Controlling One’s Life: Private Property and Economic Democracy

• In Event: Wealth, Markets, and Plutocracy

Abstract

Philosophers often justify private property by claiming that to control one’s life, one must
control the objects necessary for that life, and this control is best secured through a system of private
ownership. I intend to refute this argument, which I have termed the control view. Relying on the
distinction between productive and non-productive property, I will argue that a free-market economy
based on the private ownership of productive assets deprives a substantial part of society of any
influence over economic decisions and, therefore, over what objects are produced and to whom they
become available. As a result, most individuals lack meaningful control. My argument will consist of
three steps. Firstly, I will clear the way for a philosophical analysis of private property centered on
production by offering a critique of historical or entitlement conceptions of justice which tend to justify
property with reference to the initial acquisition of unowned objects in the state of nature. This is
necessary to shift the focus of analysis from appropriating raw materials to influencing the
processes by which useful objects are produced. Secondly, I will show that the control view fails to grasp
the lack of control experienced by non-owners whose ability to obtain the objects they need is wholly
dependent on a market shaped by the unaccountable decisions of capital owners. In short, private
property secures control after acquisition, but it makes acquisition itself dependent on the will of those
who own society’s most important resources. Thirdly, I will advocate for a democratic transformation
of the economy as a way of dispersing economic power and thereby providing a greater degree of control
over objects to all individuals than what is possible under capitalism. Without seeking to settle or
substantively intervene in the complicated and long-standing debate about post-capitalist institutional
design, I will limit my focus to surveying some proposals for the democratization of the economy and
evaluating them from the control-oriented perspective developed in the previous sections.

Author

• Peter Kerenyi, McGill University