The early modern “creation” of property and its enduring influence
| Published date | 01 January 2022 |
| Date | 01 January 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885119882146 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article EJPT
The early modern
“creation” of property
and its enduring influence
Erik J Olsen
Seattle University, USA
Abstract
This article redescribes early modern European defenses of private property in terms of
a theoretical project of seeking to establish the true or essential nature of property. Most
of the scholarly literature has focused on the historical and normative issues relating to
the various accounts of original acquisition around which these defenses were organized.
However, in my redescription, these so-called “original acquisition stories” appear as
methodological devices for an analytic reduction and resolution of property into its
fundamental elements and axioms. Through these stories, property is “created” in the
form of the classical liberal paradigm of presumptively exclusive, private ownership of
material things. The problem is that this project of “creation” is also a project which
arbitrarily excludes or marginalizes other forms and systems of property, and especially
usufructuary forms of common property. After critically explicating this early modern
project of creation, I go on to argue that the classical liberal paradigm and its problems
continue to inform property theory and discourse in the late modern era.
Keywords
Classical liberal property, collective property, common property, early modern political
theory, original acquisition, property theory
At the beginning of his critical examination of modern theories of “private own-
ership,” James O Grunebaum provided a revealing explanation of why he chose
to use the terminology of “ownership” rather than “property.” According to
Grunebaum, one of the disadvantages of using the word “property” is that it “is
Corresponding author:
Erik J Olsen, Associate Professor,Political Science, Seattle University, 901 12th Ave., Seattle, WA98122, USA.
Email: eolsen@seattleu.edu
European Journal of Political Theory
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885119882146
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2022, Vol. 21(1) 111–133
sometimes misused as a synonym for private ownership so that people only have
property in what they privately own” (Grunebaum, 1987: 4). Grunebaum saw this
“misuse” of the word “property” as a linguistic mistake that needed to be cleared
up and corrected. While I agree that the language of property is very much at issue,
I do not think the problem is merely semantic in nature. It is my contention that
the problematic tendency to conflate property with private ownership should be
seen as the residual effect of a theoretical project in early modern European
thought that sought to establish presumptively exclusive private ownership of
material things by individuals as the essential nature of property. In other
words, it was a project that identified the essential nature of property with what
has come to be thought of as the classical liberal paradigm of private property—
what AM Honore (1961: 112) famously described as the “‘liberal’ concept of ‘full’
individual ownership.”
For several decades now, most of the scholarly discussion of early modern
theories of property among political theorists has focused on the accounts of
original acquisition that accompanied them. In general, the literature has viewed
these so-called “original acquisition stories” either as simplistic histories of prop-
erty with little (if any) theoretical significance (see Becker, 1977: 4; Kekes, 2010:
1–3; Mautner, 1982: 267–268) or as efforts to establish normative frameworks
within which to justify private property and establish the sources and circumstan-
ces of its legitimacy (see Gaus and Lomasky, 1990; Gauthier, 1986: 201–221;
Grunebaum, 1987: 52–85; Mack, 2010; Narveson, 2001; Nine, 2015; Simmons,
2001: 197–221; Singer, 2011; Waldron, 1988). I wish to argue that both of these
approaches miss the larger—and lasting—theoretical significance of original acqui-
sition stories as methodological devices for establishing the foundational axioms
and principles regarding the true nature of property. As such, these stories were
not intended to be historical accounts in the usual empirical sense of history, and
while they are important as normative frameworks of justification, they are also
important as frameworks that sought to establish the norms for what counts as
property. In this respect, the details of particular stories are less important than the
reconceptualization of property they helped to bring about.
By redescribing the development of the classical liberal paradigm in early
modern thought as a project of “creation,” I mean to call attention to its boldness
as an ontological project of attempting to uncover and establish the essential
nature of property. Thinkers like Grotius, Pufendorf, Locke, Hume, and
Blackstone were not simply claiming that classical liberal property is better than
other types; much more than this, they were claiming that it is the truest form of
property. Remarkably, this project of creation was carried out by thinkers who
converged in their answers to the question of the true nature of property even
though they came to these answers from different and sometimes fundamentally
disparate political and philosophical standpoints.
In my redescription, accounts of original acquisition can be said to have func-
tioned as “creation stories” about the emergence of property (more or less
de novo). This involved the creation of property either in a state of nature or
112 European Journal of Political Theory 21(1)
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