The Prehistory of Private Property: Implications for Modern Political Theory

Description

Societies with common-property systems maintaining strong equality and extensive freedom were initially nearly ubiquitous around the world, and that the private property rights system was established through a long series of violent state-sponsored aggressions. CONTENTS Preface Acknowledgments 1. Introduction Part One The inequality hypothesis 2. Hierarchy’s Apologists, Part One 3. Hierarchy’s Apologists, Part Two 4. How Small-Scale Societies Maintain Political, Social, and Economic Equality Part Two The market freedom hypothesis 5. The Negative Freedom Argument for the Market Economy 6. The Negative Freedom Argument for the Hunter-Gatherer Band Economy Part Three The individual appropriation hypothesis 7. Contemporary Property Theory 8. The History of an Hypothesis 9. The Impossibility of a Purely A Priori Justifi cation of Private Property 10. Evidence Provided by Propertarians to Support the Appropriation Hypothesis 11. Property Systems in Hunter-Gatherer Societies 12. Property Systems in Stateless Farming Communities 13. Property Systems in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern States 14. The Privatization of the Earth, 1500–2000 ce 15. The Individual Appropriation Hypothesis Assessed 16. Conclusion References Index