Rethinking Common Versus Private Property

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12142
• Date: 01 March 2016
• Published date: 01 March 2016
• Author: David Ellerman

Rethinking Common Versus

Private Property

By DAVI D ELLERMAN

ABSTRACT. The Commons/Green Movement seems to have accepted

that the current system is based on the principles of private property,

and then has juxtaposed the notion of common property to private

property. In fact, the current system is based on violations of the

principle on which private ownership is supposed to rest, namely, the

principle of people getting the fruits of their labor. The Commons

Movement should critique the current system as an abuse of private

property both in how it treats the products of labor as well as how it

treats that which is not the fruits of anyone’s labor (natural resources).

When private property is refounded on its just foundation, then

economic enterprises would be democratic firms such as worker

cooperatives, and the ground would be cleared to apply special

arrangements to natural resources, which are not the productsof labor.

Introduction: Outline of the Argument

The purpose of this article is to suggest a rethinking of the common-

versus-private framing of the property rights issue. The underlying nor-

mative principle we will use is simply the basic juridical principle that

people should be legally responsible for the (positive and negative)

results of their actions, i.e., that legal or de jure responsibility should be

imputed in accordance with de facto responsibility. In the context of

property rights, the responsibility principle is the old idea that property

should be founded on people getting the (positive or negative) fruits of

their labor, which is variously called the labor or natural rights theory

of property (Schlatter 1951).

1

For instance, the responsibility principle is behind the Green Move-

ment’s criticism of the massive pollution and spoliation by corporations

that do not bear the costs or legal responsibility for their activities. Ordi-

nary economics shows that markets do not function efficiently in the

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 75, No. 2 (March, 2016).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12142

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C2016 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

presence of these “negative externalities.” The responsibility principle

shows that there is injustice involved as well, not just inefficiency, and

that aspect is overlooked by conventional economics. (The injustice

consists of the mis-imputation of responsibility.)

The current economic system institutionalizes forms of social irre-

sponsibility that go far beyond the topic of negative externalities.

Indeed, the forms of socialized irresponsibility embodied in Wall Street

capitalism are behind the current economic crisis, although the roots

are much older. In recent decades, the American model of Wall Street

capitalism has been promoted as an “advanced” model of a market

economy to be emulated not only in the industrialized countries but

also in the post-socialist and developing worlds. Hence the recent crisis

provides the opportunity to finally discredit the idea that this

“advanced” form of socialized irresponsibility should be emulated by

anyone. That is the topic of thenext section.

But our main point goes much deeper than just a tamed or reformed

version of capitalism; it goes to the form of private property behind the

system. The ideology of the current system seems to have convinced

those on both the Left and Right that the current system is based on the

principles of private property so that anyone who opposes the current

system is an “enemy of private property” itself, as the Commons and

Green Movements are often portrayed (and as some members of those

movements may portray themselves). We will see that practically the

opposite is true.

Like the old system of chattel slavery, the current property system is

“a” private property system, but it is grounded on violating the very

responsibility principle upon which property appropriation and other

juridicalimputationsaresupposedtorest.Whenprivatepropertyis

refounded on the responsibility principle (or the labor theory of prop-

erty), then a very different system emerges, in which firms are worker

cooperatives (or similar workplace democracies) and in which people

appropriate the positive and negative fruits of their labor. Moreover, this

refounding of property on the responsibility principle provides no basis

to treat the products of nature as if they were ordinary private property.

The rethinking of private property will take place in two steps: (1)

undoing the “brain-washing” ideology that the usual form of enterprise

is based on “private ownership of the means of production” and (2) the

The American Journal of Economics and Sociology320