Few political ideas are as divisive and controversial for some - and yet taken for granted by others - as the ownership of private property. For its defenders, private ownership is a fundamental right that protects individual freedom and ensures wider economic benefits for the community; for its critics, by contrast, property is institutionalised theft, responsible for lamentable levels of inequality and poverty.
In this book, Robert Lamb explores philosophical arguments deployed to conceptualise, justify, and criticise private property ownership. He introduces the radical case against property advanced by anarchist and socialist writers, before analysing some of the most important and influential arguments in its favour. Lamb explains and assesses the various defences of property rights advanced by Locke, Hume, Hegel, J. S. Mill, and Nozick. He then shows how theorists such as John Rawls and his followers encourage us to rethink the very nature of ownership in a democratic society.
This engaging synthesis of historical and contemporary theories of property will be essential reading for students and scholars of political philosophy.
Table of Contents
Introduction: What is Property?Contesting concepts
An historical approach to the concept of property
Structure of the book
Notes
1 The Case against Private Property
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Proudhon and the anarchist case against property
Socialism and the idea of life without private ownership
Conclusion
Notes
2 Libertarianism and the Natural Right to Property
The inviolability of property rights
Property and freedom
The concept of self-ownership
The legacy of Locke
Notes
3 Natural Law and the Gnarled Roots of Self-Ownership
The role of theology in natural law theories of property
Back to Nozick
Redistributive libertarianism
Conclusion
Notes
4 Property for the Greater Good: Utilitarian Theories of Ownership
Utilitarianism as normative political theory
Hume and the emergence of property
The utilitarianisms of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill
Evaluating the utilitarian theories of property
Conclusion
Notes
5 Ownership as Will in the World: Hegel’s Account of Property
Property as freedom
Moments of ownership
Property and poverty: the problem of ‘the rabble’
Conclusion
Notes
6 Property within Justice: Rawls and Beyond
Rawls on the right to private property
Property and distributive justice
Property-owning democracy and the concept of predistribution
Conclusion
Notes
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
