« A Misguided Enterprise? | Main | The Idea of Property »
A Misguided Enterprise? continue…
By arlene | May 7, 2008
P4 is both overdrawn and confused. It is true that intangible property is increasingly important. It is also true that, with the rise of the trust and the publicly held corporation, conceiving of property as a bundle of rights is especially useful. But if the criticism of P1 is sound, intangibles have long been considered property. And seeing property as a bundle of rights is helpful even for simple situations, as the use of Hohfeld’s vocabulary in § 2.3 to analyze undeveloped societies illustrates. Moreover, thinking of property as the ownership of material things is central to property even today. Land and houses are premier examples. So, too, are the material necessities of human life - especially food and clothing. And the criminal law in defining theft offenses still conceives of property chiefly as material things. A confusion at the base of P4 is the tendency to believe that what § 2.1 calls the popular and sophisticated conceptions of property are somehow incompatible. That is not so if each is kept to its respective quarters.
Consider now Grey’s conclusions. C1 and C2 hold only if early capitalism and early Marxism are seen in an excessively traditional, almost stylized, way. In that sense they are not very arresting propositions. Both capitalism and Marxism can be reformulated so they they do not depend on identifying property with the ownership of material things. The reformulations can be complicated, particularly the Marxian treatment of property and alienation (§§ 7.3-7.4), but they are possible.
Even if Grey’s premises were true, his principal conclusion, C3, would not follow. That conclusion is in fact ambiguous. If the word “property” as used in C3 means ownership of material things, C3 is a non sequitur. There may be other perspectives in political theory besides traditional capitalism and traditional Marxism that conceive of property in the same way. For example, arguments for a more nearly equal distribution of tangible items, such as food, clothes, houses, and land, stress the adverse consequences, in the forms of resentment and social unrest, that flow from perceived inequalities. But suppose that “property” as used in C3 means something other than ownership of material things. Then C3 is still a non sequitur. Indeed, it involves the fallacy of equivocation, since the word “property” is used in one sense in P1—P3 and in a different sense in C3. Nor can P4 rescue the argument. Even if P4 were true, it would not follow that, for whatever property is today besides the ownership of material things, property is unimportant in legal and political theory. In fact, three specialized senses of property discussed by Grey make it important in exactly that way. To conceive of property, for example, as whatever is immune from government taking without compensation raises fundamental constitutional and political questions about the balance of power and right between individuals and the state. Again, to view property as an entitlement that should promote efficiency provokes questions about the role of efficiency and justice in a general theory of property. Yet again, to see property as including public-law entitlements — say, to a minimum level of income - raises deep issues of equality and the significance of property to personal development.
The root question is whether C3, even though it does not follow, might nevertheless be true. To answer this question one should distinguish two positions, only the first of which can be vindicated at this point. One is that “property” can be used in several senses, at least one of which makes property an important category in political theory. If the previous paragraph is right, there are at least three senses in which “property” is manifestly an important category. The other position is that “property” can be used in some overarching way such that it is an important category in political theory. This position also claims that though contemporary economic conditions differ from those of one or two centuries ago, thinking in terms of property assists theoretical analysis and clarifies practical inquiry regarding economic organization. Section 2.3 in effect holds that the sophisticated conception of property is overarching, though one must wait for later discussion (§ 4.4) to see whether it can be linked intelligibly to the popular conception of property. Again, the discussion of business corporations maintains that one can best think about corporate enterprise by including economic concepts within a broader perspective that views corpora tions as a topic in the theory of property rights (§ 12.1).
More about: A Misguided Enterprise? continue…
- A Misguided Enterprise?
- Group Housing Schemes
- Methods of Using Leases To Acquire And Finance Real Estate (4-6)
- New Housing Subsidy System part 3
- Sectional Title Re-sales
- Housing Development Schemes for Retired Persons Part 3
- Selling Sectional Title Off Plan
- MARKETING THE PROPERTY
- Banks and Mortgage Finance (Residential Mortgage Loans) continue...
- Selling Sectional Title Off Plan continue...
Topics: Development, Form, Land, Property |
August 7th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Tell your contractor what you want clearly, protect yourself from potential legal action and have the appropriate forms readily available. … Common Form Templates
August 8th, 2008 at 6:56 am
Simply choose your level of cover, choose your quote and then buy online, by direct debit or speak to our expert UK based Landlord consultants. … Online Estate Agents