Ideas on Liberty

BY CLARENCE B. CARSON

AT our house, we have a cat who sometimes goes by the name of Felix, a rather scrawny but well-fed black male with some white markings. His turf has been persistently trespassed upon by our next-door neighbor’s male cat, a solid black furry animal who is called Leo. We suspect that Leo has his application in to become our cat, because he acts as if he owns the deck at the back of our house. Felix has always viewed this interloping askance, but for a good while he evaded the issue by going in and out the front doors. He was clearly becoming increasingly disturbed by Leo’s intrusion, however, because instances in which he hissed, growled, and made guttural sounds of his displeasure were becoming more numerous. Then, one morning he apparently decided he had had more than enough of Leo’s impertinence. He went about the periphery of our lot marking off his territory in a manner peculiar to four-legged animals, or at least cats and dogs. Having clearly marked the boundaries, Felix then jumped the trespasser, chased him into his own yard, and drove him up a tree. As if to warn him against further trespass, he lay under the tree until wearying of the assignment, daring Leo to come down.

Many animals protect their particular turf from intruders by primal instinct, whether it be cats fighting with other cats, bees defending their hives from those who would rob them of their honey, ants protecting their beds, or what not. This sense of some animals having a turf which they protect has been dubbed the “territorial imperative.” It is akin to man’s claim to real property in land based upon occupancy or homesteading. Indeed, states generally recognize claims to land by occupants after they have asserted that claim for a period of years without challenge.

Small children develop very early a sense of certain objects being theirs. Undoubtedly, they have a much stronger awareness of “mine” than “thine,” for they tend to have little compunction picking up and playing with another child’s toy, but assert vigorously the claim to their own.

These facts, and others that could be cited, suggest that the right to property is deeply rooted in our nature, and that we even share some of its basic aspects with the lower animals. Although the right to property can be rationally explained and justified, there is good reason to believe that the determination to have and assert such a right is prerational in origin. It stems from the most basic aspect of all life, the determination to survive, mature, and achieve that form implanted in us. It derives from that instinct which presses the plant to bend toward the sunlight when it is deprived, that sends the roots of trees deep into the ground, that causes the dog to bury a bone, that pushes the ant to store up bits of food in season, that fuels the quest for sustenance by man and his willingness to defend his store of it ferociously. It is of the will to survive.

Property Rights vs. “Human Rights”

Intellectuals—socialist casuists mainly—have made the argument in this century that the right to property is, if it exists at all, an inferior right. It is inferior, they say, to what they are pleased to call “human rights.” It is inferior, they say more specifically, to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and the like. However valuable and important these rights are—and they are important and valuable—those who argue in this fashion have got the matter wrong end to. Far from being inferior to them, the right to property is the most basic of all rights. Without the individual’s right to property none of these other rights can subsist. The right to property is foundational. It is the mother, so to speak, of all other rights. The superiority of the right to property resides in the nature of things.

Look at it this way. Which right is essential to survival? To growth and development? To the achievement of maturity? Is freedom of speech, for example, essential to survival? Of course, it is not. On the contrary, it is quite possible to survive, as many people have, without even encountering the notion of free speech. The same is true for freedom of the press, the right to peaceful assembly, and even the alleged “right” to vote. Nor are they really essential to growth and development or the achieving of maturity, though they would be quite helpful to some people, at least.

Property is in a category all by itself, in regard to these basics of life. Survival is impossible without the use of property in land. Such property provides us the very space for living on earth. Without it, we have no place to walk, eat, sleep, stand, breathe, drink, work, or even to be. The plant life so necessary to our survival in providing food, fiber, and wood is rooted in the land. Nor, given some place to stand and be, could we survive without property rights in the food, clothing, houses, and tools that we use. Nor could we grow and develop without a property in the means for doing so. As for maturity and fulfillment, these could not be unless we survived, grew, and developed. Without some sort of property rights, if we were to survive at all, it could only be as the slaves or servants of those who held the property.

Property rights, it should be emphasized, entail much more that the right to land and the fixtures upon it. Property rights extend to every species of property, to anything that can be justly owned by a person: all that we have produced with our hands and tools from our materials, or portions thereof, or acquired from others by voluntary exchange. There is a notion that has been around for quite some while, too, that it would be possible for property to be held in common—as in primitive communism, for example. If we look at the notion closely, we will see that it is ultimately an illusion. Property must ultimately be used or consumed by persons as individuals, whether it is a car to be driven or a piece of cake to be eaten. At that point, its commonality must cease, if not well before. The right to property, then, with some familiar exceptions, is ultimately the right to private property in the control and use of something. The above discussion has been made mainly for the purpose of establishing the essentiality of property to life. Thus, I have not gone at all into the diverse and complex ways that property and its rights may be parceled out, divided, alienated or held. In any case, that would be a topic requiring something much nearer to a volume for adequate treatment than an essay.

Nor is it my intent to downgrade such rights as free speech and a free press. They are no less rights because they are rights derived from property rights. Free speech is derived from the property one has in his own person. This property right translates mainly into the right to control and use one’s own faculties for his own ends. Undoubtedly, this right may be restricted so as, for example, to use them constructively not destructively, but it is nonetheless, by derivation, a property right. If a person does not have the right to the constructive use of his faculties for his own end, he is a slave of someone else, whose property he is. Speech is a faculty, and freedom of speech is merely an affirmation of the right to use that faculty constructively.

Freedom of the press clearly derives from the use of property, namely, a printing press. Moreover, it is a freedom which can only be exercised at the behest or by the person who owns or controls a press. The right to constructive use of a press is a right such as was understood to pertain to the use of all property in the United States. Undoubtedly, speech, press, religion, and assembly received mention in the Constitution because they were matters upon which governments had shown a penchant for restricting in times past. Most likely, if governments had shown a like inclination in earlier times to restrict the use of grist mills, saw mills, or plows, the Constitution might have established a freedom of grist milling, saw milling, and plowing. Of course, they never dreamed that those who governed would be likely to concern themselves with such mundane affairs.

Thoughtful men were well aware at the time of the making of the Constitution, that it would be a forbidding, if not impossible, task to list all the particular rights that comprehend liberty and property. Bills of rights usually covered only those that had been in doubt in times past. Thus, the Constitution does not even list the rights of property ownership, such as the rights to hold, to divide, to use for your own benefit, to dispose, and to sell or otherwise alienate yourself from it. The rights of property, in any extension, were just assumed.

Yet, the right to property was recognized in the United States Constitution, and in state constitutions in most cases. It was understood as a natural right, not as a governmental granted privilege. The greatest assault on property rights in the past century has come from socialists. But they have been greatly assisted in the discrediting of property rights by proponents of Realpolitik, or the modern Machiavellians, those who see things purely in terms of government power. These latter generally argue that all so-called rights are really grants of government. While there should be no doubt that government may intrude upon or deny rights, it does not follow that it is right in doing so, or that it has the right to do so. Such a political view simply denies the existence of rights.

It is socialist ideas, however, that have provided the cutting edge in the assault on property in this century. Socialists have from the outset denied that individuals have legitimate or just claims to property, or to rights in it. They have tended to see private property, especially in land and in the alleged means of production, as special privileges granted and protected by government. While socialist thought has hardly followed one consistent line, they have held that productive property is, was, or should be commonly owned. Without some power to make continual allocations, the notion is no more than a will-of-the-wisp, since it is not possible to utilize or consume property without someone controlling it to the exclusion of all other claims upon it. Try, for example, to eat a grape or to plow with a tractor in common. In practice, socialists are bent on vesting the power of allocation in government, although gradualists move toward that goal with many subterfuges.

Property Is a Natural Right

It is not my purpose here, however, to make a utilitarian or pragmatic argument for private property. On the contrary, my point is not only that property is a natural right but also that this is the surest defense of it. As an intellectual exercise, utilitarians and even pragmatists may make an interesting defense of private property. If tom cats could reason, they might make a good case that each one of them should stick to his own territory and not intrude upon the other. But as matters stand, tom cats do instinctively what men must be prepared to do ultimately in defense of what is presumptively theirs. Men must defend their property as theirs by right, for if they have a just claim, it is just that. Anything less will not do.

The burden of this essay has been to show that property is a right, that it is a right antecedent to government, to constitutions, to institutions, or to any organization of society. It is derived from the nature of man and of life on earth, a right coterminous with the right to exist. We must have property to exist, and the surest foundation of that is in property as a right. That is not to say that it is some sort of birthright to be accorded some particular property, or that we have a right to the property. On the contrary, the right to property extends only to that property we have earned, bought, or that has been given to us. It is at that point that the right to property comes into play. Nor is it my intent to deny that property may be properly taxed by government. But if the right to property is to be maintained, taxation must be limited in ways to keep it from ever being confiscatory, for then the right to property tends to be nullified.

In any case, the best defense and ultimately claim to property is that it is held by right. The best example that comes to mind of this truth concerns the historic claim of Americans to gold. When Franklin D. Roosevelt came to the presidency, a great many Americans owned either gold or currency and other notes redeemable in gold. The New Deal called in all gold and eventually nullified all promises to pay in gold. That gold and the promises to pay was the property of Americans. It was theirs by right. Once they had turned it in, they lost all claim upon that property. No great loss was immediately apparent, at least not in purchasing power of the medium of exchange. The Federal Reserve notes and silver certificates which replaced the gold would exchange for as much as the gold—over the short run. Americans were assured that their currency was still backed by gold, and the legend that Federal Reserve notes bore in those days indicated that they were redeemable in lawful money. But, of course, they could only be redeemed in silver or Federal Reserve notes. The stage was set for what did indeed happen, a long-term and ongoing inflation which moves in the direction of the ultimate destruction of the money. There was only one point in time and one position on which it could have been stopped with no loss or confiscation: when it was called in and on the basis that the gold belonged to the owners by right. Whatever opportunity there was to succeed at that was lost, largely by default.

Dr. Clarence B. Carson has written and taught extensively, specializing in American intellectual history. He is the author of the recently published Basic History of the United States, a five-volume text.