We have just marked the eight hundredth anniversary of the Magna Carta, forced by the great barons on England’s King John on June 15, 1215. It had its origin primarily in the King’s insatiable appetite for new taxes, which he sought to impose in violation of prevailing feudal law and custom. This agreement was an important victory for property rights and not coincidentally the first step in the establishment of the rule of law (however imperfect) in Britain, and by extension, the English-speaking world.
In honor of the occasion, I offer an excerpt from my Libertarian Philosophy in the Real World: The Politics of Natural Rights (pp. 34-6), where I summarize and defend the libertarian case for stringent property rights.
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Although libertarians derive their principles from a variety of distinct ethical foundations, they are united in recognizing that their political ideals cannot be instantiated without strong ownership rights (over justly held property).[i] Indeed, I believe it is fair to say that a hallmark of libertarianism is its affirmation that economic liberty has the same moral weight as all of our other freedoms. Thus, for Nozick, since our discretion regarding the control and disposition of resources is an essential element of our rational agency, redistribution in the name of social justice substantially demeans us:
This process whereby they take this decision from you makes them a part-owner of you; it gives them a property right in you. Just as having such partial control and power of decision, by right, over an animal or inanimate object would be to have a property right in it. (ASU, 172) (emphasis in original).
Another way to see the intimate connection between property rights and autonomy is simply to consider people’s motivation for ownership. For most persons, accumulating wealth is not their ultimate goal, but simply a means of achieving it. As F.A. Hayek puts it:
Strictly speaking, there is no “economic motive” but only economic factors conditioning our striving for other ends. What in ordinary language is misleadingly called the “economic motive” means merely the desire for general opportunity, the desire for power to achieve unspecified ends. If we strive for money, it is because it offers us the widest choice in enjoying the fruits of our labor.[ii]
Thus, for instance, we don’t work simply to have funds sitting in a bank account or invested in the stock market, but in order to eventually buy a home, to maintain our current lifestyle in retirement, to put our children through college, and so forth.
Because a secure right to property enables us to live as we choose, interference with it by other people or the state violates our autonomy in the same way as does the violation of our freedoms of expression, religion and political participation. As acknowledged earlier, property rights do not have absolute stringency, and may be overridden in extraordinary circumstances, but this is a far cry from holding that they are generally inferior to others, or that they must always give way in order to realize what the authorities consider to be a more just distribution of wealth.
Egalitarians may object here that this justification of economic liberty fails because it is fundamentally unfair to those who hold property of little value. In other words, since human rights are universal, what kind of right is it that disproportionately benefits the wealthy and is of little use to the poor?
My initial response to this challenge is simply to note that my defense of strong property rights relies on the ethical theory outlined in Chapter 1. Under Nozick’s principles, political justice requires equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. Thus, provided that the requirements of justice in acquisition and transfer are observed, great disparities in holdings are morally unobjectionable. If inequalities are the result of past institutional injustice, then (to the extent practical) rectification is in order. However, acknowledging this does not becloud property rights generally, rather it vindicates them.
It must be noted here that our society is not run on free market principles, and it is this failing that wrongs many citizens by denying them a fair opportunity to compete for desirable social goods. As shown in the remainder of this study, our state severely abridges economic liberty, which disproportionately harms those struggling to lift themselves out of poverty. To assist the poor, we should not weaken ownership rights, but neuter the state.
It is unsurprising that even in an equal-opportunity society some people will derive a more direct benefit from property rights than others, because this is true of all rights. For example, millions of citizens care nothing about politics; they remain completely ignorant of current affairs and never vote. Are we then to conclude that there is something suspect about political rights?
Similarly, some people will never have a controversial and potentially inflammatory opinion that they desire to communicate publically, so they have no need for First Amendment protections. But this fact hardly diminishes the importance of freedom of expression. The basic point is that all rights are enabling. It must be left to the individual to use the moral space that they provide as he or she sees fit.
Libertarian theorists are also united in holding that secure property rights play a critical instrumental role in preserving liberty generally. Put most simply, individual freedom is severely threatened when the state has its grip firmly on both the political and economic levers of power. In an ironic twist of fate, Leon Trotsky, the exiled Russian revolutionary, learned too late the horrific consequences that can ensue from this overreach. Observing that Stalin was using food as a political weapon, he writes, “In a country where the sole employer is the state, this means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced with a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.”[iii]
Richard Pipes, a leading scholar of Russian history, articulates the logic behind this important idea:
The right to property in and of itself does not guarantee civil rights and liberties. But historically speaking, it has been the single most effective device for ensuring both, because it creates an autonomous sphere in which, by mutual consent, neither the state nor society can encroach: by drawing a line between the public and the private, it makes the owner co-sovereign, as it were. Hence it is arguably more important than the right to vote (footnote omitted).[iv]
Of course, every new regulation or tax will not instantly collapse a liberal democracy into outright tyranny. Societies rooted in classical liberal values, such as ours, can withstand a great deal of political mischief. But, we erode property rights at our own long-term peril.[v]
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[i] Ayn Rand wrote that ,”The right to life is the source of all rights — and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.” Rand, “Man’s Rights,” in in Ayn Rand, with additional articles by Nathan Brandon, The Virtue of Selfishness (New York: Signet Books, 1970), 94.
Murray Rothbard, an important libertarian economist/philosopher and one of the leading exponents of anarcho-capitalism, went so far as to claim that “all rights are property rights.” This claim is based, very briefly, on the idea that we own ourselves and our labor, and accordingly the fruits thereof. Moreover, he thought it was incoherent to think of rights existing apart from property ownership, since a person cannot exercise rights without also owning property that enables such rights, i.e. one cannot exercise one’s right of free speech without controlling some means of expression. See Rothbard, For A New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, rev edn (New York: Macmillan, 1978), 39-44, accessible online at The Ludwig von Mises Institute’s website, http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp.
See also Eric Mack, “The Natural Rights of Property,” Social Philosophy and Policy 27, no. 1 (January 2010), 54 (“individuals have a basic moral claim…not to be precluded from engaging in the acquisition of extrapersonal objects”).
[ii] F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, anniversary ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 98.
[iii] Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and Where is it Going? (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1937), 283.
[iv] Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 281.
[v] See Mark D. Friedman, Nozick’s Libertarian Project: An Elaboration and Defense (London: Continuum Publishing, 2011), Chapter 5, for a more in-depth exploration of this subject.
