Just Property: Volume Three: Property in an Age of Ideologies PDF
Preview Just Property: Volume Three: Property in an Age of Ideologies
JUST PROPERTY Just Property Volume Three: Property in an Age of Ideologies CHRISTOPHER PIERSON 1 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,OX26DP, UnitedKingdom OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwide.Oxfordisaregisteredtrademarkof OxfordUniversityPressintheUKandincertainothercountries ©ChristopherPierson2020 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted FirstEditionpublishedin2020 Impression:1 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,storedin aretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,withoutthe priorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress,orasexpresslypermitted bylaw,bylicenceorundertermsagreedwiththeappropriatereprographics rightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproductionoutsidethescopeofthe aboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment,OxfordUniversityPress,atthe addressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisworkinanyotherform andyoumustimposethissameconditiononanyacquirer PublishedintheUnitedStatesofAmericabyOxfordUniversityPress 198MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NY10016,UnitedStatesofAmerica BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2019955813 ISBN978–0–19–878710–5 PrintedandboundinGreatBritainby ClaysLtd,ElcografS.p.A. LinkstothirdpartywebsitesareprovidedbyOxfordingoodfaithand forinformationonly.Oxforddisclaimsanyresponsibilityforthematerials containedinanythirdpartywebsitereferencedinthiswork. Acknowledgements In working on the three volumes of Just Property over nearly twenty years, Ihaveincurredaterrifyingweightofintellectualdebts.Iacknowledgedmany oftheseintheopeningtwovolumes.Manyofthosewhohelpedmewiththe firsttwovolumeshavealsoprovidedtheirsupportthistimearound.Iremain very grateful for all their time and advice. I have had continuing excellent institutionalsupportfromtheSchoolofPoliticsandInternationalRelationsat the University of Nottingham and from the Hansewissenschaftskolleg in Germany. I am grateful to everyone who has participated in the Politics of Property Specialist Group of the UK PSA over the past decade. Special mention and thanks go to Tony Burns, Patrick Cockburn, Hugo Drochon, Nick Ellison, Michael Freeden, Ben Holland, Jakob Huber, Richard Lamb, Nick Manning, Johan Olsthoorn, Helen McCabe, James Penner, Vanessa Pupavac,JohnSalter,EricShaw,andColinTyler.LucySargissonreadevery- thingverycarefully,andoverandoveragain.Thanks! Iclaimsoleownershipofalltheremainingerrorsoffactorjudgement. I am grateful to all the brilliant people at Oxford University Press, but especially Dominic Byatt who has supported the project for more than a decade. Thankstothewonderful,funnyfolkofKingstonCourtwhohavelivedwith the book almost as long as I have. As ever, Meridee, Lewis, and Ailsa made lifegood. Very sadly, my dear friend and colleague Professor Stephan Leibfried died inthespringof2018.Stephanwasaone-mantourdeforce,andtheverynicest enforcer you could ever hope to meet. I dedicate this third volume to his memory. Introduction Thisisalongbook,withashortintroduction.Itistheclosingpartofawork which stretches to three volumes and it brings the story of thinking about propertyrightuptothepresent.WhatIwroteintheIntroductiontothefirst volume still applies here. I am not attempting to write a continuous history of institutions and practices of property. I do not claim that my account of thinking about property at the Western end of the Eurasian land mass is comprehensive—or that no-one is left out. In the Introduction to the first volume,Iidentifiedonekeyquestionthatunderpinsmysurvey:howcouldwe have come to believe that the present drastically unequal distribution of property is justified? As we have seen in the previous two volumes, some peoplethoughtthatitcouldbe,andjustaboutasmanythoughtthatitcould not.Theargumentsmadeonbothsidesarediverse,thoughtful,oftenstrange (for us), and sometimes brilliant. They are quite often not what we would expect,andtheyareveryoftennotwhatwecollectivelyremember. The closing chapters of Volume Two dealt with the ideas of nineteenth- centurysocialists(including,butnotconfinedto,Marx)andarangeofclassical anarchists.Inthisfinalvolume,Icarryforwardthisreadingofpropertythought inanageofideologiesdowntothenear-present.Thekeychallengeindoingso is the exponential increase in the body of material that might be thought relevantand,correspondingly,thenecessitytochoose,repeatedlyandruthlessly. My approach has been to continue to focus on particular thinkers, as I have done throughout, but to organize these (loosely) in terms of ideological ap- proaches.Thisisnotan(attempted)historyofwhatvariousideologieshavesaid aboutproperty.Thisisreflectedinmychoosingtotitlemychapters‘Liberals’, ‘SocialDemocrats’,andsoon,not‘Liberalism’and‘SocialDemocracy’.Thisis justaswell—becauseIdonotbelievethatanyoftheideologiesweassociatewith modernitycanreallybesaidtohaveasingleviewofpropertyrelations.Atthe sametime,IdobelievethatthethinkerswhoseworkIhavechosentoexploredo tell us something revealing about the ideological approaches within which Ilocatethem—andaboutpropertymoregenerally. 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’ JustProperty:VolumeThree:PropertyinanAgeofIdeologies.ChristopherPierson,OxfordUniversityPress(2020). ©ChristopherPierson. DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198787105.001.0001 2 JustPropertyVolumeIII (7and8),and‘feminists’(9and10).Ineachcase,Ibeginbygivingasenseof what each of these approaches stands for, in general, before giving some indicationofhowpropertyfitsintothataccount.Ineachcase,theremaining spaceisgivenovertoadetailedinterrogationofparticularthinkers,followed byaconclusionwhichseekstorelatethisbodyofworktothevariouswaysin which propertyclaims arejustified. Inevery instance, myauthors arechosen becausetheyareinteresting,ratherthanbecausetheyarerepresentative. Thechaptersonliberalsperhapscomeclosesttorepresentinganideological stance and I consider figures who would be key to any history of modern liberalism—includingJohnStuartMillandJohnRawlsamongstmanyothers. The journalist Henry George gets plenty of space because his thinking about property (especially property in land) has been so influential. Although liberalism covers a lot of ideational space—and is often ‘divided’—its most prominentthinkers(whowouldincludeMillandRawls)takeareallyradical stanceonprivateproperty,aradicalismwhichisquiteofteneitherforgottenor ignored.Thechaptersonlibertarians,forwhomprivatepropertyreallyisthe central idea, are designed to be more comprehensive while covering a much smaller conceptual space. The chapters on social democracy try to capture something which I think is important in this most practice-oriented of ideologies: that is, a belief that social democrats once gave a very central place to property; that they then sidelined this concern, above all because theythoughttherewasanelectorallymoreviablealternative,andthatthiswas a ‘mistake’ which some recent social democrats (thinkers rather than politi- cians)havesoughttoreverse. The chapters devoted to the ‘radical conservatives’ have a rather eccentric cast,reflectingthequirkytitle.Tocqueville,forexample,wouldnothavebeen outofplaceinachapterdevotedtoliberalthinkers.Mychoiceofchaptertitle reflects two things, First, I wanted to consider thinkers who have something interesting and distinctive to say—and it might be thought that a really conservative position on property would be one that said nothing. It is not thatconservativesaregenerallystupidbutratherthatagenuinelyconservative position is one that stands for an unquestioning acceptance of (whatever happenstobe)thestatusquo.¹Thesecondreasonisthat,asbothHuntington (1957)andLilla(2016)makeclear,realreactionariesarereallyradical—thatis theywantchange,buttheywantchangethattakesusbacktothegoodworld wehavelost.ManyofthoseIconsiderinthesechapters—Cobbett,Chesterton, andBelloc,forexample—arebothveryconservativeandveryradical.Along- sideitsprofoundcontingency(followingHume),thiscapturessomethingvery ¹ Thedefinitiveandmuchmisquotedsourceonconservatismandstupidityis,ofcourse,John StuartMill(citedinCourtney1889:147).Foranexemplarofthereallyconservativeapproach, seetheverysmartGeorgeSantayana(1922). Introduction 3 importantandperhapsneglectedaboutwhatIamcallingconservativethink- ingonproperty. Feminist writers on property open up a quite distinctive conceptual and politicalspace.Pioneersoftheeighteenthandnineteenthcenturieswereoften engaged,aboveall,inholding‘malestream’defencesofpropertytoaccount.In short, whatever it is that men are entitled to, women are entitled to as well. Andyetprevailingpracticesandideasandlawsalldeniedthis.Enslavementis a frequently deployed motif in these accounts, especially in relation to mar- riage.Ihavegenerallyavoideddiscussionofslaveryinthisbook,becausethere issomuchthatisspecialaboutitasacategoryofproperty(andintermsofthe arguments taken either to justify it or to rule it out). But in working with feminist approaches, this just is not possible—because women’s status as ‘enslaved’ is so important. I have also largely avoided detailed discussions of empiricalevidenceontheallocationofdifferingformsofpropertyintimeand space. But in Chapter9, I give considerable space to such an assessment becausethisisoftenquitecentraltothewaysinwhichcontemporaryfeminist analysis understands women’s continuing disadvantage in terms of owner- ship.Thisworkisnotsolelyconcernedwithreportingcomparativedisadvan- tage,itisalsodesignedtoshowhowthisdisadvantageisconstructedthrough unequalintra-householddistributionofproperty,differentialpensionentitle- ments,andthecumulativeeffectsoftypicallydifferentworkinglives. Feministthinkingalsoopensupsomeverydifferentwaysofthinkingabout whatpropertyis.Inpart,thisisbecauseofageneralwillingnesstodissolvethe divisionbetweenpublicandprivate,butitalsoinvolvesimaginingowningin distinctiveways.ContemporaryfeministslikeCarolePateman,AnnePhillips, andDonnaDickensonexplorenewwaysofimaginingwhatitistoown,what we can own—and, also, what it is that we should never own. A key site for much of this thinking is the body. The body has always been special for feminist politics—in the face of a tradition that holds that it is just the place thatourmindshappento beresidingfornow.The bodyisalsothesitefora number of practices of owning which are especially important for women— including pornography, prostitution, and surrogacy. I explore these ideas in somedetailinChapter10.Someoftheseideasandvalueslookquiteconven- tional. Others, like Sophie Lewis’s Full Surrogacy Now, take us off in a very radicaldirection,whichpotentiallymeanstheendofbothbodiesandproperty (atleast,aswehavecometoknowbothofthese).Idevoteagooddealoftime and attention to Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Although it is not usually read in quite this way, I think de Beauvoir’s book is above all a book about gendered property relations. It affords an understanding of property thatgoesallthewaydownandallthewayback.Itispossiblythesinglemost insightfulbookaboutpropertywritteninthetwentiethcentury. Chapter11istheconclusiontothethreevolumesofJustProperty.Accord- ingly,I tieit to thequestions that wereraised in theIntroduction to Volume 4 JustPropertyVolumeIII One.ThemostimportantofthesewasthechallengeraisedbyWilliamPaley. Paleysawthatthecontemporarydistributionofproperty(inEnglandin1785) was skewed in such a way that many were abjectly poor and a few were very rich—and that the poor for the most part supported the social and political orderwhichmaintainedthisveryunequaldistribution.Thisseemingparadox must be explicable, Paley thought, in terms of the unintended benefits (for overall economic growth and well-being) that flowed from inequality. IwonderedwhatwemightthinkifPaleywaswrong.Asecondquestionraised in the Introduction to Volume One concerned property claims under condi- tions of radical scarcity. Can we (ever) make an exclusive claim to natural resourceswherethesearefiniteandwhenit’sclearthattheyarerunningout? IntheConclusion,Ireviewtheevidenceontheunequalholdingofproperty which (within affluent countries at least) has intensified over the past thirty years.Isuggestthatthiscannotbejustifiedonquasi-utilitariangroundsorby positing some sort of ‘natural right’ to own which makes distribution irrele- vant. I consider ‘no property’ alternatives and argue that these don’t really work either. At this point, I issue a reminder that property is above all an aspectofthelaw,anddrawontheworkofcriticallegaltheoristsintheUSto show that we do best to think of the property order as a social system—and one that is enforced by the state. As such, we have to evaluate our property orderintermsofwhetheritisonethatwecanall(reasonably)accept.Joseph Singer’sshorthandforthisisthatpropertyis‘thelawofdemocracy’.Ithinkit is clear that our democratic institutions as they actually exist do not redeem thisclaim.Butperhaps,suitablyreformed,theycould. In the Conclusion, I also address the second question raised at the very beginningoftheproject:howshouldpropertyclaimsbequalifiedbythefinitude ofmaterialresources?Undertherubricof‘greenproperty’,Iconsiderarangeof institutional alternatives, all of which involve either more consumption in common or else a very differentaccountof whatwe can own and how. I also assess whether we are already halfway to a solution with the invention of the ‘sharingeconomy’.Sadly,myansweristhatwearenot. In an attempt to end on a positive note, I outline three practical reforms whichmighttakeusintherightdirection:auniversalbasicincome,landvalue taxation, and an expansion and redirection of Sovereign Wealth Funds. All three reforms are anticipated somewhere earlier in the book—going back to Adam Smith, Tom Paine, and Henry George amongst others. These are reformswhichareall‘do-able’andcapableofbeingintroducedincrementally. Butthatdoesn’tmeanthattheywillbe.Overall,itisnoteasytobehopeful.But Ihavetriedveryhardnottobehopeless.
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