

Printed in Great Britain

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ryan, Alan.

Property.

(Concepts in social thought)

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

1. Property. I. Title. II. Series.

HB701.R89 1987 330'. 17 87-25538

ISBN 0-8166-1669-8 ISBN 0-8166-1670-1 (pbk.)

The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.

1201*7

-V

Acknowledgements vi

Introduction 1

PART ONE: POLITICS, PROPERTY, FREEDOM AND

VIRTUE

1 Plato and Aristotle: Communism versus Moderation 8

2 Farmers and Soldiers from Machiavelli to Hume 23

3 Modern Libertyand Property 35

PART TWO: DEFENCES OF PRIVATE PROPERTY

4 Utility and Property 53

5 Natural Rights and Natural Owners 61

6 Personality and Property 70

7 Property and Liberty 77

PART THREE: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PROPERTY

RIGHTS

8 Liberation and Slavery 91

9 The Economic Theory of Property Rights 103

10 Property, Program and Alienation 116

Notes 126

Bibliography 135

Index 139

Most of my intellectual debts will be evident from my notes; I am, however, especially grateful to Quentin Skinner for some stimulating exchanges on Machiavelli and negative liberty, to the members of the Fabian Societys Socialist Philosophy Group for three years vigorous debate on markets and socialism, and to colleagues on the Liberty Fund project on the history of liberty for their comments on the essay which grew into Part One of what follows. I am more generally indebted to my colleagues at New College for intellectual stimulation and support, and, above all, to Kate Ryan and Sadie Ryan for their encouragement and, on the bad days, for more forbearance than even a man checking his notes is entitled to demand.

Some years ago, I published Property and Political Theory, which investigated arguments about the justification of the private ownership of goods, land and the produced means of production from Locke to Marx. This book is neither a summary of it nor an extended footnote to it, though it is more nearly the second than the first. It is an essay on topics I could not cover within the framework adopted there; some lead on naturally from the earlier discussion; some are prefatory to those I did discuss. There remain innumerable issues about ownership which I have not tackled there or here.

This volume appears in a series which aims to introduce readers to topics in social and political theory. It is not a comprehensive introduction like Andrew Reeves Property, nor a comprehensive account of justificatory theories of ownership like James Grunebaums, Private Ownership. The existence of these books has allowed me to concentrate on the connections between property and freedom in a variety of moral and political theories from Plato to Robert Nozick, contrasting classical and modern, political and economic, moral and sociological concerns as seems most illuminating. What follows is therefore introductory, not only in presupposing no prior knowledge of the subject, but in being no more than a sample of the issues which one might discuss under this rubric. My readers must judge whether this sample has whetted their appetites.

Many writers have noticed that there are at least two separable problems of property.1 The first is the moral problem of the justification of private ownership. Why should anyone own anything? Why should the particular people who own land, houses, stocks and shares go on doing so? What, if anything, would be wrong if the state expropriated all the