Propertarianism

Propertarianism, or proprietarianism, is a political philosophy that reduces all questions of ethics to the right to own property. On property rights, it advocates private property based on Lockean sticky property norms, where an owner keeps their property more or less until they consent to gift or sell it, rejecting the Lockean proviso.

Closely related to and overlapping with right-libertarianism, it is also often accompanied with the idea that state monopoly law should be replaced by market-generated law centered on contractual relationships. Propertarian ideals are most commonly cited to advocate for an anarcho-capitalist or minarchist society with governance systems limited to enforcing contracts and private property.

According to its advocates, propertarianism is synonymous with capitalism.

History

The term appears to have been coined by Edward Cain in 1963:

Since their use of the word "liberty" refers almost exclusively to property, it would be helpful if we had some other word, such as "propertarian," to describe them. ..Novelist Ayn Rand is not a conservative at all but claims to be very relevant. She is a radical capitalist, and is the closest to what I mean by a propertarian.

Marcus Cunliffe defined propertarianism in his 1973 lectures as "characteristic values of American history" in regard to property.

Philosopher Robert Nozick formalized Locke's approach in his book "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" with the Entitlement Theory of Justice, specifying criteria for just original acquisition, just transfer, and rectification.

David Boaz writes that the "propertarian approach to privacy", both morally and legally, has ensured Americans' privacy rights.

Markus Verhaegh states that Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism advocates the neo-Lockean idea that property only legitimately originates from labor and may then only legitimately change hands by trade or gift. Brian Doherty describes Murray Rothbard's form of libertarianism as propertarian because he "reduced all human rights to rights of property, beginning with the natural right of self-ownership".

L. Neil Smith describes propertarianism as a positive libertarian philosophy in his alternate history novels ''The Probability Broach'' (1980) and ''The American Zone'' (2002).

Alternative meanings

Hans Morgenthau used propertarianism to characterize the connection between property and suffrage.

Criticism

In the science fiction novel ''The Dispossessed'' (1974), author Ursula K. Le Guin contrasted a propertarian statist society with an anarchist anti-propertarian society in an attempt to show that property and state objectified human beings.On Triton and Other Matters: An Interview with Samuel R. Delany
Science Fiction Studies, November 1990.

Murray Bookchin objected to propertarians calling themselves ''libertarians'', arguing:

We have permitted cynical political reactionaries and the spokesmen of large corporations to pre-empt these basic libertarian American ideals. We have permitted them not only to become the specious voice of these ideals such that individualism has been used to justify egotism; the pursuit of happiness to justify greed, and even our emphasis on local and regional autonomy has been used to justify parochialism, insularism, and exclusivity – often against ethnic minorities and so-called deviant individuals. We have even permitted these reactionaries to stake out a claim to the word libertarian, a word, in fact, that was literally devised in the 1890s in France by Elisée Reclus as a substitute for the word anarchist, which the government had rendered an illegal expression for identifying one's views. The propertarians, in effect – acolytes of Ayn Rand, the earth mother of greed, egotism, and the virtues of property – have appropriated expressions and traditions that should have been expressed by radicals but were willfully neglected because of the lure of European and Asian traditions of socialism, socialisms that are now entering into decline in the very countries in which they originated.Murray Bookchin, ''The Greening of Politics: Toward a New Kind of Political Practice,'' Green Perspectives: Newsletter of the Green Program Project, No. 1 January 198

Bookchin described three concepts of possession: property itself; possession; and usufruct (i.e. appropriation of resources by virtue of use.Ellie Clement and Charles Oppenheim, Department of Information Science, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leics Great Britain
Anarchism, Alternative Publishers and CopyrightJournal of Anarchist Studies
undated.)

See also

* Anarcho-capitalism
* Capitalism
* Creative disruption
* Entitlement theory
* Outline of libertarianism
* Private law society
* Private property
* Privatism
* Privatization
* Producerism
* Right-libertarianism

References

{{libertarianism

Anarcho-capitalism
Libertarian theory
Political theories