Fill the earth and subdue it

"Property is theft!" cried out Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his 1840 book, What Is Property? The father of Anarcho-Syndicalism was echoing Jean-Jacques Rousseau's view (see Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, 1755) that the blame for most "crimes, wars and murders . . . horrors and misfortunes . . . slavery and misery" of civil society resides with the first "imposter" who "enclosed a piece of ground," declared it his exclusive property, "and found people simple enough to believe him." The French historian, political philosopher, and statesman Alexis de Tocqueville keenly observed that a principal trait of any socialist movement, whether peaceful-utopian or revolutionary, was some devious scheme to destroy, transform, diminish, and control our private economic sphere.

In his Second Treatise on Civil Government, John Locke explains the origin of individual property and helps us understand why economic systems hostile to this institution have not and cannot thrive. Chapter Five encourages people who are simple enough to believe in the moral superiority of socialism ("even if it is not practical") to test their views. Locke begins with the observation that God has given "the world to all men in common," a mandate to rule over it, and "reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life and convenience."

For the concept of free will to be more than abstract theology, we must agree that "every man has a property in his own person." As such, man owns the labor of his own body. If I take a shell from the beach, a fish from the ocean, a sip of water from the river, or a pebble from the mountain, these previously "common" items become mine. Locke's explanation makes it easier to see how things that we remove from their natural state and mix with our own labor become our private property---"subduing . . . the earth, and having dominion . . . are joined together. The one gave title to the other." Trying to reconstruct society on different principles ignores human nature---we always do so at our own peril.