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Before we attend to the arguments of either defenders or critics of property, the first and most basic step is to make clear our object of study. We need, in other words, to establish exactly what private property is. We need to get a proper grip on the meaning of this key concept before we can justify (or criticise) it. This task is not a straightforward one. The distinction between conceptual explication (what property is) and normative justification (why property is valuable) is a potentially slippery one. There is a danger that any account of the conceptual character of property – no matter how stark or ostensibly anodyne – may end up smuggling in features that are highly relevant to its justification. This danger is well worth highlighting from the outset.

Perhaps all concepts are potentially capable of having a politically controversial definition. From the sheer contingency of both conceptual meaning (that ideas are changed and developed over time and are open to differing cultural interpretations) and the apparently inexhaustible possibilities for political contestation, it would seem to follow that there are no politically neutral concepts. For example, gorgonzola is widely accepted to be a blue-veined cheese exclusively produced in an established number of Italian areas (in the regions of Lombardy and Piedmont). Its character and geographical identity are defined and policed by a supra-national quality assurance benchmark which is rooted in cultural practices, enshrined by rules, and protected by a legal apparatus. The definition of gorgonzola is nevertheless contingent. There could, in principle, be new provinces added to the list of legitimate producers, or (heaven forfend) the manufacturing process could be changed. Although there would seem to be nothing inherently political about the conceptual meaning of gorgonzola, we can easily see how its definition could become hotly disputed. We can appreciate that were gorgonzola to be conceptually redefined as a cheese designated as creatable in Lombardy but not in Piedmont, there would undoubtedly be considerable uproar. Such a redefinition is nevertheless possible and always has the potential to be politically controversial. What is at issue in the definition of such social concepts is not a matter of scientific fact, but of cultural interpretation. There is no such thing as a politically neutral definition of conceptual meaning: even the most ordinary concepts are ripe for politicisation.

Though the contingency of meaning obviously broadens the scope of conceptual contestability, some ideas are evidently prone to perennial politicisation. One of the most famous examples is the idea of freedom. There have been long-standing debates about whether freedom is conceivable only as the predicate of an action and therefore whether the relevant obstacles to its exercise must be solely physical in nature. Critics of this familiar, ‘negative’ understanding of freedom (associated with the political thought of Thomas Hobbes) argue that it has normative implications that belie its ostensible starkness and neutrality. Such a definition of freedom is, after all, incapable of ruling out the possibility of merely threatened interference as a source of infringement worth worrying about politically. We can imagine a scenario wherein an absolute ruler seeks to dominate and control the behaviour of their subjects through fear, without actually acting to reduce their physical freedom.² According to this negative conception, if there is no physical interference, the tyrant in question – no matter what threats have been issued – has done nothing to limit or curtail the freedom of his subjects. As Hillel Steiner (1994: 23) observes in his defence of the negative account of freedom, the great irony of the line in The Godfather when Vito Corleone talks of making his enemy ‘an offer he can’t refuse’ (to comply or be killed) is that the victim of the threat could, in principle, refuse compliance. The fact that there could be such a refusal supposedly reveals the victim’s freedom to be technically unimpeded by the threat. Putting aside the issue of its practical, political entailments, the negative definition of freedom also has theoretical implications through its crowding out of alternative understandings. It rules out, for example, a more demanding conception of freedom as a kind of existential condition, which would imply the existence of – and therefore the need for political attention to – potentially mental or cultural as well as material obstacles to its exercise. As long as the negative definition is accepted, discussions about the protection or value of freedom within a community thus proceed without heed to such potential obstacles. The example of freedom indicates just how porous the boundary between conceptual and normative analysis can be. Even the barest conceptual definition can have considerable political resonance.

Philosophical analysis of property likewise disturbs the border between the conceptual and the normative in ways that can be quite glaring. The question what is property? cannot be approached innocently. It is practically impossible to define the concept in uncontroversial, apolitical terms, even when the discussion assumes (as ours does) that we are talking about private property specifically, rather than other forms. For example, the right to bequeath an owned holding to another person after death is very often included as a core part of the concept. Yet the ascription of this capacity as a definitive feature of property rights would seem to foreclose, or at the least limit, certain normative questions about the legitimacy of the state acting to tax or redistribute things that are owned. If having the right to bequeath my property is part of what it means to own something, then the case for taxing the transfer becomes a much harder sell. On the other hand, any decision to deny that the concept of property includes the power to bequeath – and instead assume that individuals do not have such rights to hold against the redistributive authority of the state – appears just as guilty of smuggling an equivalent normative claim into an austerely analytic definition. If the right to bequeath property is not part of what it means to own it, there seems no obvious argument against its taxation or even confiscation following the owner’s death.³ Questions about the meaning of private property thus inescapably intrude on questions about its fair distribution. In doing so, they invite consideration of other political concepts, such as freedom, justice, and equality, which will make various appearances during our subsequent discussions.

There is then no neat separation between conceptual definition and normative theorising, and this is particularly apparent when it comes to the most perennially contested ideas in political thought. We nevertheless do need to settle on some basic working definition of private property as a social institution, if only to distinguish it from other concepts, such as freedom (and gorgonzola). Merely pointing out the politically problematic nature of ascribing meaning to everyday concepts is surely not the only role that political theory can play in our discussions of them. While it cannot provide any detached or even final adjudication between rival contestations of the authoritative meanings of normative concepts, political theorising can point us towards grounds for endorsing some understandings over others, by interrogating both the premises such theories depend upon and the implications that they entail. The theories and arguments selected for discussion in this book represent a desire to both own up to the necessary mingling of conceptual analysis with the normative claims involved in substantive political theory, while also making the case for some accounts of property being more attractive than others. The material covered herein serves this dual function because it is, for the most part, historical in nature.