Stand and Deliver: Private Property and the Politics of Global Dispossession
| Author | Stefan Andreasson |
| Date | 01 March 2006 |
| Published date | 01 March 2006 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2006.00563.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Stand and Deliver: Private Property and the
Politics of Global Dispossession
Stefan Andreasson
Queen’s University Belfast
Property rights necessarily generate violent, and oftentimes lethal, processes of dispossession.While liberal
theorists from Locke to Hayek consider property rights as an essential and emancipatory component of
human freedom, they fail to consider societal power asymmetries impeding the ability of property rights
to protect the interests of the weak and marginalised. If property rights produce freedom and prosper-
ity, they do so very selectively. More obvious is the ongoing historical process of already propertied
classes making ‘clever usurpation into an irrevocable right’ by extending private property regimes along
two key dimensions – type and space. Examining various uses of private property over time reveals
processes whereby relatively basic notions of private property, enforced by a Weberian state at the local
level in the early era of industrialisation, are extended to encompass new and sophisticated forms of
property that are enforced globally via international institutions. Two contemporary empirical cases of
using property rights are examined in this paper: land reform in Southern Africa (specifically Zimbabwe)
and intellectual property rights. In this context of ongoing dispossession, further privatisation and com-
modification can only exacerbate contemporary problems of marginalisation and dispossession.
The true founder of civil society was the first man who, having enclosed a piece
of land, thought of saying ‘This is mine’, and came across people simple enough
to believe him (Rousseau, 1994, p. 55).
The greatest offence against property was to have none (Thompson, 1968, p. 66).
Surveying the condition of his contemporary world, Rousseau noted dejectedly
the miserable state of those rendered destitute by the civil law, a law of and for
the propertied classes.
Such was, or must have been, the origin of society and of laws, which put new
shackles on the weak and gave new powers to the rich; which destroyed natural
freedom irretrievably, laid down for all time the law of property and inequality, made
clever usurpation into an irrevocable right, and henceforth subjected, for the
benefit of a few ambitious men, the human race to labour, servitude and misery
(Rousseau, 1994, p. 69 emphasis added).
Rejecting Locke’s glorification of private property, and perhaps presaging
Proudhon’s claim that ‘all property is theft’, Rousseau formulated an under-
standing of the social consequences of bourgeois statecraft that remains a vivid
illustration of how capitalist accumulation on a global scale continues to affect
the world’s poor.1
The collective Western memory of English enclosure movements, and similar
processes of dispossession elsewhere in modernising Europe, has not entirely van-
© 2006 The Author
Journal compilation © 2006 Political Studies Association
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S T E FA N A N D R E A S S O N
ished. It is, however, largely a memory of a bygone era of ruthless capitalism that
has since been tempered by twentieth-century social reforms, culminating in the
post-WWII ‘historical compromise’ between state, capital and labour, and the
subsequent emergence of the welfare state.Yet the merciless dispossession brought
on by earlier forms of accumulation remains a reality for much of mankind
(compare with Perelman, 2000).2 While official Western proclamations may
condemn the most brutal manifestations of contemporary capitalism as it is exer-
cised abroad, the West still plays a pivotal role in this process of systematic mar-
ginalisation and immiseration of people beyond its ‘civilisational’ boundaries.‘The
hypocrisy is that bourgeois civilization in Europe, plus plunder, primitive accu-
mulation and famine in the colonial world were part of the same overarching
liberal ideals’ (Bracking and Harrison, 2003, p. 5; compare with Davis, 2001).
And, recalling Proudhon’s outrage, why not steal when one is not likely to be
held accountable?
Early modern European thought on property relations, and the ‘rightful’ means
by which states act to reinforce unequal relations between those in possession
and those dispossessed remains relevant for understanding global capitalism today
and why Western rhetoric regarding global development is not matched in deeds.
At the root of the problem of violent exploitation and dispossession stands the
problem of private property as conceived by Locke, and subsequently expounded
upon by a vast array of liberal scholars.The problem essentially arises out of the
tension between, on the one hand, insisting on private property as a prerequi-
site for freedom and, on the other hand, accepting the inevitable process of vio-
lence in establishing property rights and the subsequently very unequal
distribution of property in capitalist society. This tension unfolds and intensifies
in the era of capitalism as the use of property rights expands; it is a prominent
phenomenon in the Global South today.
In making the link between the origins of private property and historical
processes of dispossession, this paper considers three key propositions. First, there
is an important link between the essentially liberal project of primitive and capi-
talist accumulation and liberal thinkers, from John Locke to Friedrich Hayek,
and the ideology and policy of international financial institutions managing the
global economy today – the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank
and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Second, an examination of histori-
cal and contemporary processes that turn human and natural resources into prop-
erty, thus creating the enormous inequalities in ownership and wealth that exist
today, suggests that accumulation is necessarily a violent process. It is upon the
contrived separation of accumulation, as a supposedly ‘natural’ and benign eco-
nomic process, from its violent nature and consequences that support (ideologi-
cal, political, financial, military) for the world economy as currently constituted
depends. Third, the use of basic forms of property rights at the local level has
expanded over type and space into the application of sophisticated forms of prop-
erty rights on a global level today; land reform in Southern Africa (specifically
© 2006 The Author
Journal compilation © 2006 Political Studies Association
P R I VAT E P RO P E RT Y A N D G L O B A L D I S P O S S E S S I O N
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Zimbabwe) and intellectual property rights (IPRs) are the contemporary empiri-
cal cases considered here. The article concludes with some thoughts on alterna-
tives to current uses of property rights, and what the consequences may be of a
continually expanding property rights regime.
The Origins of Dispossession in the Liberal Idea of
Private Property
John Locke’s is the first comprehensive attempt – the embryonic liberal argu-
ment – at joining private property in an ‘inseparable union’ with freedom
(Kelsen, 1955, p. 86).3 That (in nature) to which man joins his labour becomes
his property, a right from which he cannot be alienated: ‘He by his labour does,
as it were, inclose it from the Common’ (Locke, 1967, p. 308). Crucial to Locke’s
argument, however, is the notion that while no other person can have a right to
this property, this is only the case ‘where there is enough, and as good left in
common for others’ (p. 306).This critical concern with what is left for others is
unfortunately left aside, both in terms of the overall emphasis in Locke’s own
writings on property, and especially in the case of transferring Locke’s arguments
on property into the basis for legal ownership – Rousseau’s ‘clever usurpation’
made into ‘irrevocable right’ (compare with Shrader-Frechette, 1993, p. 202).The
history of global accumulation provides ample proof that the right to property
at all times trumps the concern for ‘enough and as good left in common’ for
others and the rights of those who, in the process of accumulation, are left
without.
Transforming the liberal idea of a right to private property into law sets the para-
meters within which any discourse on rich and poor, on ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’,
on what can and ought to be done about extremely unequal patterns of resource
distribution can be held. Modern liberal thinkers retain Locke’s emphasis on
private property and the laws upholding them as essential for human freedom
(Hayek, 1973) and also for socio-economic development (de Soto, 2000). Gray
left no doubt regarding the importance of private property as a necessary com-
ponent of freedom and integral to the very possibility of a modern, complex
society.
The free market represents the only noncoercive means of coordinating activity in a
complex industrial society ... Private property is the embodiment of individual
liberty in its most primordial form and market freedoms are indivisible compo-
nents of the basic liberties of the person (Gray, 1995, p. 61, emphasis added).4
For Rousseau, as well as modern critics of property (for example, Perelman,
2002), such sentiments simply ‘legitimise’ exploitation by the powerful in society.
Given a sustained criticism of the origins of concepts of justice and private pro-
perty in liberal thinking, it becomes essential to the liberal project to refute claims
that capital accumulation is based on inherent injustices and is violent in both
its nature and consequences. Hence, an intense emphasis on the ‘emancipatory’
© 2006 The Author
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