In his engaging new book, David James argues that in the history of philosophical accounts of property, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Marx comprise a tradition that has something to teach readers interested in the enduring puzzles posed by the institution of property, offering a distinct way into their solution. Philosophers in this tradition, on his telling, share two ideas that allow them to overcome the shortcomings of two other, arguably more familiar, approaches to property. These approaches are well-represented by Locke and Hume, respectively.

Locke, as is well-known, anchors his account of private property in an account of original acquisition, arguing that, subject to certain restrictions, persons can acquire property in unowned things by mixing their labour with them (Locke Reference Locke and Laslett1689: 287-8). They can do this because, though in the state of nature the world is held in common, each of us has a property in our person, and so in that with which we mix our labour. Locke’s readers have taken issue with a number of aspects of this argument, questioning, for example, the coherence of the idea of self-ownership on which it seems to rest (for example Harris Reference Harris1996: 196) and asking why it follows from mixing some thing that you own with some thing that you do not own that you acquire the second rather than relinquish the first (Nozick Reference Nozick1974: 174-5).

James’s concerns are elsewhere. As James reads him, Locke derives from his justification of original acquisition the condition that, in mixing their labour with it, would-be appropriators must add value to that which they hope to acquire. The questions then arise:

James’s point is not that these questions are especially vexing, but rather that an acceptable account of property must recognize that there must be some way to answer them that everyone will accept – that there is, in his words, a ‘moment of recognition’ involved in a person’s claim that they have acquired property in something.

This points to the fundamental flaw in Locke’s account, namely that it casts ownership as a person-thing relation. In James’s terms, Locke’s account thereby rests on one of two concepts of property; the contrast is with forms of property, on which more in a moment. Now, a quibble: ‘concept’ could, I think, have been more sharply defined by James; I take it that a concept of property comprises a view about its foundation and a view about its structure. We might understand property in terms of either of two structures: as a dyadic, person-thing, relationship, or a triadic relationship between persons, mediated by things. Common among Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Marx is that each understands property as a relationship between persons mediated by things. This, James argues, is nearly explicit in Kant, plainly explicit in Fichte, implicit in Hegel, and taken for granted by Marx.

It is nearly explicit in Hume as well. Property, on his account, arises as a matter of convention, and so at its foundation rests on a relationship among persons. The problem with Hume’s account, James argues, is the contingency in it of the relationship between the concept and the form of property. Property may take either of two forms: (1) private or (2) common or collective. The distinguishing feature of private ownership is that a holder of private property has the right to freely dispose of it – to sell or give it to whomever they choose and, subject to constraints against harming other persons or damaging their property, to use it, or, indeed, render it unusable, as they like. Because his defence of private property rests on a claim about the greater overall utility it secures,

James’s point is not that these claims are in principle unjustifiable, but rather that it is a tall order to prove that some ends are more valuable than others and that some institutional arrangements are more likely than other others to realize them.

It is a virtue of the Kant-to-Marx tradition that it does not bear this burden. It does not bear this burden because common among Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Marx is the idea that there is an internal connection between the concept of property rights and the justification of the specific form it ought to take. Both are anchored in freedom. On each account, James argues, ‘[f]reedom is accorded an overriding value and the necessity of property’ as well as the form it should take ‘is explained in terms of how it is a condition of freedom rather than a way of maximizing it’ (p. 10).

Now, though they agree that property is anchored in freedom, that it exhibits a triadic structure, and that there is an internal relationship between the concept and form of property – and so overcome the shortcomings of the Lockean and Humean approaches – there is less consensus within the Kant-to-Marx tradition on what form property should take. Kant and Hegel defend the right to private property; Fichte and Marx argue that property ought to be held in common or collectively. Does this mean that one or more have got the form of property wrong, and one or more right? That is not the conclusion James wants to draw. Instead, he offers two other answers.

(1) We can think of the Kant-to-Marx tradition as pluralist with respect to the form, though not the concept, of property, allowing that ‘different forms of property are justifiable in terms of such considerations as the type of thing involved and the aspect of freedom at stake’ (pp. 13-14). It is not clear how deeply James takes this pluralism to go, and perhaps he understates it. He takes it as evidence, for example, that, notwithstanding his defence of private property, Hegel is a pluralist about form owing to his defence of state-owned property such as public poorhouses, hospitals, and streetlights (p. 129). Probably everyone is a pluralist in this sense. The form-pluralism across the Kant-to-Marx tradition runs rather more deeply, however: compare the modest role Hegel accords to state-owned property with Marx’s call for the abolition of private property (at least when it comes to capital).

And arguably the pluralism in the Kant-to-Marx tradition runs deeper still. While one can reasonably understand each, as James does, as anchoring property in freedom, what ‘freedom’ means for each is significantly different. There is a kind of ambiguity in James’s formulation of their common ground; as we saw above: freedom, on each account, ‘is accorded an overriding value and the necessity of property is explained in terms of how it is a condition of freedom rather than a way of maximizing it’ (p. 10). This trades between casting freedom as a good (an overriding value is still something valued) and as a matter of the right. There is this and other diversity in the conceptions of freedom in the Kant-to-Marx tradition. As James argues, on Kant’s account, the freedom at stake in the justification of property is independence and, as Arthur Ripstein puts it, for Kant, independence ‘is not a good to be promoted; it is a constraint on the conduct of others’ (Ripstein Reference Ripstein2009: 15). Fichte, too, understands freedom to be a kind of independence (p. 57), but, as James explains it, for Fichte ‘leisure time’ – a good, and a broadly material one – ‘is the sphere of freedom the rational state secures for all its citizens’ (p. 84). The freedom enabled by property on Hegel’s account is the exercise of the free will of the owner. And on Marx’s account, the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production is a condition of the ‘free development of each’ because it is a condition of a return to each person of control over their productive powers. These are importantly, and rather deeply, different senses of ‘freedom’.

(2) On the other hand, perhaps the differences in form are not after all as significant as they seem. James argues that, in different ways, both Kant’s and Hegel’s accounts of property offer more support for common or collective ownership than they recognize. His arguments are careful and challenging, and too complex to engage in much detail here. I will, however, quickly sketch, and raise a concern with, his reading of Kant on this point.

Property, on Kant’s account, is a matter of acquired right, a kind of extension of the innate right to freedom, that is, to ‘independence from being constrained by another’s choice’, which each may exercise as each chooses ‘insofar as it [that exercise of freedom] can coexist with the freedom of every other in accordance with a universal law’ (MM, 6: 237). On James’s reconstruction, Kant can get from the innate right to freedom to acquired rights in property by showing that independence requires that we have such rights over places and things. And here, James argues, Kant overstates his case: independence requires each of us to have control over places and things, but not to also have the right to freely dispose of them. Contrary to his own representations, Kant justifies use-rights, not full liberal ownership (as others, for example, Westphal Reference Westphal1997, have argued; in reply see, recently, Stone and Hasan Reference Stone and Hasan2022). Thinking through the conditions under which independence can be secured suggests, as well, that Kant was too quick to reconcile himself to a property requirement for voting, and the passive/active citizenship distinction he drew to frame it (TP, 8: 295).

Kant’s error here, James argues, reflects ‘a more fundamental tension between a priori principles of right and an a posteriori view of independence’ (p. 22):

This strikes me as a compelling point, but arguably the claim that Kant can only justify a right to use rather than full liberal ownership suffers from an analogous (category or category-like) error. As Stone and Hasan argue, one cannot spell out the conditions of a system of usufruct – which in some contexts bears a narrow and technical sense, but is meant by Stone and Hasan to mean ‘use-rights’ – in the purely formal terms that Kant’s argument requires:

So James’s case against Kant’s endorsement of a property qualification for voting might, on pain of inconsistency, commit him to allowing Kant’s evident support for full liberal ownership rights.

Or so one might argue. There are, of course, complexities, both conceptual and interpretive. As Mary Gregor famously remarked of his treatment of property, ‘Kant has never been accused of underestimating his readers, but he seldom treats them so harshly’ (Gregor Reference Gregor1988: 787). James has made a significant contribution to work on Kant’s account of property and the tradition he identifies and in which he places Kant. His book is rich in detail and carefully argued, integrating interpretation and analysis in a way that should be of interest to a broad audience, whose attention to his work will be well rewarded.