HUMAN RIGHTS AS PROPERTY RIGHTS

...All of these were rights, enforced by law or custom, to a certain standard of life, not just of material means of life, but also of liberties, privileges, honor, and status...

...It is not as important as the others, but it is worth noticing...

...The reason is that this concept was necessary only to the extent that the market was expected to do the whole work of allocation of resources and labor and products and rewards...

...and all the many kinds of income provided by the state, in money or in services, such as family allowances, unemployment benefits, health services, and old-age benefits...

...As late as the 17th century, it was quite usual for writers to use the word in what seems to us an extraordinarily wide sense...

...But in our age of regulated and managed capitalism (regulated by the state, and managed by corporations engaged in less than perfect competition), the market is no longer expected to do this work...

...Re 3 and 2, which we may take together) The concept of property as an exclusive, alienable right (in things and revenues) is already beginning to change...

...Of course these were very unequal rights: they adhered to rank or class...

...Much the same explanation applies to the third narrowing of the concept of property, which was a further narrowing even of the notion of property as an exclusive right in material things...

...The validity of the case for property as a necessary human right depends, then, on whether we take property in the modern narrow sense, or in the more extended and more natural sense of an individual right both to some exclusive property and to some nonexclusive right of access to the remaining natural resources and the accumulated capital of a given society...

...That right is increasingly seen as a property...

...For Hobbes, the things in which a man had property included "his own life and limbs...

...Those who are left without any, or without enough to work on or work 73 with on their own, then have to pay the others for access to it...

...And it becomes possible to treat these rights, just as the earlier unequal rights were treated—as property, i.e., enforceable claims of the individual...

...So it becomes important to consider what are the chances of our moving away from the narrow concept of property to the broader one that seems required by any concept of human rights...

...As it does so, there will be less and less need of the concept of property as nothing but exclusive alienable rights...

...The narrow institution of property is bound to result in such inequality, in any society short of a genetically engineered one that would have ironed out all differences in skill and energy...

...They were even more important than individual property in material things and revenues, partly because they were seen as the source and justification of individual material property...

...What are the chances of any such broadening...

...The fourth narrowing, less important than the others but worth noticing, dates from the same period and can be seen to have come about for similar reasons...

...It is bound to make current labor less and less necessary to provide an acceptable standard of life, always provided that we opt for less work rather than more things...

...The right to a job that is now being asserted is clearly not an alienable right...

...You may ask, can the right to such a full and free life of action and enjoyment be made an individual property, i.e., a legally enforceable claim that society will enforce in favor of each individual...

...Even if you started from complete equality of property, the operation of exclusive and disposable property rights would soon lead to some getting more than others...

...It has largely been narrowed to the first right—the right to exclude others...

...Individual rights in them all must include the right to buy and sell, the right to dispose of or alienate...

...and to the fact that it is now again perceptibly changing and may be expected to change still further...

...Re 1) What are the chances of reversing the first narrowing: of recapturing, on a higher level, the idea that individual property is much more a matter of property in life and liberty, in the use and development and enjoyment of human capacities, than it is merely a matter of rights in things or revenues...

...We may just go on behaving as insatiable consumers...

...Another form of individual property, which by now is well over the horizon, is also neither an exclusive nor an alienable right: this is the "guaranteed annual income," or the income provided by a "negative income tax...

...From the 17th century to our own time, the idea of property has generally been much narrower...

...The state now does, and in future will increasingly do, much of the work of allocation...

...But it does remove a mental barrier that is no longer justified or required, and so opens the way to a shift in public opinion, the sort of shift that is needed if we are to make much headway with human rights...

...That broad meaning of property was lost in the measure that modern societies became fully market societies...

...This is an inevitable consequence of turning everything into exclusive property and throwing everything into the market...

...And on any acceptable notion of human rights, this requires more than a right to bare physical subsistence...

...I am suggesting that this is a mistake, and that we will get further if we treat human rights as property rights...

...But the point is that there was no difficulty in having the right to a certain quality of life made into a legally enforceable claim of the individual, i.e., an individual property...

...That is what we elect politicians to do...

...and in the next degree, (in most men), those that concern conjugal affection...

...Another large segment of individual property was the right to a revenue from such things as corporate charters, monopolies, and various political and ecclesiastic offices...

...There is no certainty about this...

...Those who have to pay for access to the means of using their capacities and exerting their energies, and pay by making over to others both the control of their capacities and some of the product of their energies—those people are denied equality in the use and development and enjoyment of their own capacities...

...This change in the concept reflected a change in the facts...

...Then, with the rise of the capitalist market economy, the bulk of actual property shifted from often nontransferable rights to a revenue from land, charters, monopolies, and offices, to transferable rights in freehold land, salable leases, physical plant, and money...

...and the more one gets, the easier it is to get still more, so that, at least after free land runs out, a relatively few people get the exclusive right to the bulk of the land and working capital...

...If we continue to take it in the modern narrow sense, the property right contradicts democratic human rights...

...But a full market economy requires that everything be marketable...

...Category (a) comprises (i), for self-employed people, from doctors to independent taxi operators, the right to earn an income from the practice of their skills...

...The perception of it as a property is quite a big change in the concept of property...

...72 persons and exercise their capacities, came to depend so much on what material property they had that the very idea of property was easily reduced to the idea of material property...

...One kind, some property in the means of life, is a property in consumable things...

...2) A second change in the concept of property, which came at about the same time, was even more striking...

...and it is also not, at least in principle, a right to exclude others, so much as it is a right not be excluded from something, namely, from access to society's accumulated means of labor (although it may be, in the immediate short-run, a right of organized labor to exclude unorganized labor from that access...

...In these days, when we are all becoming more concerned about the way we are using up our natural resources, polluting our environment, and destroying the ecological balance of nature, it still seems to some that there is an insuperable difficulty in doing anything effective about it...

...And (ii), for wage earners, it comes down to a right to a job...

...I shall suggest that they are needed, and that they are not impossibly difficult...

...This contradiction, of course, will have to be resolved, or compromised or patched up or papered over, by our politicians...

...There is then a continuous net transfer of part of the powers of the nonowners to the owners...

...The other, a property in the means of labor—that is, in the resources, the land and capital, access to which I need in order to exert my energies and utilize my capacities— this does not need to be an exclusive property...

...They had to be unequal, since there was never enough to go around...

...I shall only try to deal with a few of the changes that have in fact occurred...

...As capitalism has matured and has become subject to much regulation, and as the distribution of its whole annual product has become subject to some redistribution by welfare-state measures, the most realistic description of most people's property is coming to be a right to a revenue: either (a) the right to earn an income, or (b) the right to an income not currently earned...

...I shall look at four changes...

...Both rights were created and maintained by society or the state...

...Each of the four narrowings that I singled out can be shown to be a pretty direct result of the rise of the competitive capitalist market economy, which, as it became predominant, brought within its sway things, and people, and the values that are embodied in concepts...

...So it was not surprising that the very concept of property was narrowed to property as exclusive alienable rights...

...Besides these two factors that are now perceptible in our society, there is a reason to expect more change away from the idea of property as merely exclusive alienable rights...

...Category (b) comprises all investment income, including pension rights (which are increasingly widespread in blue-collar as well as whitecollar sectors...

...If you have followed me so far, you may still wonder what is the point of treating the right to a quality of life as a property right...

...It is a change from property as a right to a revenue to property as a right to things (including the things that produce revenue...

...One's own person, one's capacities, one's rights and liberties were regarded as individual property...

...3) A third, related change is a further narrowing—from property as an exclusive right merely to use and enjoy some thing, to property as an exclusive right both to use and to dispose of the thing: a right to sell it to somebody else, or to alienate it...

...Obviously, this does not solve all problems, perhaps not any problems...

...The reason is fairly obvious: with the predominance of the market, every individual's effective rights and liberties, their effective ability to develop their own *Leviathan, chap...

...What about the second narrowing, from an individual property in both the individual right to exclude others from the use or enjoyment of some thing and an individual right not to be excluded from the use or enjoyment of some thing, to merely the right to exclude others...

...If it is asserted as a human right separate from the property right, the whole prestige of property will 'work against it rather than for it...

...This, I said, was an evident result of the fact that, with the predominance of the market, all 74 individuals' effective rights, liberties, ability to develop their own persons and exercise their own capacities came to depend so much on the amount of their material property that it was not unrealistic to equate their individual property with their material property...

...1) The first change I want to notice may appear to be only a lexicographical or dictionary change in the usage of the word "property," but I think it goes deeper...

...I think it is probable, or at least possible, that there will be more demand for this kind of property...

...All societies that preceded the market society did establish and maintain legal rights not only to life but to a certain quality of life...

...But can the political theorist make any contribution to the resolution, beyond the papering over of this contradiction...

...75 N ow let us recall that the point of looking at the causes of the various narrowings of the concept of property was to enable us to consider the chances of the concept of property being broadened again...

...The right to use, or enjoy the revenue from, a parcel of land or a corporate charter or a monopoly granted by the state did not always carry with it the right to sell that property...

...But it need not be so...

...If we take it in the broader sense, it does not contradict a democratic concept of human rights: indeed, it then may bring us back to something like the old concept of individual property in one's life, liberty, and capacities...

...As current labor becomes less needed, individual property in the means of labor becomes less important, and individual property in the means of a full and free life becomes more important...

...Certainly we don't ordinarily think of every citizen's right of using a national park as part of each citizen's individual property...

...True, we do have such things as national parks...

...30, pp...

...Both were rights of individuals...

...It is the change from property as rights in things and in revenues to property as rights in things, or, if you like to sharpen the contrast, a change from rights in revenues to rights in things...

...0 bviously, some further change now is needed to make our narrow concept of property consistent with a democratic society...

...And clearly only the exclusive rights can be marketed...

...Our demand for the means of a full life may just be a demand for more consumer goods...

...John Locke repeatedly and explicitly defined men's properties as their lives, liberties, and estates...

...If the market is to do the whole job of allocating resources and labor between possible uses, then all resources and labor have to become marketable...

...Re 4) Property is already being reconceived as a right to a revenue...

...This is now taken so much as a matter of course that it may seem surprising to say that it came as a change a few centuries ago...

...only with those whose implications for the present and future seem to be most worth looking at...

...It requires an equal right to such means of life and means of labor as any society, at its given level of command of Nature, can provide...

...The reason seems to me quite compelling...

...And in a modern market society, that amounts to most people: almost everybody except the fortunate few who are, as professional people, more or less independent and more or less exempt from that transfer of powers...

...It may seem.surprising, but the historical record bears me out...

...This must be an exclusive property: I must have the right to exclude you from my shirt, from my dinner, from my toothbrush, and from my bed...

...And these rights could be seen as properties...

...Property became predominantly a right to things...

...It was, like the other, a drastic narrowing of the concept: this was a narrowing even of the concept of material property...

...The right not to be excluded from some use or enjoyment of some thing cannot, by its very nature, be marketed...

...The difficulty is that any effective action about it seems to contradict one of the central concepts, and to undermine one of the basic institutions, on which all the advanced Western or liberal democratic societies are based: the concept and institution of individual property...

...To sum up these changes, we are left with a modern concept of property as an exclusive individual right to use and dispose of material things...

...The important thing becomes individual property in the means of a life of using and developing and exerting our capacities and energies...

...So it now becomes possible to assert an equal right, for everyone, to a certain quality of life, certain liberties to develop and enjoy the use of our capacities...

...So, of the two earlier kinds of individual property—the right to exclude others, and the right not to be excluded by others—the second virtually dropped out of sight with the predominance of this market, and the very idea of property was narrowed to cover only the right to exclude others...

...A further description of this change I shall also postpone until I look at causes...

...One or other of these schemes is almost certainly going to become increasingly implemented, both for technical economic reasons and because of democratic political pressures...

...serfs, freemen and noblemen...

...This kind of inequality is not only inconsistent with the democratic principle: it also contradicts one of the basic justifications of the very institution of individual property, namely, that human needs cannot be met without that institution...

...So I think that, given our present scale of values, it is only if the human right to a full life is seen as a property right that it will stand much chance of general realization...

...From the earliest ideas of property, say from Aristotle down to the 17th century, property was seen to include both of two kinds of individual rights: both an individual right to exclude others from some use or enjoyment of some thing, and an individual right not to be excluded from the use or enjoyment of things the society had declared to be for common use—common lands, parks, roads, waters...

...And now, in the 20th century, one factor has changed: there is enough to go around, or will be if we make intelligent use of our knowledge of Nature, i.e., of our presently possible productive technology...

...This also was required by the full market economy...

...So there is now some prospect of our breaking out of the second and third narrowings...

...There is no intrinsic difficulty about this...

...It is more usual to think of them as something set aside from the property arena...

...In considering this, it will be convenient to treat the four narrowings in reverse order...

...So it seems accurate to say that the modern concept of property is pretty well confined to the right of an individual or corporation—a natural or artificial person—to exclude others from some use or enjoyment of some thing...

...This is clearly inconsistent with one of the first principles of a democratic society, which I take to be the maintenance of equal opportunity to use and develop and enjoy whatever capacities each person has...

...He may also inquire whether changes are now needed, in order to make the concept of property consistent with a democratic society, and if so, whether such changes are impossibly difficult...

...Both therefore were individual property...

...It is an assertion of a right of access to the means of labor, no matter by whom owned...

...The only time we treat any part of them as property is when the state does turn some part of them into property in the narrow sense, by giving some person or corporation the right to exclude others from some use of them, as when it sells or leases logging or mining rights...

...The very nature of human beings, then, requires individual property of two kinds...

...I have mentioned the obvious source of the first narrowing (the narrowing from an individual property in one's life, one's person, capacities, rights and liberties, as well as in the material means of life, to merely property in the material means of life...

...Until the emergence of the capitalist market economy, most individual property had in fact been a right to a revenue rather than a right to a thing...

...4) A fourth change in the concept of property is also a narrowing, and also dates from about the same time...

...Property as an exclusive right of a natural or artificial person to use and dispose of material things (including land and resources) leads necessarily, in any kind of market society (from the freeest, most perfectly competitive one, to a highly monopolistic one), to an inequality of wealth and power that denies a lot of people the possibility of a reasonably human life...

...and after them riches and means of living...

...But it is not usual to think of these as property at all...

...We may pick up again what is a very old idea, the idea that used to prevail before the market economy converted us all into consumers: the idea that life is for doing rather than just getting...

...Moralists and reformers, and writers of declarations of human rights, have often played up human rights as opposed to property rights...

...This right is increasingly being asserted by organized labor...

...As the capitalist market economy grew, it was expected to do, and did do, most of the whole job of allocation...

...Technological advance is inherent in capitalism: it is virtually the only means of survival of the 76 oligopolistic firm within the capitalist economy, and the only means of the survival of that economy as a whole in its competition with the Communist economies...

...members of the first and second and third estates...

...The great bulk of property had been property in land, and, at least in the case of substantial estates, that property was seen as a right to a revenue rather than a right to the land itself, the more so because, as we have noticed, the land itself was often not in the owner's power to sell...

...Why not just put it forward as a human right...

...And to do this we must look at the causes of the narrowing, and see if, or to what extent, they still operate...

...Macpherson, ed...

...This often comes down to the need for a license: the license itself is a property, sometimes (as with taxi licenses) a salable property...

...It can easily be demonstrated that, granted an equal right to life, everyone needs such an amount of individual property, in the means of life and in access to the means of labor, as will ensure the continuance of his or her life...

...Before the full market society came to prevail, a great deal of property in land and other material things was a right to exclude others from some use or enjoyment of the thing, but not a right to dispose of it...

...He can perhaps say something useful by drawing attention to some demonstrable facts: to the fact that the concept of property has changed in several ways, not only as between ancient and medieval and modern societies but also within the span of modern market society...

...It can, equally well, be the other kind of individual property—the right not to be excluded .from some use or enjoyment of something...

...We have made property so central to our society that any thing and any rights that are not property are very apt to take second place...

...What makes this now possible is the inevitability of increasing productivity, with less need for current compulsory labor, through technological advance...

...Property soon came to have only the narrower meaning it generally has today: property in material things or revenues...

...To the extent that the whole job of deciding what was to be produced, and how the whole product was to be divided between people, was to be done by the market, rather than by custom or prescription or political authority—to that extent, all rights in material things, including land and other natural resources, not to mention rights in one's capacity to work, had to be made marketable and brought into the market...

...382-83 (Pelican Classics edition, C.B...

...Whether these properties were salable or not, they were obviously rights to a revenue rather than rights to any specific material things...

...I shall postpone a description of this change till I come to look at the causes of this and all the other changes...

...I am thinking of the rights of different orders or ranks—guild masters, journeymen, apprentices, servants and laborers...