OWNERSHIP AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIETY AND THE ECONOMY

The system of ownership discussed in Chapter 1 forms the basis of the relations of distribution and exchange, the cornerstones of social order. As this work is not of a normative character, I do not endeavor to determine what is a “truly” just system. My analysis spans over the extremely free social order as well as the communist order. Classifying and defining these systems (by showing them in relation to empirical reality) enables us to conduct reasoning which is free from valuation, i.e. free from any ideological favouring for one of these systems. Resources may be distributed according to the principle of original appropriation and transferred on the basis of free agreements. This approach – associated with the libertarian interpretation of John Locke – states that the person who is the first to utilize a scarce resource with his labour becomes its owner. Such a structure of ownership opens the way for entering into various contracts. This type of order would be called liberal, or according to more contemporary terminology – libertarian. In the course of time the freedom of contracts becomes the most important factor. Who was historically the first owner becomes less important as more transactions are concluded on the market (significant given the dark beginnings of many historically original appropriations).

The relation between the original appropriation of resources and the freedom of contracts is not absolute, particularly when we analyse the examples of countries that developed from feudal systems or the like. Consider, for example, the system transformation in Poland in 1989. At the beginning of the new order there was no clear private structure of ownership established, where one could posit a “communist” denationalization that would distribute resources possessed by state institutions in a pseudo-egalitarian manner. The following scenario of denationalization of assets was quite possible: schools are given to the teachers, post offices to the workers thereof, hospitals to the doctors, mines to the miners. Although this system would not be based on the principle of classical original appropriation, it would, if instituted together with freedom of contracts, quickly begin to function similarly to a classical free market (on the obvious condition that the distributed titles of ownership could be freely sold).