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Self-Ownership, Property Right and Freedom: Re-Conceiving Property

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Self-Ownership, Property Right and Freedom: Re-Conceiving Property SELF-OWNERSHIP, PROPERTY RIGHT AND FREEDOM: RE-CONCEIVING PROPERTY IN OURSELVES by MATTHEW LEE SCHNEIDER (Under the Direction of Victoria Davion) ABSTRACT The self-ownership thesis claims that all persons own themselves and therefore have overriding control of their bodies and labor. Libertarians have argued that the self-ownership thesis also generates robust property rights to things produced with one’s labor, and prohibits redistributive taxation of any sort. Robert Nozick, in particular, argues for robust property rights not only to the products of one’s labor but to natural resources, which on his view can be acquired without the consent of others. I argue that the self-ownership thesis generates a host of desirable individual rights and freedoms, and conditions property and other normative rights to the products of our labor and resources in the world so as to protect and enhance individual freedom and autonomy to pursue a good life. However, I argue against the libertarian analysis of self-ownership, concluding that self-ownership does not justify full, liberal property rights to the products of one’s labor, nor does self-ownership generate unilateral rights to appropriate natural resources, or prohibit restrictions to the privatization of these resources, so long as these restrictions do not abrogate individual freedom and autonomy to pursue a good life. INDEX WORDS: Self-ownership, Property rights, Motherhood, Parental rights, Capital resources, Natural resources, Cohen, Okin, Nozick, Libertarianism, Liberalism, Rawls, Flourishing, Welfare, Production SELF-OWNERSHIP, PROPERTY RIGHT AND FREEDOM: RE-CONCEIVING PROPERTY IN OURSELVES by MATTHEW LEE SCHNEIDER BA, The College of Wooster, 2001 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2010 © 2010 Matthew Lee Schneider All Rights Reserved SELF-OWNERSHIP, PROPERTY RIGHT AND FREEDOM: RE-CONCEIVING PROPERTY IN OURSELVES by MATTHEW LEE SCHNEIDER Major Professor: Victoria Davion Committee: Richard Winfield Melissa Seymour Fahmy Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2010 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation could not have been written without the insight and support of my committee and the faculty of the philosophy department at the University of Georgia. I could not have completed this task without the love and support of my partner, Jessie Lynn Johnson. Thank you. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................................................................... iv CHAPTER 1 Introduction and Common Concerns with Self-Ownership..........................................1 Overview: Self-Ownership .....................................................................................1 Self-Ownership: Locke and Nozick........................................................................2 Why Self-Ownership is Important..........................................................................8 Rights of Non-Interference.....................................................................................8 Liberty ..................................................................................................................10 Property Rights in External Resources.................................................................12 Just Deserts: What are we owed on the self-ownership thesis? ...........................14 Abandoning Self-Ownership? ..............................................................................32 2 Child Ownership .........................................................................................................35 Okin’s Main Objection .........................................................................................36 Okin and the incoherence of Nozickean Libertarianism.......................................39 Jeske’s Proposal....................................................................................................46 MacIntosh’s Solution............................................................................................51 Ownership constraints and the Lockean proviso ..................................................58 Solving MacIntosh’s Problem...............................................................................63 Rejecting the production yields property theory...................................................63 vi Parental rights, child-welfare and the emergence of self-ownership ....................70 Transitional stages .................................................................................................72 3 Self-Ownership and World Ownership.......................................................................74 What constitutes harm?.........................................................................................79 Analyzing acquisition ...........................................................................................86 Cohen’s analysis ...................................................................................................92 Conclusion ............................................................................................................95 4 Self-Ownership, Liberty and Property Rights .........................................................98 The Future of the Self-Ownership Thesis...........................................................108 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................................114 1 Chapter 1: Introduction and Common Concerns with Self-Ownership Overview: Self-Ownership The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the conceptual strength of the self-ownership thesis in relation to some particularly difficult challenges. The self-ownership thesis claims that all persons have full and exclusive property rights to their own person. For proponents of self- ownership, it provides the basis of political and economic association. For detractors, self- ownership is variously analyzed as paradoxical, unjustified, and without legs to generate the rules of political and economic association that proponents believe it to provide. The goal of the first chapter is to show that the self-ownership thesis is at least a reasonable starting point for political justice. I shall accomplish two general tasks. First, I will explain the thesis, its roots in Locke’s writing and in contemporary libertarian literature such as Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia, and provide some reasons why the thesis is attractive to its advocates. My next task is to discuss self-ownership’s vulnerabilities and vagaries – prima facie reasons to reject the thesis, especially in the context of contemporary political liberalism. My aim in this second task is not to prove that self-ownership is beyond reproach or that it could never actually lead to the objections laid out against it. Rather, I wish to show that these objections are themselves not inevitable. They do not necessarily arise from the self-ownership thesis, and I believe solutions to such problems are attainable. 2 Self-Ownership: Locke and Nozick The self-ownership thesis claims that all persons have robust1, exclusive property rights in their own person. These property rights generate both negative claims against other persons and positive liberties, which are conditioned by others’ negative rights to varying degrees. In political philosophy, the self-ownership thesis is generally attributed to Locke’s Second Treatise, though it is by no means limited to Locke’s writing or to neo-Lockean political philosophy. For example, Gerald Cohen claims that many Marxists and perhaps even Marx himself implicitly rely upon some sort of concept of self-ownership to explain the exploitation of workers’ labor power by capitalists, though it is unclear on a Marxian view whether or not this exploitation is in fact unjust.2 That Locke believed persons, or ‘men’ own themselves is made clear in the Second Treatise.3 However, Locke does not give us a clear picture of why we should think this is so. Elsewhere in the Second Treatise, he claims that as man’s creator, God owns all persons.4 It may be difficult to see how God owns all persons, yet each person owns themselves. However, an explanation of man’s self-ownership may be had on Locke’s account. Though Locke claims God gave the entire world to humanity in common, each person must take possession of worldly resources in order to sustain him or herself. All persons must sustain themselves because they are God’s property.5 However, the only way Locke can make 1 I refer to property rights as ‘robust’ throughout this thesis. By ‘robust’ I mean that these rights grant significant, overriding control of the use and disposal of property to owners, constrained only by similar property rights of others. Robust property rights are the sorts of property rights that libertarians such as Nozick defend. 2 Gerald Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 144-148. 3 John Locke, Two Treatises on Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), II, § 27. 4 Locke, Two Treatises on Government, II, § 6. 5 Locke, Two Treatises on Government, II, § 6. 3 sense of a person’s coming to possess things in the world is if they own themselves and by extension, their labor. As a result, it seems that on Locke’s view, God owns all persons (as creator)
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