A while ago, our own Kevin Vallier wrote some provocative posts on why he thinks rights to property are deeply problematic. Most libertarian types think that property rights are robustly justified, indeed perhaps obviously justified. But Kevin thinks that property rights are coercive, or authoritative, and that this threatens their justification. In all honesty, libertarians should be as skeptical about property as their opponents are.

Kevin seems especially intrigued by some of Rousseau’s remarks on property. Rousseau, Kevin thinks, offers a much “deeper normative challenge” to property than libertarians commonly realize. Here’s an excerpt:

What Rousseau brings into focus is that, at the most fundamental level, property rights are coercive and so trigger a requirement of justification to those who are putatively disadvantaged by the property system.

Another example, this time offered in the context of Huemer’s arguments against political obligation (from our symposium on Huemer’s book):

[T]he second most pressing objection, if not the most pressing, is one that draws from the political tradition of the continental left that starts with Rousseau and runs through Hegel and Marx. These thinkers see the system of private property as a system of governance that stands in need of justification and that lacks such a justification. Such folk are tempted to agree with Noam Chomsky that, say, large capitalist firms are similar to states in the authority that they exercise over others. Perhaps they wouldn’t go so far as to call many corporations “totalitarian private tyrannies,” but they will argue that the systems of directives required to operate a market anarchist society rests on the widespread use of coercion and manipulation. And even in a private context, coercion and manipulation require justification apart from the fact that they bring about good consequences.

In this way, property is just like political authority, Kevin claims:

[An owner’s] property rights are supreme: there is no higher human authority than hers when it comes to her justly acquired property.

And:

with the authority of property rights comes an account of political obligation. Others are obliged to comply with her rights-respecting commands and she can coerce them into compliance if she views them as a credible threat.

See also Kevin’s follow-up post here.

Property rights are “coercive.” Property rights involve “manipulation.” Property even involves “political obligation.” Stronger still, property owners recognize “no higher human authority.” We might as well think of large-scale property owners as “totalitarian private tyrannies.”

Holy cow.

So what are we to make of these claims and indictments? Here’s the good news: these complaints are confused. Let’s start by considering Kevin’s claims that “property has authority” (he also sometimes says that “property owners have authority,” which seems like the more natural way of speaking, but let’s leave that confusing equivocation aside) and that “property is coercive.” What should we make of this?

Suppose we think about a simple case in which two neighbors, A and B, each own a piece a land. Presumably, to say that A and B are the owners of their land is to say that they each have a right against the other to their land. What precisely those rights come to is a complex issue, but let’s say they at least have the right to exclude the other. And let’s say that, as a flip-side, they each have a duty not to trespass on the other’s land. Should we say that A and B are coercing each other? Should we say that A and B are exercising authority over each other?

Kevin is free, of course, to define his terms as he pleases. And I don’t want to get into a fight here over the proper definition of terms. I don’t care about that sort of thing. But it seems fair to say that at the very least, these are unnatural ways of describing what A and B are doing to each other.

Consider some of the things we ordinarily count as coercion: physical force and threats. I simply do not see how these might apply to A and B and their property. A is not physically forcing B to stay of his land. And even though it is A’s land, whether A may force B to stay off is an open question (contrary to what Kevin says). A is not trying to get B to stay off his land by threatening B. And whether A may threaten B in this way is an open question (contrary to what Kevin says). All that is true of A and B is that they have rights against each other, and that (other things equal) they should respect these rights. That seems pretty far removed from what we ordinary think of as “coercion.”

But maybe I am just mistaken about this. Let’s suppose that I am. Or maybe Kevin has a different sense of coercion in mind. One thing is clearly true: A’s property rights limit the freedom that B would otherwise have had, and vice versa. But surely that is not enough for these rights to be coercive – or at least not coercive in any sense that is interesting. Compare, for example, our rights to our bodies. These limit the freedom people otherwise would have had. When I sit on my stool, you cannot also sit there without violating my right to my body. So are my rights to my body coercive? Kevin seems committed to saying that they are. Nothing about the example of A and B changes if we substitute bodies for property. But (whatever we want to say about “coercion”) it is clearly false that this simple fact shows that our bodily rights are deeply problematic. (And it is plainly ridiculous to say that people who have really big bodies resemble “totalitarian private tyrannies.”)

Can the “authority” claims help? Honestly, I don’t see how they could. For, again, everything Kevin says about property, we can say about rights across the board. And whatever else might be said about rights, property, or authority, we can safely say that these observations pose some “deep normative challenge” to our rights to our bodies.*

So Kevin’s argument either indicts not just property rights, but all rights that allow people to exclude others, including rights over their bodies. Or Kevin’s arguments do not indict property rights. Whichever of these two options may be correct (I know which one I think is true), Kevin’s objections do not strike against property rights in particular.

It is safe to say, then, that these worries are simply misguided. Perhaps Kevin’s Rousseau-inspired arguments have something interesting things to teach us. But the conclusion that property rights are somehow especially problematic is not among them.

In closing, let me stress something that irks me about these types of arguments. Kevin – and many of the critics of libertarian thought that invoke these types of Rousseauian arguments – pretend as if these arguments strike only against the kind of strong property rights libertarians typically favor. (The title of Kevin’s first post, after all, is “Rousseau’s Challenge to Libertarianism.”) But that is simply not what this argument supports – even if it were correct (which it is not). It does not differentiate between strong property rights and not-so-strong property rights. It indicts property rights for what they are – claims to exclude others – and not-so-strong property rights are still property rights.

* Kevin talks about the “authority of property” in the context of Huemer’s arguments about political authority. Again, Kevin is free to define his terms as he pleases, including in confusing ways. But, for the record, there is a clear difference between two cases: (a) insisting that people respect your moral rights, and (b) claiming the kind of authority that governments claim over their subjects. Governments claim the power to create new rights and duties for their subjects over and above those that they already possess as a matter of morality. The former (a) does not.

Here’s another difference. Political authorities cannot (if they are to be true or effective authorities, at least) accept that their subjects have the same authority with respect to them. But people who insist on their rights or freedoms can and should recognize other people’s like claims. (In fact, the grounds on which I can insist on my rights and freedom also make it the case that others can. Not so for political authority.)