Against Libertarianism: A Critique of Property as the ground for all Rights

Debased creature! Galvanized corpse! How can I hope to convince you, if you cannot tell robbery when it happens before your eyes.

P.J. Proudhon - Qu'est-ce que la propriété? (Besançon 1840)


Libertarianism, referring to the ideology of progressive capitalism based on the dual principles of negative rights and individualism, can well be said to be a uniquely North American phenomenon. Whereas libertarian thought and political influence, despite the lack of support for the actual Libertarian Party, is an ever-present concept of liberty and justice in American political discourse up to the highest level, no such background and framework exists anywhere in Europe (nor in Asia or any other part of the world, for that matter). Why is this? The most logical explanation seems to be linked to the American love of individualism of a kind as unfettered as possible, which we might call the "pioneer spirit". Where the idea of a region of disorder and relative lawlessness would remind Europeans of the manifold Revolutions, uprisings and wars that have plagued that subcontinent, in the United States it is fondly, perhaps even longingly, known as the "Wild West". Where almost all continental European nations nowadays operate on the basis of malleability of society by the government, Americans regardless of original ethnic background seem to have an almost instinctive distrust of this idea, instead placing their faith in the capacity of the individual above all to shape the world to his wishes and the benefits this can bring for all.

Within libertarian doctrine (as I understand it) in particular, the whole of this rugged individualism creating good for all based on individual needs and desires is based on the primacy of property rights. Indeed, libertarians are known to state - in my experience loving rhetoric and hyperbole almost as much as left-wing radicals - that property rights are the supreme right, the very fons et origo of all concepts of rights and of morality. The preservation of the self against external threats, they argue, is basically nothing more than the property right of the body; and equally, the preservation of the liberty of the individual against external meddling and regulation is nothing more than the property right of the works, ideas and goods gained by the individual's own work and effort.
This, of course, also implies defending individual rights against nearly all, if not actually all (for the self-styled 'anarcho-capitalists') claims of the collective. And this in turn means that the role of government in the libertarian concept is of necessity very limited, and that its power over the actions of the population is small indeed. After all, even taxation for public works can be considered a form of violation of property rights, since it robs the individual of his wealth and/or income without prior consent, and without direct guarantees that the works will be of use to him; and if such can be said of providing for the public works, of old considered one of the most primary tasks, yes even raisons d'être, of government, then what to think of the host of other tasks and purposes modern governments undertake? In this way the primacy of property rights as source of all (earthly) justice necessarily forces a small government.

Yet lovers of liberty as they are - and this one credit I would not deny them, that contrary to many ideologies of left and right, one can at least of libertarianism say that it does not wish to impose upon others - their ideas about property right being the most supreme of all rights are strongly misguided. So much in fact, that it reverses the real situation: property right, if there even be such a thing, is least of all rights, and when at the core of society, inhibits the equality of opportunity that is required for the justice it promises.

To see how this functions, we must go back to the 'state of nature' as John Locke describes it, him being the greatest intellectual defender of the primacy of property rights, and an inspiration to libertarianism even if such would not have been his intent. In The Second Treatise on Government, the wise Locke describes this as the following: "a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man", but also as "a state also of equality wherin all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another". Now it will be manifestly clear that neither the society we now live in, nor the one the libertarians would envision, comes even close to this original state; for it indicates an utter lack of government altogether, and experience would show us that such a state does not exist for long, and libertarian ideology perceives this and avoids it by allowing for government to provide for defense, administer justice, create civil law, protect intellectual property, and so on. Nevertheless they would call such a state just. How then, do we come from this Lockean state of nature to the libertarian ideal, in a just manner? How does one create property and maintain it fairly where there was none before? For for the result to be just and acceptable, the means of getting there also have to be; a poisoned tree bears no edible fruit.

Locke, then, has a method of creating property, namely, the labor of each man and the increase in value of the belabored natural resources this entails. Such labor, Locke and the libertarians say, entitles him to the goods he has worked on, the value increase of which is to be his reward for his work; and the good is to be his property henceforth. To quote the Treatise, Chapter V: "The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others."

The wise Locke here makes comparisons to the Indian who hunts deer, and so gains the property of them, and also to the man who collects acorns in the forest, or apples in the wild, and so gains them for his use. Now this is no mere coincidence, for the reasoning of Locke is entirely based upon the presumption of a society whose heart is agriculture, and the labour-intensive agriculture of before the industrialisation at that. It also presupposes a world where there is no alternative to this situation; one goes from a state of nature, where before labor all goods are 'free', to a state of intensive agriculture and perhaps some handicraft, where personal labor is at the core of the division of wealth. But in modern times, the situation has quite reversed.

Not only is subsistence agriculture less and less the basis of society, it having been replaced first by mass industry and subsequently by intangible services and mechanisation; but also has the division of wealth become the inverse of that which Locke assumes natural as following from the state of nature. Those who work in the fields themselves, those who mine for ores, those who cut wood and those who cure leather are instead of the most rewarded, now the lower class of all modern societies. What's more, this work is increasinly exported to less modern societies that in effect are functioning as the lower class within the world; furthermore reinforcing the incompatibility with reality of the idea that society moves based on expenditure of labor as the title to property. Were it so that labor, and labor alone, at the core creates increase of value, and were it just that this increase of value be given to the laborer as reward for his work, the West, indeed all of the developed societies would have a hard time being just indeed, for the whole of the Third World, billions altogether, would have an immense claim upon the disproportionate wealth of the modern nations, a wealth that is based rather on working as little as possible instead of as much as possible, and relying on machines and automation for far more efficient production. Yet such is quite the opposite of what the libertarians intend: they would have it so that the capital to invest with is created in the Third World itself, and that it follows the course that the Western nations have: first industrialisation, then automatisation and services-based economy. Simply put: they want to reduce labor as much as possible to increase wealth, defined as possession of property.

The internal contradiction here, to use that Marxist phrase, is not just that. The fact that property rights are meant to be maintained against claims from others naturally makes them obsolete. Because all would agree that one should be protected against unwarranted aggression, and the same people would agree that assault upon one's livelihood falls under that name. But what does this negative right actually confer? A right to possession, as long as it is used by an individual for his own benefit, of his own making. This, however, is something entirely separate from a right to property, which entails a permanent right even when unused, and also gives the ability to keep control over it despite its current owner and location, by force of intent alone (one can legally only lose property by abandonment if one intends to give up property of it). The former protects one against assaults upon one's liberty; the latter is a force against others, as it presumes a right to some good based upon occupation in the legal sense; a form of prescription, and that is something that can only be done at the cost of others, since prescription takes away from the common property that which you claim, based on your claim of occupation only: and that is in fact no better than seizing something by force. Therefore, claiming to protect against unwarranted aggression and accepting property as opposed to possession is contradictory.

Having established this, we can follow the reasoning to its logical conclusion: the current social inequality, visible everywhere in society, between people, is based on the current law of property. And since property claims are in fact claims originally based on aggression, and since the property claim cannot be said to be validly based on labor either, there is a moral unjustness in this division of wealth. Since libertarians assume the current law of property to be the basis of all rights, they are in effect defending a status quo which is, following their own moral logic of nonaggression and noninterference with others in the form of claims, absolutely unjust. And how can something unjust be the basis of all rights, the core of society, the most supreme of all laws? It is nonsense, and it befits a self-interested conservative instead of a lover of liberty. For this kind of conservatism, as Proudhon states, is "prescriptions against reason, prescriptions against facts, prescriptions against all previously unknown truth; such is the sum total of all the philosophy of the status quo and the banner of conservatives of all ages." Let us do away with this barbarism, and reject the notion of property rights as the fata morgana it is.
Posted by Matthijs Krul @ 06:34