Why America Is Great:: Private Property: Is It Mine or Thine?
Why America Is Great:: Private Property: Is It Mine or Thine?
Why America Is Great:: Private Property: Is It Mine or Thine?
Private Property:
Is It Mine or Thine?
Volume IX
In Search of Utopia
While it is impossible to trace the origins of debate over private property, we know the discussion
began early in history. One of the earliest well-known figures to challenge private property was the
Greek philosopher Plato (died c. 347 B.C.). Living in Athens during a period of cultural decline, Plato
was distressed to see wars raging abroad and depravity increasing at home.2 Through his philosophical
discourses, he sought the “key” to order and virtue in human society. In The Republic, Plato—through
the character of his former teacher, Socrates—pondered what this virtuous society would look like.
If people were to live in harmony with each other, he reasoned, they would need to abandon social
conventions that prompted strife. Whatever encouraged greed, envy, dishonesty, and selfishness would
need to go. “[W]here there is no common but only private feeling a State is disorganized,” says the
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philosopher in The Republic. “Such differences commonly originate in a
disagreement about the use of the terms ‘mine’ and ‘not mine,’ ‘his’
and ‘not his.’”3 Private property—the chief tool for distinguishing
between “mine” and “not mine”—was a primary culprit of this
disunity. Thus, in this ideal society, the most prominent citizens,
such as “guardians” of the state, would be forbidden to hold
private property. They would not be permitted to own houses,
land, or material possessions, but would share all such things
Plato with the community. This would free them from worldly
distractions and petty quarrels, allowing them to “preserve their
true character” and virtue as guardians of the state.4
This discourse, though focused only on an imaginary society, touched on the “problem” of tampering
with private property: if “mine” and “not mine” are harmful distinctions for a community, then how
far is that community able to go in eradicating such differences? After all, if a society has no problem
taking away a person’s house, why would it have a problem taking away anything else that belongs to
him as long it benefits the community? Who decides what truly belongs to the individual as a right?
A Natural Right
Centuries after Plato, a different approach to private property was at work in medieval Europe. This
approach taught that property was a natural right given by God to human beings for their benefit.
As such, an individual’s private property was sacred; it couldn’t be violated, and couldn’t be seized
by a temporal authority without due process of law. This concept, while ancient in origin, gained
particular expression in England. The English encapsulated this idea in many of their landmark
documents throughout history, including Magna Carta (1215) and the English Bill of Rights (1689).
But the right of private property had been preserved even long before this in unwritten form, in
England’s ancient common law. Through the common law, rich and poor alike understood that it
was wrong for one person to unjustly take the property of another. As jurist William Blackstone
later articulated in his 18th-century Commentaries on the Laws of England: “[B]y a variety of antient
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statutes it is enacted, that no man’s lands or goods shall be seised into
the king’s hands, against the great charter, and the law of the land;
and that no man shall be disinherited, nor put out of his franchises
or freehold, unless he be duly brought to answer, and be forejudged
by course or law; and if any thing be done to the contrary, it shall be
redressed, and holden for none.”6
The late 17th and early 18th century ushered in the Age of Enlightenment. As scientific inquiry
increased and ideas were more easily transmitted from place to place, people began to challenge the
authority of old political and religious establishments. Social revolutions gained traction as the middle
and lower classes began to chip away at the monarchical foundations of Europe. As concepts like popular
sovereignty grew in popularity, people began to debate what a truly modern government and society
should look like—and where property ought to fit in the grand scheme.
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People solved this problem, said Locke, by coming together and forming a civil society. The society
provided the individual with the protection of laws and the security of a community. There was a
trade-off, of course: people who chose to join the society had to surrender their personal sovereignty
to the sovereignty of the new community. The individual agreed to live under the laws and
government of the society, and the government agreed to protect him and his property.
Locke’s ideas, of which the above is only a small part, would influence different contemporary
movements but in different ways. The American Founding Fathers adhered to parts of the Locke’s
writings, particularly to the idea that a government’s purpose was to protect the property of
its citizens. But when it came to the idea of the individual surrendering his sovereignty to the
sovereignty of the community, Locke perhaps gave the community too much credit. How could
an amorphous human society be trusted to do what was right for the individual? What if a society
decided it knew better than the individual what was right for the individual?
Such dilemmas came into focus later in France. Enlightenment thinker Jean Jacque Rousseau
(1712–1778), writing several years before the French Revolution, went much further than Locke in
his confidence of the community.9 Rousseau suggested that the proper
way for a society to govern itself was through the “general will” of the
people. The general will is sovereign, for “the general will alone can
direct the State according to the object for which it was instituted,
i.e., the common good.”10 The general will is qualified to decide the
common good, said Rousseau, because it “considers only the common
interest,” while an individual citizen “takes private interest into
account.”11
This sounds nice in theory, but what if the general will decides
that private property—or any other individual rights—are not in
the common good? If we are to judge by some of Rousseau’s other
writings, private property rights don’t stand much of a chance in his model. To Rousseau, property was
a source of social inequality and all the evils that flowed from it. It was purely a man-made convention,
a corrupting influence that soiled man’s primitive and innocent nature:
The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, “This is mine,”
and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many
crimes, how many wars, how many murders, how many misfortunes and horrors, would that
man have saved the human species, who pulling up the stakes or filling up the ditches should
have cried to his fellows: Be sure not to listen to this imposter; you are lost, if you forget that the
fruits of the earth belong equally to us all, and the earth itself to nobody!12
After all is said and done, is there any way to have a society that both respects the individual’s private
property rights, but also benefits from those rights?
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A Right to Property, and a Property in Rights
The American Founding Fathers were educated, well-read men. They had studied many of history’s
greatest philosophers and political theorists. They kept up with the times and understood the
significance of the era they lived in. They too, like so many of the philosophers, saw the need for
order and harmony in human society. But unlike many others, they believed the right to own
property was a key to such order and prosperity, rather than a hindrance to it.
The Founders may have been classicists in their training, but they were also Judeo-Christian in
thought, English in heritage, and practical in temperament. And these influences made a big
difference in their approach to private property.
As Judeo-Christians, the Founders believed that human beings were created in the image of God and
were highly capable of creating a sophisticated, prosperous, and free society. But they also believed
that humans were inherently corrupt and could only build such a society upon transcendent—not
solely man-made—principles. This is why they hallowed the concept of natural rights: God had
bestowed these rights, and therefore only God could revoke them. No temporal power had a right to
violate or deny these rights.
As Englishmen in heritage, the Founders were heavily influenced by England’s traditional approach
to property through the concept of natural rights and the common law. No one could touch
another’s property rights without due process of law. And everyone—king and commoner alike—
were bound equally by the law.
Being practical in temperament, the Founders looked for what worked in experience as they created
America’s government and system of laws. Even in pre-Revolution America, private property was
the rule, not just a theory. At the beginning of European migration, the New World had offered
countless acres of wild land to anyone who was
willing to work hard and hack out a life in the
wilderness. For early American settlers, private
property had not only offered the sole means
of survival, but had also laid the foundation for
flourishing farms, families, communities, and,
eventually, colonies. In this way, America had the
unique opportunity of forming a distinct culture
and complete way of life before it even became
a nation, and this culture was based largely on
private property. So from the beginning, private
property was not simply a “nice to have”—it was
the rule, and it was the foundation of Americans’
independence and freedom. So when the
Founders began designing a new government, they looked for what accommodated the freedoms and
rights already in operation on American soil.
But the Founders went a step further. A person’s property was sacred because it intertwined with his
very personhood. To the Founders, “property” meant much more than land, houses, money, and
material possessions. The full definition of property, wrote James Madison, “embraces every thing to
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which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.”13
Thus, property includes:
• A person’s opinion and his right to communicate it freely.
• A person’s religious beliefs and his freedom to profess and practice them (conscience being “the
most sacred of all property”).
• Personal safety and liberty, which, Madison notes, includes freedom from “arbitrary seizures of
one class of citizens for the service of the rest.”
• A person’s free use of his faculties (skills, talents, and abilities), choice of occupation, and the
ability to earn and keep wealth. For, as Madison explains, “a just security to property is not
afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and
reward another species, where arbitrary taxes invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich, and
excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor.”
“In a word,” said Madison, “as man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to
have a property in his rights.” This is precisely why the Founders took property violations so seriously.
A violation of one’s property is an assault on all his other rights. When the government is allowed to
encroach on one individual right, it will inevitably encroach on all the others. Such a government is
not just, and such a people are not free.
And while the Founders cared about individual rights, they also believed the right to property
blessed the community in many of the same ways sought by the utopists. First, allowing people the
right to property harnesses the power of self-interest. Private property engages a person’s energy
and motivates him to work for himself and his family. He knows he will rise or fall based on his
own efforts. However, self-interest alone is not enough to produce a free, happy society. It must be
balanced and directed in ways that are beneficial to the whole community. When human beings are
held responsible for their own property, it provides an intangible restraint, holding the individual
accountable for his conduct and giving him a healthy way to relate to the community. The citizen who
is responsible for his own property has an incentive to think ahead and to be productive. He naturally
wants what is good for his community because it will also be good for him. Secondly, property also
produces in the citizen an empathy for his neighbors who are also being held responsible for their
labor and possessions. When people cease to be held responsible—for their property, their labor, their
families, or anything else that can truly be called their “own”—freedom loses its meaning. When
nothing is expected of the individual and all his needs are simply provided to him as an entitlement,
his heart begins to grow cold and turn inward.
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sell to private developers. They justified this by saying that the developers would create jobs, increase
tax revenues, and produce other benefits for the wider community. The Supreme Court, siding with
New London against the private property owners, argued that this type of property seizure did not
violate the Constitution.14 The underlying message from the case? It’s acceptable for the government to
arbitrarily seize an individual’s private property as long as it can make an argument that it benefits the
community. Suddenly, the individual’s rights don’t matter anymore. And the government’s word does.
However, a government doesn’t have to physically take away someone’s property to infringe on
property rights. A government can implement arbitrary or unjust taxes, policies, and legal hindrances
that make it difficult for citizen to acquire or maintain their property. Americans need to take a stand
against any and all such infringements on property rights, for they infringe not only on our property
but on our freedom. As John Adams wrote in 1787, “The moment the idea is admitted into society,
that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice
to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet,’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ were
not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can
be civilized or made free.”15
Endnotes
1. James Madison, Property, dated March 29, 1792. Excerpted 9. Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order, 3rd ed.
from The Papers of James Madison at The Founders’ (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1991), 286-287.
Constitution, accessed at http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/
10. Jean Jacque Rousseau, Social Contract: Book II, accessed
founders/documents/v1ch16s23.html. Emphasis original.
at The Constitution Society, http://www.constitution.org/jjr/
2. Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order, 3rd ed. socon_02.htm.
(Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1991), 85
11. Ibid.
3. Plato, The Republic, Book V., accessed at Project Gutenberg,
12. Jean Jacque Rousseau, A Discourse Upon The Origin And The
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.
Foundation Of The Inequality Among
Mankind, accessed at
htm#link2H_4_0008 (The Project Gutenberg EBook of The
Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11136/
Republic, by Plato).
pg11136.html (The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Discourse
4. Ibid. Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of The Inequality Among
Mankind, by Jean Jacques Rousseau).
5. Ibid. Emphasis added.
13. James Madison, Property, dated March 29, 1792. Excerpted
6. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England,
from The Papers of James Madison at The Founders’
Volume 1. Accessed at The Founders’ Constitution, http://press-
Constitution, accessed at http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/
pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s5.html.
founders/documents/v1ch16s23.html. Emphasis original.
7. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Section 87,
14. “KELO v. CITY OF NEW LONDON,” The Oyez Project at IIT
accessed at http://www.justiceharvard.org/resources/john-locke-
Chicago-Kent College of Law, accessed May 8, 2013, http://
second-treatise-of-government-1690/.
www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2004/2004_04_108.
8. John Locke, excerpted from Second Treatise, Chapter IX,
15. John Adams, Defence of the Constitution of Government of the
accessed at The Founders’ Constitution site of the University of
United States, 1787, accessed at http://press-pubs.uchicago.
Chicago, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/
edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s15.html.
v1ch16s3.html. Emphasis original.
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