John Locke
When speaking of property, a good place to begin is with John Locke — the 17th century English philosopher.
Locke was one of the first political philosophers to think about the nature of property. He struggled with the concept of private property, given that he believed God gave the earth to "mankind" — not certain individuals.
In his words:
"God gave the world to men in common; but since he gave it them for their benefit, and the greatest conveniencies of life they were capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed he meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational, (and labour was to be his title to it;) not to the fancy or covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious. He that had as good left for his improvement, as was already taken up, needed not complain, ought not to meddle with what was already improved by another's labour: if he did, it is plain he desired the benefit of another's pains, which he had no right to, and not the ground which God had given him in common with others to labour on, and whereof there was as good left, as that already possessed, and more than he knew what to do with, or his industry could reach to."
So it is not the land that God has given us that an individual is laying claim to, but rather the product of an individual's labor. By claiming property, we are claiming individual entitlement to the product of the work that we do, not the common gift of God. By his logic, a plowed field has value because of the labor that one invested in plowing it — and that is why one would claim it as his or her own.
Locke makes it clear that this is based on the assumption that there is always "good left."
"Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as good left; and more than the yet unprovided could use. So that, in effect, there was never the less left for others because of his enclosure for himself: for he that leaves as much as another can make use of, does as good as take nothing at all. No body could think himself injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a good draught, who had a whole river of the same water left him to quench his thirst: and the case of land and water, where there is enough of both, is perfectly the same."
He continues to add that the process of enclosure actually helped to preserve this state of abundance. He claims that a man can live on 10 acres of cultivated land, where he would most likely require 100 acres of uncultivated land in order to maintain the same level of sustenance. Hence, when one encloses 10 acres of common land, one is not taking 10 acres — but giving 90.
Of couse, at this point we're only talking about the means that one uses to sustain one's self.
"Before the appropriation of land, he who gathered as much of the wild fruit, killed, caught, or tamed, as many of the beasts, as he could; he that so imployed his pains about any of the spontaneous products of nature, as any way to alter them from the state which nature put them in, by placing any of his labour on them, did thereby acquire a propriety in them: but if they perished, in his possession, without their due use; if the fruits rotted, or the venison putrified, before he could spend it, he offended against the common law of nature, and was liable to be punished; he invaded his neighbour's share, for he had no right, farther than his use called for any of them, and they might serve to afford him conveniencies of life.""The same measures governed the possession of land too: whatsoever he tilled and reaped, laid up and made use of, before it spoiled, that was his peculiar right; whatsoever he enclosed, and could feed, and make use of, the cattle and product was also his. But if either the grass of his enclosure rotted on the ground, or the fruit of his planting perished without gathering, and laying up, this part of the earth, notwithstanding his enclosure, was still to be looked on as waste, and might be the possession of any other."
Did you hear that! This boughouis thinker who influenced the very foundations of the United States and all subsequent Property Law asserts that all those companies who are filling their dumpsters with unsold produce every night, as well as the United States Government itself — which subsidises agriculture by buying up surplus grain and letting it rot away in silos — is stealing from us. Even from Locke's boughois perspective, he's calling us to the barricades right now.
Locke admits that the introduction of money into society changed the shape of property. Using money, it becomes possible for one to freeze one's labor into a durable form represented by precious medals — or in the case of today, currency. Once this possibility was introduced, the potential size of an individual's encloser is no longer limited by fruits, vegetables, or livestock that will rot away in time. Where as before, if I used 1000 acres to grow fruit that would rot away before I could eat it all — I was stealing from the common gift of God. If, on the other hand, if I trade all of my surplus fruit for precious medals which are durable and will not rot, I have wasted nothing. Locke imagines a large island where there is an incredible abundance of resources, but nothing that is so scarce or durable that it could be used as a form of money. On this island, Locke realizes, there would never be any incentive for an individual to use more land than one would require for one's personal needs — because there would be no way to crystalize any extra labor performed into a more durable format.
So here Lock is admitting that the emergence of money and trade threw a crimp into his logic on property. But he continues to rationalize his justifications by claiming that since gold and silver have no inherant value beyond what we've bestowed on them — all of us have voluntarily consented to this expansion of property by agreeing to accept the value of currency.
"But since gold and silver, being little useful to the life of man in proportion to food, raiment, and carriage, has its value only from the consent of men, whereof labour yet makes, in great part, the measure, it is plain, that men have agreed to a disproportionate and unequal possession of the earth, they having, by a tacit and voluntary consent, found out, a way how a man may fairly possess more land than he himself can use the product of, by receiving in exchange for the overplus gold and silver, which may be hoarded up without injury to any one; these metals not spoiling or decaying in the hands of the possessor."
This is about as far as Locke can take us.
Proudhon
Background.
Pierre Joseph Proudhon was a 19th century thinker who questioned the bougois foundtions of property. He was the first person to call himself an anarchist, claiming that "Anarchy Is Order." He was referring to what he called the "natural" order of true unity from below rather than the false unity brought about by constraint. The phrase "Anarchy Is Order" is thought to be the origin of the circle-A.
He is well known for exlaiming that "Property Is Theft!" and starts his book "What Is Property" by saying:
"If I were asked to answer the following question: WHAT IS SLAVERY? and I should answer in one word, IT IS MURDER, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: WHAT IS PROPERTY! may I not likewise answer, IT IS ROBBERY, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?"
Proudhon's thoughts on property depend on a distinction between property and posession. For him, property is ownership by a landowner or capitalist that is derived from conquest or exploitation and is maintained through the state, property laws, and an army. On the other hand, posession is ownership of a home, land to cultivate, or tools of a trade that excludes control over the lands and lives of others.
"There are different kinds of property: 1. Property pure and simple, the dominant and seigniorial power over a thing; or, as they term it, NAKED PROPERTY. 2. POSSESSION. The tenant, the farmer, ... the usufructuary, are possessors; the owner who lets and lends for use, the heir who is to come into possession on the death of a usufructuary, are proprietors. If I may venture the comparison: a lover is a possessor, a husband is a proprietor. This double definition of property — domain and possession — is of the highest importance; and it must be clearly understood, in order to comprehend what is to follow."
Proudhon wonders how property has become an accepted 'natural right.' When categorized along with natural rights like life and liberty, property does not seem to fit in. Where he sees things things like life and liberty as inherant immutable components of humanity, he sees something like property as a specific creation of proprietors. He investigates the basis for property as a natural right, starting with Locke's justification on the basis of labor.
"Why is not this principle universal? Why is the benefit of this pretended law confined to a few and denied to the mass of laborers? ... Why does the tenant no longer acquire through his labor the land which was formerly acquired by the labor of the proprietor?""I prove that those who do not possess to-day are proprietors by the same title as those who do possess; but, instead of inferring therefrom that property should be shared by all, I demand, in the name of general security, its entire abolition."
In response to a justification of property such as "Some laborers are employed in draining marshes, in cutting down trees and brushwood,—in a word, in cleaning up the soil. They increase the value, they make the amount of property larger; they are paid for the value which they add in the form of food and daily wages: it then becomes the property of the capitalist."
Proudhon Responds:
"The price is not sufficient: the labor of the workers has created a value; now this value is their property. But they have neither sold nor exchanged it; and you, capitalist, you have not earned it. That you should have a partial right to the whole, in return for the materials that you have furnished and the provisions that you have supplied, is perfectly just. You contributed to the production, you ought to share in the enjoyment. But your right does not annihilate that of the laborers, who, in spite of you, have been your colleagues in the work of production. Why do you talk of wages? The money with which you pay the wages of the laborers remunerates them for only a few years of the perpetual possession which they have abandoned to you. Wages is the cost of the daily maintenance and refreshment of the laborer. You are wrong in calling it the price of a sale. The workingman has sold nothing; he knows neither his right, nor the extent of the concession which he has made to you, nor the meaning of the contract which you pretend to have made with him. On his side, utter ignorance; on yours, error and surprise, not to say deceit and fraud.""In this century of bourgeoisie morality, in which I have had the honor to be born, the moral sense is so debased that I should not be at all surprised if I were asked, by many a worthy proprietor, what I see in this that is unjust and illegitimate? Debased creature! galvanized corpse! how can I expect to convince you, if you cannot tell robbery when I show it to you? ... Under the pretext that he has paid his laborers, that he owes them nothing more, that he has nothing to gain by putting himself at the service of others, while his own occupations claim his attention,—he refuses [to acknowledge his own justification for property] ... And when, in the impotence of their isolation, these poor laborers are compelled to sell their birthright, he—this ungrateful proprietor, this knavish upstart—stands ready to put the finishing touch to their deprivation and their ruin. And you think that just? Take care!"
Finally, in response to Locke's justifications, Proudhon exclaims: "GOD GAVE THE EARTH TO THE HUMAN RACE: why then have I received none? HE HAS PUT ALL THINGS UNDER MY FEET,—and I have not where to lay my head! MULTIPLY, he tells us ... that is as easy to do as to say; but you must give moss to the bird for its nest."
Proudhon goes on to examine the justifications of private property based on the concept Original Occupancy.
At this he exclaims "...property was the first of rights, just as submission to authority was the most holy of duties."
When a contemporary of Proudhon attempted to justify property through original occupancy by claiming:
"My liberty needs, for its objective action, material to work upon; in other words, property or a thing. This thing or property naturally participates then in the inviolability of my person. For instance, I take possession of an object which has become necessary and useful in the outward manifestation of my liberty. I say, `This object is mine since it belongs to no one else; consequently, I possess it legitimately.' So the legitimacy of possession rests on two conditions. First, I possess only as a free being. Suppress free activity, you destroy my power to labor. Now it is only by labor that I can use this property or thing, and it is only by using it that I possess it. Free activity is then the principle of the right of property. But that alone does not legitimate possession. All men are free; all can use property by labor. Does that mean that all men have a right to all property? Not at all. To possess legitimately, I must not only labor and produce in my capacity of a free being, but I must also be the first to occupy the property. In short, if labor and production are the principle of the right of property, the fact of first occupancy is its indispensable condition."
Proudhon Responds:
"Well, is it not true, from [this] point of view, that, if the liberty of man is sacred, it is equally sacred in all individuals; that, if it needs property for its objective action, that is, for its life, the appropriation of material is equally necessary for all; that, if I wish to be respected in my right of appropriation, I must respect others in theirs; and, consequently, that though, in the sphere of the infinite, a person's power of appropriation is limited only by himself, in the sphere of the finite this same power is limited by the mathematical relation between the number of persons and the space which they occupy? Does it not follow that if one individual cannot prevent another — his fellow-man — from appropriating an amount of material equal to his own, no more can he prevent individuals yet to come; because, while individuality passes away, universality persists, and eternal laws cannot be determined by a partial view of their manifestations? Must we not conclude, therefore, that whenever a person is born, the others must crowd closer together; and, by reciprocity of obligation, that if the new comer is afterwards to become an heir, the right of succession does not give him the right of accumulation, but only the right of choice?""If the right of life is equal, the right of labor is equal, and so is the right of occupancy. Would it not be criminal, were some islanders to repulse, in the name of property, the unfortunate victims of a shipwreck struggling to reach the shore? The very idea of such cruelty sickens the imagination. The proprietor, like Robinson Crusoe on his island, wards off with pike and musket the proletaire washed overboard by the wave of civilization, and seeking to gain a foothold upon the rocks of property. "Give me work!" cries he with all his might to the proprietor: "don't drive me away, I will work for you at any price." "I do not need your services," replies the proprietor, showing the end of his pike or the barrel of his gun. "Lower my rent at least." "I need my income to live upon." "How can I pay you, when I can get no work?" "That is your business." Then the unfortunate proletaire abandons himself to the waves; or, if he attempts to land upon the shore of property, the proprietor takes aim, and kills him."
"The right of property, provided it can have a cause, can have but one. I can possess by several titles; I can become proprietor by only one. The field which I have cleared, which I cultivate, on which I have built my house, which supports myself, my family, and my livestock, I can possess: 1st. As the original occupant; 2d. As a laborer; 3d. By virtue of the social contract which assigns it to me as my share. But none of these titles confer upon me the right of property. For, if I attempt to base it upon occupancy, society can reply, "I am the original occupant." If I appeal to my labor, it will say, "It is only on that condition that you possess." If I speak of agreements, it will respond, "These agreements establish only your right of use." Such, however, are the only titles which proprietors advance. They never have been able to discover any others. Indeed, every right supposes a producing cause in the person who enjoys it; but in man who lives and dies, in this son of earth who passes away like a shadow, there exists, with respect to external things, only titles of possession, not one title of property. Why, then, has society recognized a right injurious to itself, where there is no producing cause? Why, in according possession, has it also conceded property? Why has the law sanctioned this abuse of power?"
There is, of course, a major distinction between what Proudhon was advocating and the likes of the State Socialists.
"...instead of inferring therefrom that property should be shared by all, I demand, in the name of general security, its entire abolition."
Proudhon considered the state socialists of the time to be the worst proprietors — seeing state ownership as the most degenerative case of capitalist exploitation.
"I see in it a barrier to liberty ... the free disposition of the soil taken away from him who cultivates it; and this precious sovereignty ... forbidden to the citizen, and reserved for that ficticious being, without intelligence, without passion, without morality, that we call the State. By this arrangement, the occupant has less to do with the soil than before; the clod of earth seems to stand up and say to him: You are only a slave of the taxes; I do not know you!"
Proudhon was also opposed to libertarian notions of collectivism. He only favored association where association was necessary as the organic combination of forces. Operations that required specialization and many different workers performing their individual tasks to complete a unified product required association. This is because the workers would be inherantly dependant on each-other, and without association the workers are related as subordinate and superior. Master and wage-slave. Proudhon considered this to be "free association" and did not favor what he called the "cult of association," which would require everyone to collectivize for the sake of collectivization. He felt that operations which could be performed by an individual — such as the artisan or peasant — without the help of specialized workers did not require association. This is the origin of his saying that "Property is freedom!" — Where here he is referring to property as posession.
Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin was one of the first proponents of Anarchist Communism. He looked at the world of individual autonomy and personal posession that Proudhon had imagined, and further questioned its basis. He noted that all of society's labor was intimately tied together in a myriad of ways, and that even apparently isolated groups were not functioning as autonomously as they seemed. He pointed out that even the peasant farmer or isolated artisan was dependant on "roads and the bridges made in common, the swamps drained by common toil, and the communal pastures enclosed by hedges which were kept in repair by each and all. If the looms for weaving or the dyes for colouring fabrics were improved, all profited; so even in those days a peasant family could not live alone, but was dependent in a thousand ways on the village or the commune." He continued that in the industrializing world, these connections were even more complicated and tight knit.
Kropotkin felt that this demonstrated the "instruments of labor" to be a common inheritance — and that this was in direct contradiction to wages or even collectivist renumeration. He felt that "the common possession of the instruments of labour must necessarily bring with it the enjoyment in common of the fruits of common labour." He saw enough for everyone, and proposed that those currently in control of property were resting on a centuries-old foundation of appropriated common labor. He thought that the amount of work necessary to track people's ongoing labor was less efficient than just having a fully communitarian society where everything was freely available to everyone. So contrary to Proudhon, Kropotkin did not feel that one was entitled to the product of one's labor — but rather to whatever one's needs may be.
Kropotkin advocated a gift economy, where everything would be available to everyone. He often pointed out that in situations of crisis, people regularly banded together to help each-other and lend services without thought of renumeration — often with amazing and beautiful results. He imagined a world where everyone was always united by such a common cause.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there is a long history of anarchist thought on the nature of property and posession. Proudhon has interesting ideas about property existing both as an act of theft and a liberating force. Kropotkin has interesting ideas about the interconnectedness of it all and the potentials for a beautiful communitarian world. To me, even the writings of Locke are interesting — because at least this boughouis philosopher was even thinking about the origins and rights of private property. This is a far cry from today's world, where large social questions are no longer discussed. There are no more promises, no more ideas. People are not continuing to work because they have been promised the hope of an eventual better life. By and large, those in America today have accepted the conditions and parameters of their lives and are operating within that framework. The politicians doen't even have to lie about promises of alternatives. The questions they do ask are meaningless, because the method is false. If asked for a justification of private property, those of the established order would not speak of bases in equality, liberty, or justice. They would simply reply that private property is necessary for capitalism, and that would be sufficient. Because nobody is imagining anything else.