Conclusion

In the Conclusion, I return to the key questions raised at the very opening of the first volume of Just Property: what should we do if present levels of wealth inequality cannot be justified? and what consequences follow for our property order from a recognition that the physical resources upon which life on Earth depends are running out? I first establish what present levels of wealth inequality on a global scale look like. I suggest that both (libertarian) arguments from a natural right to appropriate, and alternative strategies built around a ‘no-property’ regime cannot do the work required to make them persuasive. I argue that we need a legal property order, but that it must be grounded in something other than individual natural right. Working through arguments in American critical legal studies, I argue that we need a property regime that is democratically chosen—but in a democracy which is substantially re-tooled. On the issue of depleting resources, I turn to work on ‘green property’ which suggests ways in which we can incorporate a concern with sustainability and limits into our understanding of what and how we can own. Although we have very limited reasons for optimism, I finish by identifying three policy options that might accord with this revised view of a good property order: land value taxation, basic capital/income, and an amplified system of sovereign wealth funds.

Social Democrats I

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of what we mean by social democracy. I explore the origins of a distinctively social democratic view in mid-nineteenth century Europe, above all through the work of Louis Blanc and Ferdinand Lassalle. I plot its further development, above all in the context of German social democracy and the work of Bernstein, Kautsky, Luxemburg, and Jaurès. I turn to the British case to consider the further development of these ideas in the interwar period, above all in changing views of nationalization, planning, taxation, and ‘functional property’. Key thinkers in this process include Tawney, Jay, and Keynes. The earliest social democrats had very clear views about the need to socialize the ownership of property. Later social democrats, under the press of a politics that was electorally feasible, sought to fudge the hard questions on property.

Libertarians I

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of what we mean by libertarianism. I explore the ways in which the forerunners of contemporary libertarianism came to justify a regime of minimally constrained individual private property, (often) grounded in natural rights and instantiating the maximum of personal freedom. Key thinkers in this respect are Herbert Spencer, Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, and Friedrich Hayek. Murray Rothbard is a figure who belongs more unambiguously to modern libertarianism. The chapter ends with a substantial discussion of the debate that has surrounded the work of Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State and Utopia. I suggest that Nozick is a much more ambivalent figure for libertarianism than is usually supposed.

Radical Conservatives I

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of what we mean by conservatism (and reactionary). The focus here is upon those conservatives who can be considered ‘radical’: that is, those who want to resist change but who believe that this resistance means taking a radical stand against that which is becoming the new orthodoxy. In this chapter, I start out with a group of thinkers who are really ‘reactionary’: that is, they want to take us back to an order which has been replaced. These real reactionaries include Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald, and Donoso Cortés. I also discuss at length the property-focused work of Alexis de Tocqueville. Although Tocqueville’s conservatism is qualified—and he might be as well be considered an unconventional liberal—he is clear in his hostility to many of the consequences of modernity, including the rise of commercial values and the emergence of socialism. He develops some characteristically conservative arguments about how property should look in the face of these challenges.

Liberals II

This chapter continues the evaluation of ideas about property within the modern liberal tradition. Much of this thinking has its origins in the later work of John Stuart Mill. I begin with some key ‘new’ liberals: T. H. Green, J. T. Hobhouse, and J. A. Hobson. These thinkers take a varyingly radical view of the provisionality of individual claims to private property. Following a short interlude on interwar liberalism, I turn to the development of liberal ideas on property in the US. My two key thinkers here are John Dewey and John Rawls. Both of these iconic liberal thinkers take a view of property which emphasizes its function as a social institution, one which has to be justified by its societal outcomes rather than its private and personal origins.

Introduction

The Introduction outlines the overall structure of this third volume of Just Property. The book consists of five pairs of chapters, devoted to ‘liberals’ (1 and 2), ‘libertarians’ (3 and 4), ‘social democrats’ (5 and 6), ‘radical conservatives’ (7 and 8), and ‘feminists’ (9 and 10). In each case, I begin by giving a sense of what each of these approaches stands for, in general, before giving some indication of how property fits into that account. In each case, the remaining space is given over to a detailed interrogation of particular thinkers, followed by a conclusion which seeks to relate this body of work to the various ways in which property claims are justified. In every instance, my authors are chosen above all because what they say is interesting, rather than because they are representative. The Conclusion returns to the project’s opening questions about property and inequality and about property under the imperative of growth to limits. It judges that we need, as a political community, to re-think the ways in which we allocate property, and suggests some of the ways in which we could do this.

Liberals I

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of what we mean by liberalism. It continues with an evaluation of the views that liberals have taken of the justification of property. I first consider the broadly utilitarian case developed by William Paley, James Mill, and Jeremy Bentham. I then assess the distinctive view taken (in France) by Benjamin Constant and (in the US) by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. I devote careful attention to the work of John Stuart Mill, who is a key source for a distinctively modern (or ‘new’) liberal view in which property is not so much a right of persons as a social institution, legitimately open to collective regulation. The chapter ends with an outline of the liberal case for communal ownership of the land made by the American journalist Henry George.

Feminists I

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of what we mean by feminism. I then discuss the place of property in the earliest feminist texts—of Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft—where it is associated, above all, with the institution of marriage. In early feminist texts, the oppression of women is often likened to (or identified with) chattel slavery. This is clear, for example, in the work of John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor and in the historical materialist accounts of Friedrich Engels and August Bebel. The single most remarkable treatment of property in feminist texts comes in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Built around a critique of Engels and Bebel, de Beauvoir argues that the will to acquire property (including property in women) is a characteristic of men’s behaviour which goes all the way down and all the way back—and which must change if men and women are to forge a new and more equal relationship. A key component of contemporary feminist work on property is the emphasis upon the lived experience of gendered inequality in the ownership of property. The final third of this chapter reviews the evidence of an earnings gap, a poverty gap, and an assets gap between men and women.

Radical Conservatives II

This chapter continues the evaluation of ideas about property amongst radical conservatives. The focus is on three English writers: William Cobbett, G. K. Chesterton, and Hilaire Belloc. They all condemned recent changes in the property order in Britain and called for radical reform to reverse it. Cobbett was concerned above all with the disruption to an established, paternalistic property order in the countryside, which disruption he associated, above all, with a new commercial order, paper money, and excessive taxation. He wished to see the old, and benign, property regime in agricultural areas re-established. Chesterton and Belloc were also hostile to commercialism and ‘new money’. They advocated a radical redistribution of private property and were associated with a political movement designed to achieve this, distributism. For them, property was a conservative principle and encouraged conservative behaviour—but only when widely distributed. This required a radical redistribution—and it might take a revolution to achieve it.

Social Democrats II

This chapter continues the evaluation of ideas about property amongst social democrats in the period after 1945. It explores how in the period between 1945 and 1975, social democrats came to de-emphasize the importance of ownership as a political force (my exemplar is Britain). In the second half of the chapter, I turn to social democratic responses when this orientation faltered (after 1975). Of particular interest here is the experience of Swedish social democrats and their initiative for Wage-Earners’ Funds. After a brief consideration of ideas surrounding a ‘Third Way’, I complete my survey with an assessment of a number of recent property alternatives generated by social democrats. These include asset-based egalitarianism, predistribution, basic capital and basic income, property-owning democracy, and market socialism. The most important thinkers discussed here are Durbin, Crosland, Marshall, Childs, Karelby, Adler-Karlsson, Meidner, White, Hacker, Van Parijs, Meade, and Nove.