9.4.3 |
THE EXTRINSIC OWNERSHIP OF
PERSON-MADE THINGS |
Suppose that everyone possesses (in the empirical sense)
a block of marble of the same volume and quality, and that there
is still so much marble left that fluctuations in the size of
the population will not decrease a person's share in a way that
its value will become less than the value of the block of marble
a person possesses. These conditions are sufficient to call
everyone "the owner of a block of marble". A person who now
starts to carve
'er block of marble into a certain
shape, may not only call the marble 'er 'property',
'e may also call the
sculpture 'er 'property'. It is not important in this situation
whether the object is described as a piece of marble or as a
sculpture, and it is not important whether the marble got better
or worse because of the owner's work on it.
If, next, there are two other people who desire to have the
sculpture and are willing to exchange their blocks of marble for
it, and the sculptor agrees, then they become the new owners of
that sculpture, and the sculptor becomes the owner of two blocks
of marble. If 'e uses one of these blocks to make a new sculpture,
and also exchanges this one for two blocks of marble, 'e
is left with three blocks of marble, whereas no-one else has
more than two. At the same time, there are two couples with a
sculpture no-one else has, but even if they completely destroyed
their sculptures, let's say, because they had become bored with
them, the sculptor would still rightfully own 'er three blocks
of marble. Thus
the right to personhood guarantees every
living person's equality as a person but not as an owner of pieces
of marble or of sculptures, if the inequality results from the person's
own free actions.
The
metadoctrinal principle underlying
the right to personhood is therefore by no means a nontemporal
or (exclusively) future-regarding end-state principle. What it
does guarantee
tho,
is initial equality for every living person
with respect to the allocation of goods if, and insofar as,
they are not person-made. A new-born person will therefore have
a right to 'er own block of marble, even if all other people had
already sold their block to the sculptor. And conversely, if
someone who has sold 'er block to the sculptor dies, the block
'sold' returns to the common stock, or becomes the property of a
new-born person, because what is sold is always a share only,
even when it is a 100% share (in natural land or resources).
Should this be impracticable or impossible, money will
—again— be the more convenient medium of compensation in a
more complex society.
Now assume, more realistically, that there are far more people
than blocks of marble. In that case no-one has the right to
just take a block of marble and to start carving it into a fancy
shape. Should 'e do so, the marble will remain the property of
the community (whatever labor theorists or other theorists on
property may contend).
If the sculpture turns out to be of a higher economic value than the
marble as material substance —however that is assessed— the
added value is the laborer's and 'e may claim it (for example, when the
community sells the object as a sculpture, not as a piece of marble).
But if the sculpture turns out to be of a lower value, because of a
loss of marble, for instance, it is the laborer's fault, and 'e will have
to compensate the community for it.
In no way can the laborer (the sculptor in this example) claim ownership
in the object concerned if no agreement is reached on the amount of
compensation.
If agreement is indeed reached, this is nothing else than a case of
selling and buying the material in question.
And of course, a smart worker does not espouse the labor theory of
property: if the material 'e needs is scarce, that is, if it is an
economic item, 'e first buys it using the money 'e can safely consider 'er
property, or else borrows the money from someone else whose property it is.
'E buys it before 'e starts 'to mix 'er labor with it'.
(This presupposes that the other resources
cannot all be so scarce that the number of items or units is
smaller than the number of living people. For many, if not most
of them, the number of items or units must be greater than the
number of people, so that a person may be sure that 'e owns at
least one or a certain number of items or units, which can then
rightfully be exchanged for scarcer goods or materials.)
If the worker only used material of a kind and to an extent which does
not exceed 'er rightful share in it, or if 'e bought or received this
material, 'e owns the whole thing 'e produced.
The ownership in the whole thing is not absolute, but
ownership in the change of value is, because of the unique
relationship between the person changing the value of the raw
material and the change of value itself. It is not so much that
the person owns 'er body and therefore also the product of 'er
body's labor under the relevant description; it is rather that
the kind of relationship between the person and the product of
'er labor under the relevant description is equally unique as
that between the person and 'er body. Whereas the person's body
is the medium of 'er personhood, the things 'e produces under
the relevant description are the product of 'er personhood.
Thus, a painting is a product of someone's personhood but not the
paint and canvas, or other material, it is made of; and so is a
piece of music but not the paper or tape, or other material, on
which it is recorded, altho all these materials themselves are,
in turn, the product of other people's personhood. In saying
that there is a unique relationship between a particular person
and the change 'e produces in a thing, it is not in any way
suggested that the person could ever accomplish such a change as
an isolated individual, and that 'e should also from a
doctrinal point of view have
the exclusive right to the whole value added.
It may be that people can only produce something worthwhile as
social beings, but this does not change the phenomenal uniqueness
of the relationship between this one individual and this
one thing 'e has made at one stage of a perhaps enormously
complex, social process.
If the individual did not make or add something
'imself at all, 'e is not a
laborer.
Person-made things cannot only be sold, leased, given away or
loaned like shares in natural resources, they can also be
bequeathed, unlike shares in natural resources.
This is possible because if, and insofar as, a thing is person-made,
extrinsic ownership in the thing is
absolute. (This is quite something
else than believing that the ownership of a thing is absolute
regardless of its description.)
Ownership in the person-made thing is not a share which depends on the
thing's scarcity, that is, the quantity available, and the size of the
(living) population. Even if the thing is the only thing of its kind
left, and even if the population has increased considerably, the
owner keeps 'er absolute extrinsic property right in the thing
under the relevant description of it.
The owner and maker of the thing need not be only one person —'e
probably seldom is—: the owner of a person-made thing may be a group
of two or more people, in which case every person has an equal or
proportional share in the absolute property of the thing made.
This 'share', however, is only affected by the number of workers, or
living workers, involved, and is of an entirely different type than the
fluctuating share in things which are not person-made. If all
the people who have made a thing agree, they can be looked upon
as one person and bequeath it to a particular person or group of
persons. (Should they not agree, they will have to define their
absolute shares.) The owner must somehow clearly state 'er wish
because automatical inheritance is a legal institution based on
doctrinal rules alien to the right to personhood. On the
metadoctrinal view the owner may bequeath a thing made by 'im to
whomever or whatever 'e likes. The person or group of persons
does not have to be 'er partner or spouse, or 'er children. (But
obviously, 'e cannot on 'er own bequeath something 'e co-owns
with 'er partner or partners.) No state or community ever has
the extrinsic right to discriminate between wills in which
individual property is left to a partner or spouse, or to
someone's own children, and wills in which such property is left
to other individuals or to organizations.
It might be objected to this that a parent will have to
bequeath enough to 'er children to keep them alive when they are
still too young to fend for themselves. Such an objection is
evidently of a doctrinal nature, altho correct on that level. On
the metadoctrinal level the extrinsic right to give is in no way
dependent on the situation of the person or group of persons to
whom the prospective donor wants to give something, so long as
they are prepared to accept the gift. Furthermore, the objection
is probably made against the background of a society in which
the right of every living person to an equal share in all things
which are not person-made, or to an income of equivalent value,
is disregarded. It is especially in such a kind of society
that the patchwork of a familially exclusivistic inheritance
institution, and also of an unpredictable social security
system, is and need to be cobbled together.
Things can solely be bequeathed if, and insofar as, they are
person-made. No object is person-made under every description:
at least it has some material content. The property in this
material substance is part of a total, personal share which
varies, and which has to be reallocated when the person who made
the thing in question has died. If the person inheriting the
thing has no right to the material substance (and it cannot be
reallocated to 'im), 'e has therefore the duty to compensate the
other person or group of persons (such as the community or the
state) for the loss of their part of the share (for example, by
paying an inheritance tax or succession duties). In the case of
paintings or pieces of music this may come to (almost)
nothing, in the case of land which has been cultivated or
developed the amount of compensation to be paid by the heir may be
gigantic, assuming that the person or persons who have a right
in the land as a natural element are willing to renounce their
title at all. The problem we are confronted with here is that of
the proportion of the original value to the added value. It has
been said that no 'workable or coherent property scheme has yet
been devised' to solve this problem. Nevertheless, there is
already a long established institution of value-added tax, based
on the very calculation of the increase of value of a product at
each stage of production or transference. It cannot therefore be
denied that the calculation of the original, or material, value
is also feasible in principle. Since from a metadoctrinal
perspective even some of the main features of the
politico-economic scheme adopted are immaterial (like the proportion of
private to collective ownership), the details of such a scheme
certainly are. What we can be sure about is that, on the one
hand, people's
rights of personhood are not to be
infringed upon (including their right to accept or refuse a certain
politico-economic arrangement) and that, on the other hand, their
property claims are not to be recognized if, and insofar as,
they are not morally entitled to the objects concerned in the
light of those same rights of personhood.
