The Philosophy of Ownership

Chapter III Earliest Property Concepts

The difficulty in discussing ownership as one of the major factors of human existence and experience is that little data exist. Most of those who have examined economics, whether they were concerned philosophically with man, or materialistically with property, have had many of their thoughts molded by written history. But written history does not encompass the experience of man. At best, it plunges into the past only briefly. The written record is confined to the last five or six thousand years of human experience. By the time we find learned men examining property and property relationships, we are in the historic period and these men are dealing with the findings of the historians. Nearly all the early historians were men who looked at government and war as the major factors which mold human social order. They entered the story at a point where the fundamental guide lines were disappearing in a welter of working relationships already aged and warped with custom.

Examination of pre-history calls for logic and imagination, for data are not available. We must consider possibilities and probabilities, for the facts are not known and probably never will be known with certainty.

When did the human yearning to own something first appear? It is impossible to know. However, the precise date at which such yearning occurred is not too important. Of significance would be understanding of the actual character of this yearning and the results emerging from it.

Evidence produced by scientists and scholars, conducting original research in far-flung locations where bones and artifacts relating to early man have been found, provides a few important clues. First, it is safe to conjecture that man, developing slowly from earlier and more primitive times, emerged in a kind of social order. No evidence has yet been found of the existence of isolated and single men, living alone. Obviously, a failure to discover such evidence does not prove its non-existence. We cannot know a negative. But it can be stated that, in view of a lack of evidence to the contrary, earliest man maintained some kind of group organization. Remains of our prehistoric forebears indicate that dawn men coalesced in a kind of hunting society, probably structured around the leadership of a superior hunter.1

Great quantities of pebble tools have been found in various places, showing that men of this early period, possibly a million years ago or more, had contrived to make a kind of hand axe, lacking a handle, which could be used for the important task of hacking flesh or wood, or of pounding various objects.2 Bone structures indicate that some early men were flesh-eaters while others probably maintained a diet primarily of herbiage of some type. Since pebble tools were in wide and general usage from earliest times, I will conjecture that the existence of these tools in no way indicates the emergence of the urge to own property privately. Ownership as we think of it today was probably unknown.

Since men appear to have organized into groups at an early date, we can assume they had some means of communication, probably by grunts, squeals, and gestures. Further, it can be presumed that the earliest notions of ownership or exclusive possession were somehow related to the group rather than to individuals. Men lived in hunting units, and the survival of the group would have been the primary value. Men served the tribe or the hunting unit. This is particularly likely in view of the evidence that at least some of the earliest men practiced cannibalism. Respect for men as individuals was probably slow in coming, except in cases where physical strength and endurance made respect necessary. The individual who did not serve the unit well, might have been marked for early extinction in the event of game scarcity. This would have helped cement the concept that all men lived to serve the tribe, and even in death a kind of dinner service was rendered.

The kill would have been for the use of the entire tribe. Those tools, such as pebble axes or stones used as missiles, would probably have been viewed as adjuncts to tribal survival, hence, as tribal property.

It is conceivable that hunting units claimed territory as the exclusive possession of a particular tribe. The penetration of an alien hunting unit into territory thought of as the exclusive territory of an occupying group, might have stimulated the first kind of military activity. It is likely that a tribe having exhausted the game resources in a given location moved into more favorable areas as predators, willing to attack any groups of men opposed to their foray, even as they were prepared to run to earth any food animals they flushed from cover. The tribe then shared in the feast.

The advent of private ownership as opposed to tribal possession seems to have been related to reproduction. Even though women were also viewed as creatures whose service was to the tribe, it is unlikely that they gave birth to offspring without feeling a personal identification with the product of their own bodies. The mother, in most instances, would surely have known her own child. And her care and feeding of the infant, without which survival of the species would have been impossible, may well have provided the first dim awakening of the idea of exclusive personal ownership. “This baby is mine.” As the child grew, other members of the tribe would have construed the child as tribal property. This would have run counter to the mother’s sense of property in her child, and her possession was doubtless thwarted by collective action on the part of the tribe. In most primitive tribes (there are exceptions) the male was valued more highly, and the women were viewed as something of a sub-species, existing to serve the tribe in labor and in a child-bearing capacity.

Among many early peoples, the role of the male in procreation was but dimly understood. Australian aboriginals even as late as the mid-twentieth century believe that conception occurs, not because of male participation, but as a result of a ceremony invoking the fertility goddess.3 Among the earliest man-made artifacts are fertility idols notably female in character, with the genitalia enormously enlarged, although some aboriginals in New Guinea today carve out enormous phallic symbols indicating the fire and purpose of the generative organs of the male. Reproduction was mysterious and women played the leading role. The man’s participation was transient, and often not seen as a direct cause of pregnancy. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that the very first yearnings toward personal identification and personal ownership of property awoke within women; here the budding awareness of self took on added meaning.

While women were viewed as tribal property, it is likely that men simply mated with them at the male’s convenience. But if logic may be stretched this far, it is probable that some female, attracted by the growing biceps of a particular male, sought to attract his attention exclusively to herself, not with sexual contact the object, but with personal identification of herself, as an individual, the motivational drive. How could she rivet his attention upon herself to the exclusion of all other women, when all women looked pretty much alike and served the same general tribal functions?

Quite possibly the woman, seeking personal identification, took to marking her body in some unique way, probably at first by creating artificial scars, or by daubing her epidermis with various clays or berry juices, or even with blood from the kill. The yearning for personal adornment and decoration is far more deeply seated in the human female than in the human male at the present time, possibly indicating prior adoption of the custom. However, when males first discovered that women had gained a march on them in the matter of decoration and personal identification, the males copied the practice. There is little left to the imagination when male decorative impulses have been stimulated.

It is probable that the woman crooning to her infant awakened the early love of music, rhythm, and song; that women were the first to be conscious of form and color, and were the first artists, dancers, and actors.

Women were in touch with the mystical “beyond” by virtue of their role as child-bearers. But males are enormously imitative, and the man who was able to invoke a following because of his declared contact with the mystical and invisible powers, both of birth and death, would have eclipsed the natural role of women in this particular. Almost mesmerized by the female display of magical powers, males firmly usurped the role of magician.

The shaman sought to rule the tribe as a man born with the mystical powers of the woman. For millennia, shaman-invoked taboo and ritual, and shaman development of the mask and the costume, provided rivalry for the hunter in tribal leadership.

In her presumed ownership of the child and in her sensitivity in matters artistic, the woman was probably not seeking to own property but rather was seeking individual identification through these means. Private property ownership resulted. In addition to the child viewed as property, it is likely that a cache of decorative material, a musical instrument such as the musical bow (the forerunner of the lyre), or some other artistic utensils were the first items to be privately owned.

It is possible that this conjecture is in error. Some male, attracted by an unusual shell, a particularly strange or attractive stone, a rare feather, or an unusual bone structure taken from a kill, may have evinced the first urge to possess himself of a property exclusively.

The desire to own a property of some sort would conceivably be more impelling among the elderly. The young would have a larger satisfaction in the collective procedures, the group responses, the interhuman relationships. As maturity came and as the competitive urge was dulled by time, property could have been sought to compensate for the increasing negligence and disinterest shown by younger members of the tribe. Some hoary patriarch, enfeebled with age, may have sought solace in private possession of some inanimate object to make up for the neglect and possibly the threat of positive aggression from his more vigorous rivals.

What is most likely is that no single pattern manifested itself universally. Factors which would stimulate the somewhat dull-witted primitive to the point where he would defy the tribe by shutting it away from something of his own exclusive possession would have been slow to appear. This, in itself, may account in part for the long passages of time in which men lived in eolithic or paleolithic conditions. It took the unusual individual, with rare endowments of vision and courage, to break from the mold of collective tribal ownership. He would have been distrusted and opposed by the tribe. The hostility directed against him might very well have been a fatal obstacle in case after case before private ownership of anything became general practice.

The rare endowments of the exceptional savage who first visualized an item of property as an extension of his personal self can hardly be overemphasized. This was a penetration into abstract reasoning on a par with the most complicated metaphysical formula. To think of an item as inseparably linked with a human being, when that human being has not manufactured the item, is still a thought process which stretches the minds of moderns.

The abstract character of ownership should be recognized at this juncture. It is a simple matter to suppose that an item of property held in the hand or in physical contact with the owner in some manner, belongs to him. But contact of this sort is actual possession and is not the same as ownership. When ownership occurs, the relationship to property is perpetuated during the absence of the owner. An item is put down and the owner departs. Others recognize and respect the fact that the absent owner is still the owner, although, absent. This respect leads them to leave his property alone in spite of ready physical access to it. How was this abstraction first explained in the absence of a competent vocabulary?

It is easy to suppose that the first man to secure this respect for his property was a strong man capable of punishing a trespasser. Possibly he was the hunting chief or the shaman. But the thought of ownership, that is, the retention of control over a property when the owner is not physically present, would have required some skill in expostulation.

Possibly each member of the tribe had assigned to him a tiny plot of ground, which became his sleeping site, and in consequence a more or less sacred precinct, upon which items he wished to own could be placed and trespass avoided. Possibly the odor of the owner clung to various objects and early men, doubtless more sensitive in their olfactory powers than modern man, may have been able to use scent as a mark of exclusive ownership.

In time, markings were added to indicate private ownership. Sir Leonard Woolley, in his Excavations at Ur, comments: “We generally connect seals with written documents, and for many historical periods that is natural and correct; but seals as marks of private ownership antedate by many centuries the invention of the art of writing—indeed, they go back as far as the Stone Age. . .this is the beginning of writing, and our seal impressions give us in graphic detail the evolution of the Sumerian script.”4

The fact is that IDEAS of private ownership did emerge, whatever the difficulties. One can marvel at the ability of dawn men to bridge, with a kind of mystical cord of attachment, the gap between an object and an absent owner.

This much appears reasonable. So long as man relied upon the tribe, insofar as his direction and behavior were concerned, and so far as properties he needed for survival were viewed as tribal, so long was he prone to remain in the lowest primitive state. Since no man could acquire more property than his fellows, incentives for self-improvement if they appeared must have been stifled. And the story of progress rather clearly shows that when progress appears, the occurrence is not general. Individuals and not groups violate the tribal taboos of collective ownership. Individuals and not groups perform inventive and pioneering acts. Individuals who do these things are the likely persons to develop private property concepts. The human race has not marched upward out of its dim and primitive past shoulder to shoulder. Groups tend to stagnate and to preserve the status quo. Individuals seeking to better their conditions, unquestionably are those who construe property into something that is private and exclusive.

I am also of the view that the first private property was not an item of utility to the owner. The usefulness of an item would have tended to cause the person to view it as something that rightfully belonged to the tribe. It was perhaps an exclusive personal relationship, such as mother-child, wife-husband, friend-friend, which relationship itself had little or no utility, that transcended the concepts of tribal collective property. Or possibly it was the item of rare beauty, unusual configuration, or startling appearance which was viewed as an exclusive treasure, not to be shared.

It appears that man, in his earliest hunting and foraging social organization, did not individualize. He was a unit of the group and he doubtless viewed the group as a kind of employer. He was under the requirement of taboo to labor for the group and to serve it in his best capacities. Everything that he acquired would have belonged to the group, nor would he have had any contrary views for long ages of time, at least on the basis of the known evidence. Primitive men thought of themselves as herd animals. They watched the behavior of animals upon which they preyed. And they saw clearly that so long as an animal remained in its herd, it was relatively safe. To succeed in the hunt, man had to contrive to separate an animal from the herd. Then, and then only, would it be available as food. And men must have looked at themselves in the same light. Only within the tribe were they safe. Thus, all tribal ritual and all tribal taboos contained the magic leading to survival. Innovators were dangerous. Violators of taboos were criminals. They might tend to weaken the conformity to herd patterns.

The tribe was a kind of primitive bureaucracy with tribal religions mirroring the bureaucratic structure. All early primitive religions appear to be pluralistic. They have a host of spirits, both malevolent and benevolent, arranged in something of an hierarchical order. The idea of one God, embodying all divine qualities, was a much later conceptual break-through. The tribe contained its various units in a ranking order of importance. The divine tribe of ancestors, gods, and demons also had a ranking order.

The awakening consciousness of man led him to individualization. The concept that he was a person, somehow both a member of the tribe and at the same time separate, led to the acquisition of private property. With private property came the idea of privacy.

It is likely that in earliest times men performed all actions, even those of the most intimate character, in full view of other tribal members. No effort would have been made to screen one’s behavior. But as individualism and the concept of private ownership emerged, increasing respect, both for other persons and for one’s own person, would have stimulated the idea of secrecy and privacy. Further, only when properties are kept hidden can they be safe from the straying hand of a thief, especially when ownership concepts are new or little understood.

A number of scholars have attested to the fact that in certain neolithic communities theft did not occur. This was probably true because little property was viewed as privately owned. No value was placed on the exclusive possession of anything. Hence, neither privacy nor exclusiveness resulted. But in these same communities when contact was made with persons representing a more developed culture, the idea of theft quickly developed. Properties owned by visitors were frequently stolen, whereas properties within the tribe remained tribal and hence not subject to theft.

When men adopt a societal view and think of themselves as units within a greater social whole, the idea of exclusiveness, privacy, private ownership, and so on, is viewed with antagonism. Similarly, when men adopt an individualist view and think of themselves as having independent merit, self-respect, self-responsibility, and so on, they view a societal whole as somehow antagonistic to their well-being. It is apparent that both of these views survive today with the opinion fairly well divided.

It is likely that both the socialist and the individualist will bridle at the statement that opinion is relatively evenly divided between their two points of view. The socialist will contend that the difficulty in establishing a world social order arises from the prevalence of “poisonous individualism,” which exists on such a broad scale that it hampers all his organizational efforts. Conversely, the individualist will cry out that the world is engulfed in socialism, which is advancing on all fronts and is in process of depriving him of his rights and his property. To a degree, both are correct. The socialist of today does not seek a return to primitive conditions. He does not favor theft as a constant practice. In fact, so far as is known, even the most disturbed kleptomaniac does not always approve of theft. He steals, but he resents theft if it occurs against him. The thief, whether operating individually or with social approval provided by the state, primarily seeks a redistribution of goods, after which he intends to act as though the loot were privately owned by himself. He really supports private ownership, except in the transitory stage of redistribution.

The individualist is rarely committed to his doctrine with consistency. He will emphasize the importance of private ownership and of private management of property in most cases but he is prone to strike his colors when he confronts major problems which seem difficult to solve.

The preponderance of evidence sustains the view that collective ownership of property precedes private ownership. Recently, certain data have appeared which indicate that all people living under what we must class as stone-age conditions, are not necessarily void of private-ownership concepts. An outstanding instance is the Kapauku Papuans of New Guinea.5 Here, in the remote central section of the island, is a tribe of primitives displaying many of the characteristics of a private-property society. However, there is some reason to suspect that in this case the idea of private ownership may have been ingrafted by contact with a more advanced culture. These Papuans use the cowrie shell, not native to their territory, as a medium of exchange. They must have absorbed the idea of money in trade with tribes along the coast having access to the cowries. Additionally, these Papuans count in units of sixty, a rather typical mathematical subdivision among those having had contact with traders using the standard chronometer of sixty seconds to the minute and sixty minutes to the hour. Since knowledge of these interior peoples is limited to recent years, and since their economy has not developed beyond a simple agrarian form, it is reasonable to assert that ideas of private property here are a late development, hardly indigenous, and conceivably absorbed from traders, either native or otherwise, coming into this or adjacent areas.

Strong words have been uttered in condemnation of both collective ownership and private ownership. Yet it appears that once the concept of private ownership takes root, progress begins on an ascending scale, which ascent is marred in those intervals in which private-property concepts are eroded or abandoned.

Scott Gordon reminds us in reviewing the writings of Thomas Hodgskin, “They considered property to be a right conferred by law, whereas the true theory is that property is a NATURAL right, devolving from the fundamental principle of individuality—a man’s right to himself. ‘It is as impossible,’ he said, ‘for men not to have a notion of a right of property, as it is for them to want the idea of personal identity. When either is totally absent, man is insane.’ ”6

Reasoning from the assumption that it is good for men to survive, and to survive in an increasingly comfortable and rewarding economic condition, one would have to agree with Hodgskin, once men have evolved to the point where individuality has been attained.

Man, as a complex, living entity, is entirely dependent on property of various kinds and utilities. In general, it is sought in accordance with two divergent drives. Collective property is sought when men subordinate their persons to the “good of the group.” When men live as tribal units, individualization, self-seeking, privacy, and personal possessions appear to be undesirable. Such a collective system apparently has considerable staying power and has survived for thousands of years. The major drawback of the system is that it tends to inhibit progress. Conformity is the prime requirement. Self-responsibility and self-control are viewed, to a degree, as selfishness. In such a system, the concept of freedom either does not appear at all or, if it does, it would seem a kind of madness, a type of wild invitation to anarchy, a destruction of law and order, a breakdown in all restraints with destruction of the tribal unit the ultimate result.

Private property is sought when men stop subordinating themselves as individuals to taboo and ritual, to the tribal “good,” to custom and conforming usages. Private property is the mark of individualizing man. When man’s value of himself is elevated, he no longer wishes to be dependent on others of his kind. He breaks away from established patterns to become an innovator, an individual, a self-reliant and responsible person. This entails a degree of privacy and a considerable willingness to confront danger and to be alone. The principal drawback of this type of behavior relates to the potential risk. When one pioneers in any area, the chances of error are enhanced. But private ownership of property, once man has individualized, is viewed as so fundamental a condition as to be worth the risk. When any considerable number of men, in a given location, accept the idea of self-responsibility and proceed to become innovators and producers, progress become possible and even likely.

This much is certain. Whether men view property as a desirable item privately or collectively, they are dependent upon property ownership. The drive to own property and, in our increasingly populous world, the desire to own it privately, is a fundamental urge.

Once a man has owned something he values, and owned it on a private basis wherein he excludes the world, the degree of satisfaction coming to him is so great that it is entirely likely he will never again be satisfied completely with collective ownership concepts.

The importance of private ownership increases day by day. While it may be true that usages tending toward collectivization reappear from time to time, the overwhelming data suggest that the desire to own property is enlarging.

________________

7The idea that man did not invent society but inherited it, is conveyed in the writings of Dr. L.S.B. Leakey and Dr. Raymond Dart and included in Robert Ardrey’s African Genesis (New York: Atheneum, 1963).

8L.S.B. Leakey, Adam’s Ancestors (Torchbook ed.; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), pp. 57, 66-68.

9Douglas Lockwood, I, the Aboriginal (Adelaide, Australia: Rigby, Ltd., 1962), pp. 34, 101-103.

10Woolley, Excavations at Ur (London: Ernest Benn, Limited, 1954), pp. 39-40.

11Leopold Pospisil, The Kapauku Papuans of West New Guinea (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), pp. 29, 89-90.

12Gordon, “The London Economist and the High Tide of Laissez Faire,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. LXII, December, 1955, p. 472.

• 1The idea that man did not invent society but inherited it, is conveyed in the writings of Dr. L.S.B. Leakey and Dr. Raymond Dart and included in Robert Ardrey’s African Genesis (New York: Atheneum, 1963).
• 2L.S.B. Leakey, Adam’s Ancestors (Torchbook ed.; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), pp. 57, 66-68.
• 3Douglas Lockwood, I, the Aboriginal (Adelaide, Australia: Rigby, Ltd., 1962), pp. 34, 101-103.
• 4Woolley, Excavations at Ur (London: Ernest Benn, Limited, 1954), pp. 39-40.
• 5Leopold Pospisil, The Kapauku Papuans of West New Guinea (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), pp. 29, 89-90.
• 6Gordon, “The London Economist and the High Tide of Laissez Faire,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. LXII, December, 1955, p. 472.
• 7Evidence produced by scientists and scholars, conducting original research in far-flung locations where bones and artifacts relating to early man have been found, provides a few important clues. First, it is safe to conjecture that man, developing slowly from earlier and more primitive times, emerged in a kind of social order. No evidence has yet been found of the existence of isolated and single men, living alone. Obviously, a failure to discover such evidence does not prove its non-existence. We cannot know a negative. But it can be stated that, in view of a lack of evidence to the contrary, earliest man maintained some kind of group organization. Remains of our prehistoric forebears indicate that dawn men coalesced in a kind of hunting society, probably structured around the leadership of a superior hunter.
• 8Great quantities of pebble tools have been found in various places, showing that men of this early period, possibly a million years ago or more, had contrived to make a kind of hand axe, lacking a handle, which could be used for the important task of hacking flesh or wood, or of pounding various objects. Bone structures indicate that some early men were flesh-eaters while others probably maintained a diet primarily of herbiage of some type. Since pebble tools were in wide and general usage from earliest times, I will conjecture that the existence of these tools in no way indicates the emergence of the urge to own property privately. Ownership as we think of it today was probably unknown.
• 9Among many early peoples, the role of the male in procreation was but dimly understood. Australian aboriginals even as late as the mid-twentieth century believe that conception occurs, not because of male participation, but as a result of a ceremony invoking the fertility goddess. Among the earliest man-made artifacts are fertility idols notably female in character, with the genitalia enormously enlarged, although some aboriginals in New Guinea today carve out enormous phallic symbols indicating the fire and purpose of the generative organs of the male. Reproduction was mysterious and women played the leading role. The man’s participation was transient, and often not seen as a direct cause of pregnancy. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that the very first yearnings toward personal identification and personal ownership of property awoke within women; here the budding awareness of self took on added meaning.
• 10In time, markings were added to indicate private ownership. Sir Leonard Woolley, in his Excavations at Ur, comments: “We generally connect seals with written documents, and for many historical periods that is natural and correct; but seals as marks of private ownership antedate by many centuries the invention of the art of writing—indeed, they go back as far as the Stone Age. . .this is the beginning of writing, and our seal impressions give us in graphic detail the evolution of the Sumerian script.”
• 11The preponderance of evidence sustains the view that collective ownership of property precedes private ownership. Recently, certain data have appeared which indicate that all people living under what we must class as stone-age conditions, are not necessarily void of private-ownership concepts. An outstanding instance is the Kapauku Papuans of New Guinea. Here, in the remote central section of the island, is a tribe of primitives displaying many of the characteristics of a private-property society. However, there is some reason to suspect that in this case the idea of private ownership may have been ingrafted by contact with a more advanced culture. These Papuans use the cowrie shell, not native to their territory, as a medium of exchange. They must have absorbed the idea of money in trade with tribes along the coast having access to the cowries. Additionally, these Papuans count in units of sixty, a rather typical mathematical subdivision among those having had contact with traders using the standard chronometer of sixty seconds to the minute and sixty minutes to the hour. Since knowledge of these interior peoples is limited to recent years, and since their economy has not developed beyond a simple agrarian form, it is reasonable to assert that ideas of private property here are a late development, hardly indigenous, and conceivably absorbed from traders, either native or otherwise, coming into this or adjacent areas.
• 12Scott Gordon reminds us in reviewing the writings of Thomas Hodgskin, “They considered property to be a right conferred by law, whereas the true theory is that property is a NATURAL right, devolving from the fundamental principle of individuality—a man’s right to himself. ‘It is as impossible,’ he said, ‘for men not to have a notion of a right of property, as it is for them to want the idea of personal identity. When either is totally absent, man is insane.’ ”