The individual capacity to claim ownership of value does not entail an intrinsic right to own property, but, I argue, this right is objectively normative nonetheless: it is a necessary condition of authority and responsibility – the capacity to attribute the consequences of action to self – and is therefore indispensable to agency. All authority is reducible to individual ownership of action. Any alternative justification of authority, such as collectivism, socialism, communism, is unavoidably parasitic on actions ‘owned’ by individuals, amounting to a performative contradiction. I also show that this must not be taken as a blanket endorsement of capitalism.

Whenever we act intentionally we exercise the capacity to discriminate between more or less valuable possibilities of action, and thus we endow value on the intended action: “having intentions involves belief in the value of what they intend.” (Raz 2015, 1) This capacity is conditional. We need to have exclusive control of what we do and of the means of doing it in order to be actually doing it. This entails exclusive control of the value we endow in addition to possessing (at least temporarily) the means of endowment, which is just what property rights are about. Another way, without acting on reasons taken to be ‘my’ reasons it would be a mystery in what sense intention would differ from compulsion, and ‘my’ action from something merely happening with me. Property rights and self-ownership (Cohen 1995) empower us as creative, ethical agents, without whom there would be no endowment of value and no responsibility for the consequences of action.

If creativity is beneficial to all agents, then adequate property rights, being a condition of value-creation, are also (instrumentally, not intrinsically) valuable to all. But self-ownership and the property rights over the value we create are still not sufficient conditions of value-creation. Exclusive control (even if only temporary) of some limited space and resources is also necessary to create and subsequently preserve value, therefore property rights must extend to space and resources. Since space and natural resources are not, in their natural state, a product of anyone’s action, these become property only by appropriation. The individual has no better claim than the collective to this form of value and the rules according to which resources can be appropriated are not objectively normative. Individuals are still the only agents capable of establishing such rules, but the rules have common authority only on account of consensus among value-endowing agents. Parts of the usable space and resources may therefore be reserved for common or collective uses, although the community does not, in its own right, have a claim on the individually endowed component of value.

Any departure from these logical imperatives would go against the rationale for creating value, insofar as value were collectively appropriated to begin with, in favour of partaking in collective appropriation by threat or force. Private property rights are therefore a condition of peaceful, collaborative society. According to Hume “it will be for my interest to leave another in the possession of his goods, provided he will act in the same manner with regard to me… When this common sense of interest is mutually expressed, and is known to both, it produces a suitable resolution and behaviour…” (Hume 1978, p490). Where private property rights are systemically rejected, one has more to gain by taking than creating. Under the collectivist ideology this reduces to the following dictum: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” (Marx 1875)

While individualism is focussed on the conflict between individual interests, and on self-interest as the primary motivation for group formation, collectivism emphasises the conflict between interests of the individual and interests of the (hypothetical) collective agency, where interests of the collective are taken to be absolute. It may be the case that our agential existence and prosperity does in some fundamental way depend on the existence and prosperity of others, on humanity and perhaps on life in general, but this does not diminish the logical dependence of agential existence and the capacity for ethical responsibility on private ownership of action. Action makes sense only if there is attribution of limited but exclusive control to an agent, which entails ownership of action as the source of value-endowment. Socialism, Communism, or any other political ideology based on primacy of collective ownership is realisable only insofar as it implicitly negates, to a degree, the agential capacity of individuals, which in turn negates their creative capacity and ethical responsibility. What necessarily follows is erosion of the existing value-supply without replenishment and, subsequently, corruption of the collectivist ideology in favour of individual survival. Collectivism is immanently self-defeating and therefore bound to result in misery for all.

The above argument should not be taken as a blanket endorsement of capitalism; there are components of contemporary capitalism that restrict the capacity of individuals to claim ownership of the value generated by their own actions. A case in point may be the existing intellectual property law. In granting pecuniary interest in all activities covered by a patent to the owner of the patent, anyone who would independently develop a similar technology but had failed to purchase a patent, even if that occurred at an earlier date, may be liable to pay royalties to the owner of the patent. Another example may be fractional reserve banking, allowing for unbacked expansion of the money supply (tokens of claim on the value of goods and services) and charging pecuniary interest on the expanded amount without creating any new value. I have discussed the inequity of bank-credit and the associated monetary expansion in Kowalik 2015.

Cohen, G.A. Self-ownership, Freedom and Equality . Cambridge University Press, 1995.

. Cambridge University Press, 1995. Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature . Clarendon Press, 1978 [1739].

. Clarendon Press, 1978 [1739]. Kowalik, Michael. A Monetary Case for Value-Added Negative Tax . Real-World Economics Review, 2015.

. Real-World Economics Review, 2015. Marx, Karl. Critique of the Gotha Program . 1875.

. 1875. Raz, Joseph. Intention and Value. Public Law & Legal Theory Working Paper, Columbia Law School, 2015.

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