Challenges to Libertarian’s Property Right Premises

Each libertarian philosopher approaches the concept of property rights differently. There are two categories of libertarianism. The first is broad libertarianism, a political view that advocates a major shift in the direction of free markets and limited government. The second category is called strict libertarianism. It is more philosophical in its orientation and advocates for individual liberty, which is the absence of interference with a person’s body and rightfully acquired property. The role of government in a libertarian view is to protect individual life and property from aggression by others. Classical libertarians emphasize individual freedom, free trade, and strict limitations on political authority. Objectivists believe that the right to life is the source of all other rights, and the primary role of a government is to protect man’s inalienable rights.

In essence, all types of libertarians have similar approaches to defining rights. Private property is one of the central themes of all libertarians, and they face a common challenge in their approaches to property rights. This essay focuses on Ayn Rand and John Locke's philosophical views on property rights. It accounts for the challenges libertarians have with their premises of property rights.

There are three approaches to property rights premises in the libertarian view. First, it is the natural rights approach to property that defines property rights from the perspective of human nature and the natural state. John Locke is one of the prominent advocates of the natural rights theory of property. He believes that in the natural state, the earth belongs to mankind in common, and the purpose of the land is to use it for our benefit. Based on the concept of self-ownership, Locke believes that anybody can own external resources and land by mixing their labor and cultivating the land. In his Second Treatise, Locke wrote, “Every man has a property in his person: this nobody has any right to but himself.”

The other approach to property rights is the consequentialist approach. Private property rights are important because they internalize both positive and negative externalities. Property rights incentivize productive labor, and land ownership encourages farmers to produce more. The negative externalities are discouraged by private property rights. You can’t violate or theft the labor of others without prior consent. The main argument is that property rights incentivize the productive use of land and other resources. Friedrich Hayek is another consequentialist thinker who believes that private property allows the use of local knowledge and decentralization of decision-making.

Finally, we have the objectivist approach to property. Ayn Rand is the architect of the objectivist approach to property rights. Property right is grounded in an individual’s right to life. Man has to work and produce to support his life through the effort and the guidance of his mind. Both Rand and Locke's approaches align with the natural rights theory. Ayn Rand's approach paves the way for a philosophical foundation for capitalism. Private ownership of things entails that you trade your products with others. Ayn Rand defines capitalism as “the relations between private owners of non-personal means of production (land, mines, industrial plants, etc., collectively known as capital) and free but capital-less workers, who sell their labor services to employers.”

Libertarian of all camps faces strong challenges to their approaches to property rights. One such challenge is the argument of historical injustice. The libertarian approach to property is derived from a historical analysis. This analysis derives its premises from John Locke's theory of natural rights. The justice of any particular distribution of resources depends on the process by which that distribution came about. Contemporary critics believe that the property arrangements of the actual capitalist societies did not arise “from a just situation by just steps.”

The second challenge to libertarian approaches to property is the acquisition of natural resources. The claim is that we are entitled to what we produce, but whatever we produce is produced with natural resources. The challenge here is who produced natural resources because we didn’t produce they. This dilemma raises the justification of property rights in natural resources.

The libertarian conception of property rights also creates bad consequences. The issue of coordination among many property owners is one challenge to initiating large-scale projects such as interstate highways. The second bad consequence is the large-scale externalities, such as global climate change.

The Libertarian property argument stems from individualistic philosophy. The self-ownership approach is the most influential expression within all camps of libertarian philosophers. The premise of self-ownership sets the basis for all other rights. Locke, Rand, and other libertarians emphasize the right to life as the epitome of property rights. The tenets of libertarian philosophy have been challenged on the arguments of historical injustice, which criticizes the ignorance of capitalists over land appropriation in the past. The economic argument also challenges the belief that capitalists, as mere owners of capital, earn their money not through labor but through their possession of a scarce resource needed by others. The moral injustice approach criticizes the appropriation of land by capitalists. As the land itself was not created by anybody, and landlords hold no just title to their land through mixing their labor. The property argument and its challenges within libertarian theories compel us to ponder other issues that pose similar challenges to libertarian tenets, such as legalizing marijuana, sexual labor, abortion, and privacy.