Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Thursday, March 28th, 2024

Rights to Property

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Rights to Property

Property rights come from culture and community. One person living in isolation does not need to worry about property rights. However, when a number of people come together, they need to define and enforce the rules of access to and the benefits from property. In this way, the group or community defines the stream of benefits.

“This land is mine to use, enjoy, and treat as I wish.” Many property owners feel this way about their rights to land, and certainly, landowners possess many rights to the properties they hold. However, historical actions by governments and courts suggest that the property rights of private owners are shared with the public. Therefore, the definition of property rights can, and has, changed over time.

The right to life is the source of all rights – and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.

History shows that previously accepted concepts of property have changed with new conditions and passage of time. Early communities treated land and other natural resources as a communal resource held in joint ownership. Under feudalism, status in the community was directly related to the rights a person held in land. Let’s view the idea of English philosopher John Locke in this regard.

John Locke held strong views on the institution of property and on the sacredness of the right of property. Originally God had given the world to men in common and, therefore, nobody had any exclusive claim to anything. Though the land and all inferior creatures belonged to all, yet every person had the right of pro­perty in his own person. The labor of his body and the fruit of his labor was his. If he mixed his labor which was his own with the earth, the fruit of his labor became his own. By mixing his labor with something, man removes that thing from the common right of other men. A man’s labor fixed his right of property in the thing with which the labor was mixed because it represented an extension of his personality.

Locke proclaims that “everyman has a property in his person; this nobody has a right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hand, we may say, are properly his”. He argued that property ownership derives from one’s labor, though those who do not own property and only have their labor to sell should not be given the same political power as those who owned property. Laborers, small scale property owners and large scale property owners should have civil and political rights in proportion to the property they owned. According to Locke, the right to property and the right to life were inalienable rights, and that it was the duty of the State to secure these rights for individuals. Locke argued that the safeguarding of natural rights, such as the right to property, along with the separation of powers and other check and balances, would help to curtail political abuses by the state.

Locke’s theory of property is a theory of formation reinforced by the right of hereditary succession based on the law of nature. A man acquires the right of ownership in a thing which he forms by mixing his labor with it. By mixing his labor with any gift of nature, he does enclose it from the common for his exclusive use and ownership. The right of hereditary succession arises from the law of nature ordaining that a man must provide for his wife and children.

Locke started with his original premise of perfect human equality of rights but has justified an unequal distri­bution of world’s goods. His theory of property resulting from a man mixing his labor with earth and having as much as he actually needs may suit an agrarian society but will not do in a capitalist and industrial society. Locke tries to overcome this difficulty by introducing the element of money which gives a man a means of storing up property without wastage. Locke’s theory of proper from a man mixing his labor with earth led to later labor theories of value of Marx and others.

From Locke’s theory of the origin of property from the mixing of a man’s labor, it follows that the right to property existed even in the state of nature. As he put it, property is ‘without any express compact of all the commoners’. In other words, property existed before the social contract was entered into and did not result from it. According to Locke, the right to property is a right inherent in the individual because his labor is inherent in him. The society does not create the right to pro­perty and cannot justly regulate it. In fact, the society and state instead of being creators of property are creatures of it. Man created them to protect the prior right of property.

Man is an integral part of society and cannot have any inviolable rights against the society. The right to property must be related to the performance of a man’s duty to the state. His ideas regarding property are not applicable in the complex indus­trial society of today.

Hujjatullah Zia is an emerging writer of Daily Outlook Afghanistan. He can be reached at zia_hujjat@yahoo.com .

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