Praxeology

Power of the Market

Need no words. Here is an old collection of videos on which Milton Friedman opens up the power of the market. Highly worth of watching. Here is also link to additional material.

The Pencil

Poverty

Prices

Voluntary Cooperation

Invisible Hand

Balancing Trade

Welfare

Fairness

Choices

Equality

Higher Education

Consumer Protection

Education

Labor

Immigration

Unfair Competition

Minimum Wage

Medicine

Opportunity

How to cure inflation 1

How to cure inflation 2

How to cure inflation 3

Big Government 1

Big Government 2

Individuals vs Government

Social Security

Limited Government

Principles of Adam Smith

Conglomerates & Free Trade

Freedom

Robert LeFevre on Ownership

I have noticed that in addition to all kind of crap, there is also a lot of valuable material in Youtube. It is just up to an individual what kind of staff one wants to search. This time I would like to share some videos I just found interesting. These clips may be a bit old-school, but the content of them is still worth of listening and learning.

Here are some links to Youtube videos in which an American libertarian businessman, radio personality and primary theorist of autarchism Robert LeFevre speaks about ownership. The rights of the material are owned by Mises Institute. You can find more similar material for example from LibertyInOurTime channel. The clips last circa half an hour each so take time while listening.

Property and Ownership

Conflict in Ownership

How To Become Owners

Collective Ownership

Property Classifications

Value: What It Is And How It Works

What Is Wealth?

What Is Money? - Part One

What Is Money? - Part Two

Copyright

Nordqvist - Socio-Symbolic Ownership

The following is how Mattias Nordqvist introduces socio-symbolic ownership in his PhD thesis.

Introducing Socio-Symbolic Ownership

Grunebaum (1987) theorizes the concept of ownership and argues that there is an important difference between ownership and property, where the latter connotes “something in the thing or object rather than the idea that ownership is a relation between persons with respects to things” (p.3). He defines ownership as a set of relations constituted by rights and responsibilities among persons with respect to things, with the argument that there is nothing in the object owned which “marks it off as mine, yours, or ours” (Grunebaum, 1987:4). He also suggests that ownership has a broader connotation than property in the sense that it does not only refer to land or real estate, which the concept of property often is used to refer to.

The rights and responsibilities of ownership are related to both moral and legal rules set within a specific society and also acknowledged by the members of this society. This means that owning something implies that the owners have rights over what they own, which non-owners lack, but also responsibilities according to the specific social and cultural context. As pointed out by Grunebaum (1987), this is in line with Hobbes’s claim that “there is no ownership, no mine and thine, in a state of nature”. If the members of a society do not acknowledge the same set of ownership rules, ownership will make no sense and it must thus be based on a sanctioned, accepted form of ownership (Grunebaum, 1987).

Grunebaum (1987) further suggests that ownership refers to the relationship between individuals and their surrounding things and objects. This means that ownership is a broader concept than merely the legal, physical and status-related aspects around which the traditional notion is built. His view allows seeing ownership as connected with individuals rather than being a non-personified state. From this perspective, Mattila and Ikävalko (2003:3) identify four ‘ontological’ bases of ownership’:

a) Ownership at a social level

b) Ownership at a legal level

c) Ownership at an action, influence and outcome level

d) Ownership at a personal, psychological level.

The first level of ownership (a) includes communication and interaction between people with the outcome of understanding and acting as a certain group. The second level (b) is a social construct as well, but typically more static and more or less intentionally developed and maintained by society. This is the most easily definable form of ownership and often used as the meaning of the concept. The third level of ownership (c) refers to the process of generating a certain outcome using power and action with regard to the object of owning, and the last level (d) “includes goals, ambitions, motivations, commitments, responsibilities and other things in the mind of an owner that link him to the target of owning” (Mattila and Ikävalko, 2003:3).

The duration of ownership differs between the four levels, even if ownership typically lasts for long. As a social construct and at a personal level, ownership may last for a certain period of time even if it rarely appears or disappears suddenly (Mattila and Ikävalko, 2003). For instance, at the third and fourth levels, ownership is in action, a time-specific phenomenon and a state of being in terms of goals, actions, influences, and outcomes at a certain moment and after a certain action: The reality of the phenomenon of ownership is filtered through human perception and there are often numerous actions and several factors interacting constantly at all these four different levels in ongoing processes. Examining ownership at one level requires consideration at the other levels too. (Mattila and Ikävalko, 2003:3)

The authors thus suggest that ownership is a complex and multifaceted notion which includes socially constructed meanings of the concept created in social interaction and in a culture, or defined in a more tangible legal framework. This means, for instance, that in a specific empirical context, it is not simply ownership as property in a legal sense that is relevant to observe. The other meanings and levels of ownership are also likely to surface and be important in terms of how ownership is channeled in a specific organizational context. This also indicates that notions of ownership include views that attach more than simply ‘materialistic’ meanings to the concept. It is well-established that ownership can also have symbolic meanings that extend beyond the mere physical qualities of what is owned and the specific state of de facto owning (Dittmar, 1992).

Philosophers such as Kant and Hegel were occupied with these more ‘subjective’ meanings of ownership. Hegel, for instance, focused on the importance of the mind and mental products rather than the material world. He argued that it is the social definition of the physical and material world that matters most, not that world itself. Hegel observed a contradiction between what people were and what they felt they could be. The resolution of this contradiction lies, he argues, in individuals’ awareness of their place in the ‘larger spirit of society’ (Ritzer, 2000:20). In terms of ownership, this is the origin of the idea that possessions can play such a dominant role in the identity of owners that they become part of the extended self (Dittmar, 1992). Or as Pierce et al. (2001:299) observe:

Sartre, in his treatise on ‘being and nothingness’, notes that ‘to have’ (along with ‘to do’ and ‘to be’) is one of the three categories of human existence and that the ‘totality of my possessions reflects the totality of my being…I am what I have…What is mine is myself (1969:591-592)”.

In a similar vein, Etzioni (1991:466) notices that ownership is a “dual creation, part attitude, part object, part in the mind, part real”, thus underlining psychological and social aspects of ownership. Dittmar (1992) argues that this means that there is an important symbolic significance of ownership that often manifests itself in everyday life. Most work in this area has been done in the field of employee ownership (e.g. Pierce et al., 2001) or the social psychology of material possessions (e.g. Dittmar, 1992) and typical focus is on the symbolic and psychological extension of legal ownership. However, as Mattila and Ikävalko (2003) point out, this notion of ownership does not require legal ownership, meaning that even non-owners can be included in (psychological and social) ownership. This means that the relation between the individuals and ownable objects is in focus with no demand for these individuals to actually own the object in a legal sense.

Pierce et al. (2001) present three routes through which individuals come to experience ownership, regardless of their legal status as owners. The routes are a) controlling the target, which means that the feeling of being able to control an object gives rise to feelings of ownership towards that object, at the same time as the controlled object becomes a part of one’s self, b) coming intimately to know the target. This means that the more information and the better knowledge a person has of an object, the deeper the relation between them and, consequently, the stronger the feeling of ownership toward it. Here, a long association with the target supports the development. Finally, c) investing self into the target, means that the investment in objects that an individual makes in terms of energy, time, effort and attention affects the self to become ‘one with the object’ and develop feelings of ownership. Hence, ownership as a phenomenon is closely linked to human action in a social context (Mattila and Ikävalko, 2003).

These theoretical considerations about ownership are important ingredients in the further development of a socio-symbolic understanding of ownership which builds on symbolic interactionism and which is consistent with the conceptualization of strategizing adopted in this study. Socio-symbolic ownership focuses more on social and symbolic aspects of ownership in addition to more traditional legal, financial and structural rights and responsibilities. It is also a notion that emphasizes ownership as a wider social phenomenon that is interpreted and potentially acted on by actors involved in social interaction on different arenas as they engage in everyday activities related to strategizing.

Insights from psychological ownership as discussed above also indicate the possibility that feelings and actions of ownership may be developed by actors who are not owners in a traditional structural and legal meaning. Psychological ownership focuses on the individual level. The socio-symbolic notion includes this, as will be clear later on, but adds an emphasis on social interaction and symbolic relations. This means that ownership is seen as a phenomenon that stretches beyond the actors as legal and structural owners and that this potentially evolves and changes over time. In terms of strategizing, this further means that it is important to track and interpret different actors and arenas to capture how they are linked to ownership as a social, symbolic phenomenon. In other words, ownership can be channeled through different actors and arenas in strategizing and this may change over time. This is what I refer to as socio-symbolic ownership.

Source: Mattias Nordqvist (2005) - Understanding the role of ownership in strategizing

Nordqvist - The Concept of Ownership

As I promised before, here are some interesting parts of Mattias Nordqvist's PhD thesis summarized.

The Concept of Ownership

The concept of ownership is complex, involving aspects from various fields and disciplines. Just to give a few examples, the meaning of ownership has been widely treated within subjects like philosophy, law, finance, economics, and psychology.

Private and organizational ownership are concepts deeply rooted in Western cultures and have different connotations depending on the context in which they are discussed. Formally, the meaning of ownership can be tracked by consulting a dictionary. Encyclopedia Britannica’s Merriam-Webster’s dictionary lists two meanings of ownership as a noun, “(a) the state, relation, or fact of being an owner, and (b) a group or organization of owners”. The following words are listed as synonyms: dominion, possession, possessorship, property, proprietary, proprietorship. Looking closer into the verb ‘to own’, the dictionary refers to “to have or hold as property” and “to have power over” and “to have as an attribute, knowledge or skill”. The latter meaning is also close to the word possess. From this one can derive a meaning of the concept of ownership that seems to go beyond the mere factual or legal situation of owning something.

Adam Smith on Ownership

The traditional meaning of ownership has been in focus in most treatises on the role of ownership and property in organizations. Early commentators on this include Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Max Weber. Smith (1776/1979) analyzed the ‘objective’ functions of private property as a utilitarian mode to provide for physical needs, at both individual and societal level. In his view, ownership is not just a measure of wealth, but also an element of personal satisfaction that, however, is guided by an ‘invisible hand’ looking after the interests of the society as a whole. Smith’s notion of the role of ownership and private property is still the overall principle in most Western countries, even if there are some governmental restrictions on ownership in some fields (Monks and Minow, 2004). With regard to firm ownership, Smith was especially worried about the consequences of the joint stock company. He believed negative implications would arise when owners had limited personal responsibility. He predicted that it would be difficult to find managers acting in line with an ownership whose role was to risk their wealth on the premise to earn more of it:

Being the managers rather of other people’s money than of their own, it cannot well be expected, that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a copartnery frequently watch over their own. Like the stewards of a rich man, they are apt to consider attention to small matters as not for their master’s honour, and very easily give themselves a dispensation from having it. Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company. (Smith, 1776/1979)

Karl Marx on Ownership

The implications of private ownership of the ‘means of production’ for the nature and structure of society on one hand and of the individuals’ well-being on the other are at the center of attention for Karl Marx and his followers as well, but they have a different point of departure and different conclusions than Adam Smith and other theorists in his vein. Marx analyzed how the unequal distribution of private property in the capitalist system eventually led to the domination of one class in society over the other. In essence, he focused on the dialectics between the owners of the ‘means of production’ and those generating the output – the working class. One of Marx’s conclusions was that instead of controlling private property, the workers were controlled by it and this led to their alienation. The capitalists, or the owners, on the other hand, could profit from this situation. Marx’s agenda was political, his perspective the workers and his goal the eventual overthrow of private property (Ritzer, 2000). He was particularly interested in the concentration, or ‘centralization’ to use Marx’s wording, of ownership, where private property and wealth was accumulated in larger units and controlled by a lesser number of instances. This is interesting, since the family firm can be seen as a structure where ownership is concentrated.

Max Weber on Ownership

Max Weber’s (1921/1968) notion of the bureaucratic organization was characterized by a modern, efficient, and rational way of organizing economic activities, thus differing from other versions of organizing on traditional and charismatic grounds. The rational/legal authority of the bureaucratic organization was based on objective rules, norms, and rational decision-making, where managers’ authority was based on technical qualifications and rational values rather than individual characteristics and personal ownership rights. In is eight statements regarding “the fundamental categories of rational/legal authority”, Weber writes:

In the rational type it is a matter of principle that the members of the administrative staff should be completely separated from ownership of the means of production or administration. Officials, employees and workers attached to the administrative staff do not themselves own the non-human means of production and administration. (…) There exists, furthermore, in principle complete separation of the property belonging to the organization, which is controlled within the sphere of office, and the personal property of the official, which is available for his private uses. (Weber, in Pugh, 1997:7)

Thus, for Weber, the domination in the bureaucratic organization is not so much linked to the authority of the owners of the means of production, but rather to the rational/legal type of authority that was assigned to the bureaucracies, which used “formally the most rational known means of exercising authority over human beings” (Weber, 1921/1968:223). As indicated, Weber argued that ownership and management in the bureaucratic organizations would, in principle, be separated and the legal owners of the organizations not those necessarily exercising this authority. This means that typically other administrators or bureaucrats decoupled from the ownership would be in charge. Weber also argued that since individuals are driven by the search for means to reach their own personal goals, there could, in the bureaucratic organization exist “the tendency of officials to treat their official function from what is substantively a utilitarian point of view in the interest of the welfare of those under their authority” (Weber, in Pugh, 1997:15). This is linked to the discussion about the separation of ownership and management.

Monks and Minow on Ownership

The traditional notion of ownership and private property is reflected in most literature on ownership within management and organization theory. Monks and Minow (2004), for instance, write from a North American perspective about the shareholders of a corporation and outline four elements of ownership. They do this, even if they also raise the question if a corporation can be owned in a formal way given its ‘legal personality’. Still, however, the role of owners and ownership in a traditional corporation or other type of firm is within the realm of the shareholders’ function.

Monks and Minow (2004) summarize the elements of ownership as follows. The first element is that the owner (O) has the right to use his or her property (P) as he or she wishes. The second is that O has the right to regulate anyone else’s use of that P and the third that O has the right to transfer rights to that P on whatever terms he or she wishes. There is less agreement about the fourth element, they argue, which refers to O being responsible for making sure that his or her use of P does not damage others. In sum: Ownership is therefore a combination of rights and responsibilities with respect to a specific property. In some cases those rights and responsibilities are more clearly defined than in others.

Much of the complexity that arises from ownership comes from the responsibility side of ownership. (Monks and Minow, 2004:99) This complexity leads the authors to pose the question what it means to own part of something. This is implied in the word shareholder and originates in the notion that in many firms there is not just one owner, but ownership is distributed among several individuals and/or organizations that own, or hold, a share. This is further complicated by the legal fact in many countries that the ownership of shares in a firm is linked to limited risks. In other words, in the conventional notion of ownership of a firm, the firm can be seen as a separate entity, with an existence beyond the life of the owners and/or operator. Thus, ownership of all or part of a firm is not only linked to an individual owner.

Source: Mattias Nordqvist (2005) Understanding the role of ownership in strategizing. p. 33-36.

Metaphors of Organizations

Some time ago I participated an Organization Theory course at University of Jyväskylä. One of the ideas presented at the course was Gareth Morgan’s Images of Organizations. According to Morgan organizations can be seen as: 1) machines, 2) organisms, 3) brains, 4) cultures, 5) political systems, 6) physic prisons, 7) flux and transformation and 8) instruments of domination. The classification gave me foods for thoughts so here are some ideas that came to my mind in ownership context.

Images of organization

If organization is a machine, it is something physical, something material so it is easy to be owned. "This machine is mine", is clearly defined. A machine is a physical asset.

If organization is an organism, how can it be owned? How to own an organism? Organism is a living unit.

If organization is brains, how can brains be owned? How to own human capital? How to own immaterial asset which is in people’s heads?

If organization is culture, it is even more complicated to be owned. How to own culture? What is the role of ownership in organization culture? Whose culture it is in organizations?

If organization is a political system, it seems that owners are either the people, in the case of democracy or dictators, in the case of tyranny. Ownership can be political, and actually there seems to be a lot of politics involved in ownership. Still, if organization is a political system, how it can be owned? Is politics in this sense related to power? I have no answers, just a lot of questions to be considered.

If organization is a physic prison, it means that there are prisoners inside the organization. Is it so, that owners own the physic prison and enforce people to stay in there? Are owners actually owners of prisons that lock people in? What would it be, if there were no prisons like this? Would people be free? What would they do? I guess this line of thinking might lead to some ideas of Karl Marx.

If organization is flux and transformation, is ownership also flux and transformation? In one end, in family businesses ownership of organizations seem to be very stable and long-term, but in the other end, in stock exchange, the ownership of organization can change hands in seconds. One conclusion is clear, the relationship between company and it’s owners is not permanent, it can change and will change, it is just a matter of time.

If organization is an instrument of domination, it reflects to idea that there are owners who dominate workers by using organization as an instrument in this means. This would mean that owners are dominators and workers dominated. In this sense ownership is about owning ways to have power and instrument for domination.

Philosophers on Ownership

With this post, the collection of philosophers on ownership comes to an end. All the writings were based on James O. Grunebaum's book titled Private Ownership. The collection is by far not comprehensive and I'm sure it lacks some key philosophers. In addition I urge readers to take Grunebaum's background and view's critically into account when drawing conclusions. However the idea was to share some key aspects of insightful philosophers on ownership.

A portrait of a philosopher thinking

Based on the different view's on ownership, I have come to a conclusion and have chosen Austrian School to be the philosophic framework of the theoretical part of my dissertation. Austrian School was chosen because of it's sustainable and ethical philosophic foundation. Next, I will continue to explore the key philosophers of this line of thinking including names like Ludwig von Mises, Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Friedrick Hayek, Murray Rothbard and Milton Friedman.

Opponents to private ownership

As a summary, Grunebaum finds some critics to private ownership in most of the philosophers thinking. According to him, Robert Owen and Karl Marx are not the only opponents to private ownership. Plato opposes private ownership and Rousseau believes private ownership creates both poverty and the absence of ownables. Aquinas defends a form of ownership which in some respect resembles private ownership, but the form has other aspects which significantly differ. Although Artistotle claims he is defending private ownership, his rules of land ownership are not private ownership rules. Locke and Hume, who defend private ownership under some conditions, also believe that civil governments may legitimately alter private ownership in order to promote good of the community. Finally, Rawls has argued against the idea of private ownership of natural talents and abilities.

In my view, I would conclude that John Locke, Immanuel Kant, David Hume and even Aristotle are the ones most in favor of private ownership and John Rawls, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Robert Owens, Karl Marx and even Plato against. It seems that the main thing that cuts philosophers in half is the question of preference between individualism and collectivism. The ones for private ownership prefer individualism over collectivism and the opponents vice versa.

The collection of philosophers on ownership

1) The Concept of Ownership

2) Plato on Ownership

3) Aristotle on Ownership

4) Thomas Acquinas on Ownership

5) John Locke on Ownership

6) Immanuel Kant on Ownership

7) Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Ownership

8) David Hume on Ownership

9) John Rawls on Ownership

10) Robert Owen on Ownership

11) Karl Marx on Ownership

Source: James O. Grunebaum. 1987. Private Ownership

Karl Marx on Ownership

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Marx's definitions of ownership

Karl Marx's concept of ownership implies that some form or another of ownership must exist in all productive societies, i.e. a productive society without any form of ownership whatsoever is an impossibility. Marx gives three definitions of ownership which are equivalent. The earliest definition comes from 1844 Manuscripts where ownership is defined as embracing both relations: "the relation of the worker to work and to the product of his labor and to the non-worker, and the relation of the non-worker to the worker and the product of his labor."

Later in The German Ideology, Marx gives the following definition: "ownership is the relations of individuals to one another with reference to the material, instrument and product of labor." Lastly, in the Grundrisse, he says, "we reduce this property to the conditions of production". These three definitions are consistent with Marx's position in Capital where he argues that the objective appearance of ownership as a relation between things only belies the underlying reality of its existence as a social relation between producers.

Critisism of capitalist private ownership

Marx' criticism of capitalist private ownership relations is well known. His attack upon private ownership is usually understood to be grounded upon the contradiction in capitalism that simultaneously creates wealth and many ownables for the few capitalists and little wealth with few or no ownables for the multitude of workers. This contradiction finds expression in Marx's concepts of alienation and exploitation. Alienation consists of three modes: alienation from the object of one's labor, alienation from one's activity of labor, and alienation from oneself, from one's species being, and from one's fellow men. The object of the producer's labor is no longer his own. He is alienated from the object of his own labor because the economic requirements of sale and exchange reduce of eliminate his freedom to control what he produces. Forces outside of himself determine what he must produce.

One of the conditions Marx believes necessary for widespread capitalist production is that large numbers of people have no other means of earning a livelihood than by selling their labor power. No individual, who has a choice, would sell his labor power and be exploited by another if he could receive the full value of his labor by being self-employed. It is private ownership of land, resources, and the means of production which Marx believes forces workers to sell their labor power. Private owners become rich, powerful and free, while the workers become poor, weak, and enslaved. Marx might say that the slavery of the worker is the condition for the freedom of the private owner capitalist.

The free development of all

In the Communist Manifesto Marx proposes that the communist society be based upon the principle that "the free development of all". The main difference between rights of title for private possession and for private ownership lies in commercial rights. A person who privately possesses woodworking tools is free to use the tools to mold toys for his children. Marx free development principle also permits the right to give these toys to friend's children. There is also no reason why such a toymaker could not make these toys to be sold. Marx would draw the line at this point (the sale of the homemade toys), but his free development principle does not appear to exclude toymaker from employing others to use his tools and work with him making toys for sale. As long as his workers choose to work for him and have other job opportunities, there seems to be no incompatibility between the toymaker's free development and his workers' free development. Were the owner or his workers prevented from freely choosing to earn their livelihood by making toys, others in the society would be exercising rights over toymakers' labor and to that extent the toymakers would not be free.

Marx' opposition to private employment and to wage labor is not implied by his own free development principle. The control of an individual's labor by the community can be both exploiting and alienating. Still, Marx' idea of private possession does differ from private ownership because of the limits upon exploitation caused by the narrow range of the domain of private ownables. Land and resources are not possible objects of Marx's private possession form. That land and resources must be communally owned places further limits upon the toymaker.

Source: James O. Grunebaum. Private Ownership. p. 128-140

Further reading:

1) The Concept of Ownership

2) Plato on Ownership

3) Aristotle on Ownership

4) Thomas Aquinas on Ownership

5) John Locke on Ownership

6) Immanuel Kant on Ownership

7) Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Ownership

8) David Hume on Ownership

9) John Rawls on Ownership

10) Robert Owen on Ownership

Robert Owen on Ownership

Robert Owen (1771-1878)

Children should be collectively educated

Robert Owen is probably best known in connection with the co-operative movement in England and the United States. Owen criticizes the education of his time for failing to take into account the truth that "character is formed for and not by the individual". Human character is molded by the environment and education thus; Owen's cure attempts to capitalize upon this carefully controlling early education. Children are to live in dormitories separated from their parents. They will be collectively educated not only in practical skills needed for work and in theoretical knowledge needed for understanding, but also in what Owen calls principles of unity and universal charity.

"... have created an aggregate of wealth, and placed it in the hands of a few, who by its aid, continue to absorb the wealth produced by the industry of the many. Thus the mass of the population are become mere slaves to the ignorance and caprice of the monopolists, and are far more truly helpless and wretched than they were before the names of Watt and Arkwright were known."

Private ownership forces workers to be employed by others

Owen has no theory of exploitation although he does recognize that private ownership of land and industry forces workers to be employed by others. Workers are not able to privately own sufficient quantities of land to be self-sufficient and self-employed. Workers who own neither land nor instruments of production must work for wages from others. Private ownership, therefore, permits the relatively small number of owners to enormously increase their wealth at the expense of the industrious classes who become, "poorer, more numerous, and more degraded". Without access to land workers cannot become self-sufficient or improve their conditions.

"But the lowest stage of humanity is experienced, when the individual must labor for a small pittance of wages from others - when he is not suffered to have land, from which, by his own labor, he may produce the meanest necessaries of life."

Owen further believes that private ownership fosters individual interests which place workers and owners in competition amongst themselves and with each other. Owen believes that competition among the owners also stimulates competition among workers. He believes that there is competition between workers and owners. He thinks that raising the wages of the workers inevitably will reduce the owners' profits.

Collectively owned home colonies

Owen's cure for these evils is the creation of a new kind of community for living and working. He calls these communities "the cottage system" and "home colonies". The home colonies are intended by Owen to be self-supporting, voluntary unions for mutual co-operation. These are communally owned, self-contained communities which provide for the needs of all their members and, if possible, their rational wants and desires. Owen envisions home colonies to be composed of members who freely choose to live there and who collectively own all of the land, buildings, machinery, and other assets of the colony. Colonies originally will be founded by privately financed joint-stock companies with the private investors ultimately being bought out from the surplus produced by the colony. Membership in the colony either will be generated from the children of its members or new members will be admitted from outside by a vote of the members.

Owen believes that agriculture should be the mainstay of the colony's production. He advocates the use of hand cultivation rather than the mechanical plough. Hand cultivation puts more people to work, he believes, and he thinks hand cultivation is more productive. Over and above producing the means of its own subsistence, a home colony is to provide decent living quarters, free education, medical care, baths, lecture rooms, art studios, dormitories for young persons, ets. The children of the colony live in dormitories, not with their parents and they are educated together.

Individualism is replaced by the principle of union

The work of each colony is to be shared and rotated among the members. While Owen is opposed to "minute division of labor", he believes in a division of labor based upon age and sex. Women are to cook, wash, clean and make garments. Men are employed on farms, buildings and manufacturing. Work should be performed in healthful conditions and no one should work so long as to endanger mental or physical health. Under these working conditions, Owen predicts that the products will be far better made with less labor. The home colonies shall unite all classes with good feelings to one another because working together and sharing in the products will destroy all contest and competition. Individualism will be replaced by the principle of union.

"There will be no occupation to be performed by one, which will not be equally performed by all; and by all far more willingly than any of the general affairs of life are now performed by any class, from the sovereign to the pauper".

Spirit of universal charity

As a result, members of the colony do not have the right to make individual decisions about the content or direction of their labor not do they have the right to the product, or the fraction of the product, produced by their talents, abilities, and effort. Owen would not believe these communal rights over the labor of the member of a colony to be a source of concern. He predicts that in the home colonies all classes will be united by good feelings and will be infused with a "spirit of universal charity". Further, he believes union will benefit all members because co-operative production will create more and better goods with less labor than will competition. Members should therefore have no reason to complain about subsidizing other of feel any loss or autonomy and self-determination.

Source: James O. Grunebaum. Private Ownership. 1987. p. 116-128

Further reading:

1) The Concept of Ownership

2) Plato on Ownership

3) Aristotle on Ownership

4) Thomas Aquinas on Ownership

5) John Locke on Ownership

6) Immanuel Kant on Ownership

7) Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Ownership

8) David Hume on Ownership

9) John Rawls on Ownership

John Rawls on Ownership

John Rawls (1921-2002)

Natural talents are not private but communally owned

John Rawls believes that ownership rules, as well as the rules which define justice are a product of delineration in an original position that decides upon the rules for society. In his book, A Theory of Justice, Rawls presents a most radical account of ownership of oneself. He argues that the distribution of natural talents must be regarded as a common asset and also that the distribution of natural abilities must be regarded as a collective asset. What is radical in Rawls' concept of self-ownership is that at least a part of oneself, i.e., one share of the distribution of natural talents or abilities, is not privately but collectively or communally owned.

Possessor of natural talent have no special right

According to Rawls the greater well-being of those who are well off is justified only if it is required to improve the condition of the lesser (or least) well off. Income therefore may need to be transferred to those with small incomes from those with large incomes. The difference principle implies that possessor of natural talents have no special right to the income their talents may earn in an economic system. Rights over the income from natural talents vest in all members of the community. Rawls does not suggest that the income be distributed equally, because that may lower the well-being of those who are less well off.

Rawls believes that justice requires incentives to stimulate production. He further believes that the difference principle captures the idea of a just distribution in that all members of the community would agree to the distribution if they considered the idea from the proper position. Collective ownership of natural talents or abilities, however, can most straightforwardly be understood as a right to the income from the talents or abilities which vests in each member of the community simply because of membership of the community.

Source: James O. Grunebaum. 1987. Private Ownership. p. 110-115.

Further reading:

1) The Concept of Ownership

2) Plato on Ownership

3) Aristotle on Ownership

4) Thomas Aquinas on Ownership

5) John Locke on Ownership

6) Immanuel Kant on Ownership

7) Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Ownership

8) David Hume on Ownership