The Philosophy of Ownership

Chiefs of tribes, kings, potentates, and rulers of the earth were among the first to claim land as property. At that exciting period in our remote past when men were changing their way of life from a foraging, hunting society, dependent upon the wild things they could find in forest, stream, or prairie, to an agrarian economy depending upon what the soil could produce, a major development occurred in the societal organizations of men.

Instead of accepting the proceeds of the hunt as the item of highest value, men began to take an interest in land, as a permanent, tangible asset. And when they did, patriarchs and kings laid claim to vast territories, asserting that these lands were royal and hereditary and were for the use of the tribe. The foraging tribe gave way before the development of agriculture. Men settled in more permanent dwellings and cultivated the land, in order to benefit by the harvest resulting from their labor.

Long before this transition, individual men in hunting and foraging tribes in various parts of the earth had begun to claim objects as personal and private property. Ultimately, they claimed the land itself as exclusively their own.

Whether or not the first concept of private property centered on persons, such as children, slaves, or spouses, or upon sea shells, feathers, bones, tools, or other physical objects, private ownership of objects became a reality. This is the kind of personal possession that is easiest to understand, partly because objects have so long been accepted as property, and partly because objects by their nature have the qualities of discernible boundaries and admit readily to individual control.

When an object appeared valuable to a person, that is, when he reached out by an action of his will to possess himself of such an object, the object thus selected was separated from all others. A shell has a discernible limit. The possession of a particular shell does not mean the ownership of all shells. The claim to a particular feather or bone can be quickly established. By grasping the object an individual can take “control” of it. And though at first there may have been a certain amount of violence wherein the strongest acquired ownership, the fact emerges that at a very early date, personal ownership in the form of exclusive possession of such objects became a way of life. Even the weakest members of a tribe owned “things.”

It is noteworthy, I believe, that these things were not “produced” by primitives, any more than the land was “produced.” No man can make a tree. No man can make an acre of ground. No man can make a sea shell. The assumption of John Locke, thinking as he was of agrarian development, that the admixture of the labor of the man with the property being produced creates ownership, clearly will not hold.

If it is said that the mere picking up of a pretty stone is a kind of labor, I will have to contend that the setting forth of a claim over land is also a kind of labor; but this is to overlook the essential: that it is the claim that creates the relationship of ownership, not the labor. A man may pick up many stones and throw them all away. He does not value them. He establishes no claim. But when he finds some particular stone that pleases him, he has labored no more in picking that one up than he has labored in picking up others he has discarded. Those he discarded may even have cost him more labor. Does he “own” all stones he picks up and discards? Obviously, no. It is his retention of the item he values that creates ownership. And his retention is based, not upon his labor, but upon his claim.

It took a remarkable extension of the mind into the abstract to make the next assumption. If a man possesses and “owns” an object when he has it in his hand—a point rather easily sustained—suppose he puts it down, but does not throw it away. What then? Does his control of the object cease the minute he stops holding it? Sometime in our dim past, the idea must have emerged among our forebears that ownership does not relate merely to immediate physical retention of the item.

A man values a pretty object and claims it as his own. But he cannot hold it forever. He must hunt and fish and move about, employing both his hands in mere survival. Will the object of his claim be taken by the first man who sees a value in what he has claimed?

Here is the essential requirement for all private ownership. If ownership is to be more than temporary use of an item, the owner’s rights to the item must endure in time and space beyond his immediate and physical contact. When property of any kind is viewed as collectively owned, then use and not ownership becomes the standard of behavior. Since no individual can own any collective property, he must await his turn in the use of anything available. It would follow that control of one’s environment would always be at the mercy of other users. No one could plan in advance beyond the immediate next step. What he had in his hands, or what he was immediately using, would be the only property over which his control could be extended.

While some have contended (notably Proudhon, What Is Property?) that such a procedure would be beneficial to the human race, it follows, upon examination, that little if any economic development could ensue from such a policy or practice. For any production to occur at all, some person or some group of persons (organization) would have to pre-empt the uses of some so that accumulations of raw materials could be set aside, so that tools could be devised, so that ultimate production could ensue. Production never truly occurs until savings have been accumulated, either of money or goods. Since any accumulation of anything would be subject to the immediate use of anyone who happened to discover the stock-pile, the entire concept is unworkable.

Where socialists have championed the idea that all tools should be owned by the state for the benefit of the people, the net result is to create a monopoly of control or ownership in the hands of the state, wherein the people have neither control nor rights, and all is left in the hands of the political overlords.

Since the socialist is fundamentally motivated, at least in theory, to act in such a manner that he benefits all, and hence has traditionally viewed monopoly at any level as essentially detrimental, it boggles the imagination to note that socialist programming invariably leads into state monopoly. The socialist confuses monopoly, which is a condition arising in the market by means of state intervention, with the condition of private ownership, which is rightfully an individually expressed sovereignty over the item owned. The two are not even remotely similar.

If we reason that private ownership is not desirable but that the use of property is, then collective socialist control of all property and all men in society is implicit. Any people so organized would be the victims of regimentation, poverty, and apathy, for the incentives provided by all private ownership are absent, the variables deriving from diverse ownership are banned, and the production for use to ensue would in time reduce the standard of living to a subsistence level.

The difficulty of accepting the concept of private ownership relates to its abstract character. There is usually nothing about any particular property which reveals, by its nature, the identity of its owner. To make such identification it is necessary to inscribe a name, a number, or some other identifying symbol upon the property. Or, in the case of works of art, literary or musical compositions, etc., where style and other identifying characteristics are clearly established by a creative person, the matter of identification is implicit.

It is likely that the alphabet was first devised as a set of symbols by means of which items of property could be identified with their owners. Written language is probably an extrapolation from the fundamental urge to own property privately.

It is obvious that language itself is a remarkable systematic development of abstractions. Words and letters merely symbolize reality. The urge to possess property privately may have formed the the abstract base both for ownership and for written expressions of precise ideas.

I would argue further that the entire concept of morality stems from private ownership of property. Morality inescapably concerns inter-human relationships and what they should be. If on every occasion when a man deposits an object he possesses, someone else assumes control of it, private ownership of anything would be completely impractical. For private ownership to have practical meaning, it follows that conduct which “ought to” occur would be conduct in which each person recognized the ownership of the other person. For the assurances that ownership of private property creates, possession and control of property must extend beyond momentary physical contact. If it does not, then private ownership is wholly impractical and without meaning. The morality arising from private property is based upon respect for the property owned by another when the other is absent. The conduct that “ought to” occur in respect to property relates to non-trespass of the property of another. In a very real and practical sense, the tangible boundaries of properties, once claimed, become sacred markers across which no other than the owner may properly advance. It is instructive to note that the Golden Rule, one of the earliest admonitions to the human race, and in such general usage that its origin is lost in antiquity, essentially sets down a moral injunction to the effect that one ought to measure his own conduct toward others as he would hope the others would measure their conduct toward him. This provides the abstraction of moral law respecting property. The boundary of any property is sacred; not because it is physically impossible to commit a trespass but, rather, because trespass is so universally simple an act that a general rule of behavior setting forth the desirability of non-trespass is a moral imperative.

It is also instructive that the Decalogue, recognized in the Judeo-Christian tradition as the base of moral behavior, contains in its most impressive sentences prohibitions against property trespass. The admonitions against theft, killing, adultery, and covetousness clearly admonish the individual to refrain from crossing private-property boundaries without permission of the rightful owner. The only variables in these injunctions relate to the kinds of property trespass under consideration. Thus, theft is merely a trespass of boundary for the purpose of acquiring property belonging to another. Killing, in this context, becomes a kind of theft in which a life, as a specific property, is stolen. Adultery is clearly seen as a trespass of an existing contract, and hence a violation of a property boundary. And covetousness is merely a mental lusting after a property which belongs to another and which is not on the market.

It is not too extreme to suggest that the only code of morality ever suggested which has been generally accepted as desirable by human beings, regardless of their geographic location or the type of social structure they support, is a code of moral behavior which forbids trespass of property boundaries. Such a code is of such universal usefulness that it actually provides the base for all major (higher) religions, and is not unknown even among primitive peoples who have had no access to advanced theology. It could be argued that this moral rule arises, not from divine revelation but from the physical nature of man. Man, as a consumer, must be able to produce before he consumes. For him to produce in any satisfactory degree, he must have the assurance that his savings or accumulations will not be trespassed. Since he cannot keep all his savings on his person, it is essential for his well-being that he be able to set down his accumulations and know that he can return to them, without running the risk of their being taken from him in his absence.

Arguments against this moral requirement usually take the direction of suggesting that when accumulations go beyond a certain place (no rational line has ever been drawn to indicate just where this certain place may be), then the “surplus” of the person may be rightfully stolen in order to alleviate the “needs” of others who do not have such accumulations.

This argument is based, ultimately, on a number of fallacies, only one of which relates to the impossibility of ever finding a proper line of demarcation wherein theft can be justified.

Another fallacy is that wealth or money that is being saved is of no utility and whoever accumulates anything is, in fact, performing an act of robbery upon society. But while it may be true that a very few persons do hoard, out of fear or from a desire to act as misers, their numbers are so negligible as scarcely to affect the market. Nearly all who save, put their savings to work one way or another, thus benefiting themselves and the market generally.

Still another fallacy has it that there is a fixed and limited amount of wealth in the world. Hence, accumulations in one quarter result in deprivations in other quarters. Actually, accumulations which are saved and invested are used to create tools, which in turn provide jobs and more wealth, which is then circulated through market channels for the benefit of all. The total amount of wealth in the world is not static. Wealth is constantly being created. The matrix of all wealth is the investment, the savings that are employed in such a way that still more wealth is produced.

When natural resources are considered as wealth (some economists agree and some do not), this particular order of wealth does not fluctuate particularly. However, the fact that natural resources cannot be made by man in their original state in no way precludes their ownership privately, nor does it preclude considering them as wealth. No natural resource is of any use to anyone unless it can be put to work. Natural resources of all kinds and descriptions are constantly flowing into the market for those who know how to employ them constructively. Men will only claim those natural resources as their own when they see a value in them.

Assume that a given individual who wishes to own something doesn’t intend to part with it. Nor does he intend to “use” it in any commercial sense. He merely admires the object or the resource and intends to keep it in his possession so that his admiration of the item will not be interrupted by the intrusion of others. This in itself is a kind of use. The man who admires the pretty sea shell is “using” it himself as an object of beauty, an object to stimulate conversation, an object from which he derives satisfaction.

All things that men own are either owned by them to admire, to use directly, to save, or to exchange in commercial ventures. Since what we seek is a system which will enhance satisfaction for men, there is no valid reason for precluding any of these dispositions of property. To ban ownership of items which are merely admired would be to ban ownership of all works of art made by men as well as all works of beauty made by nature. Since such admiration is a fundamental quality which men have as an endowment, to curtail this would be to remove a major area of fundamental satisfaction from the human race.

If others desire what a man owns more than he does, they have only to seek to exchange with him on the basis that they have something else they hope he will accept in place of what he already has. Either they can effectuate an exchange or they cannot. If not, the would-be purchaser is dissatisfied, as we are all dissatisfied when we do not have our way. But all he has to do is to obtain what the owner wants, and the exchange can occur. And if the item desired is still not for sale, at least the would-be purchaser has everything he owned before and no injury has ensued. Assuming respect for property, no one is ever compelled either to buy or sell. The immediate status is sustained unless both parties to a potential exchange agree. And in any case, each man ends with those things in his ownership which he values most, thus fulfilling his innate sense of values and increasing his satisfactions in life.

To prevent private ownership of an item simply because many people wish to use that item, is to destroy the satisfaction of the person willing to produce the item in favor of those unwilling to produce it. To prevent ownership of items that are to be used in exchange is simply to deprive all persons of the opportunity of improving their lot as a result of their own efforts and judgments.

Any man may own anything he wishes provided he acquires ownership through honest means. He begins by owning himself. All properties beyond himself are merely extensions of himself. These may include objects in nature, manufactured items, interests in contracts, and media of exchange. He may rightfully own anything that is subject to ownership.