Page 216 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

property rights and contracts 1517

Property rights are not the rights of property; they are the rights
of humans with regard to property. They are a particular kind
of human right. • David Friedman (twentieth century)

(1914–1918) made the military side of technological both for good and for ill, is clearly cumulative, and con-
progress, of which their nineteenth-century predecessors stitutes a kind of progress that deserves to be recognized
had been so proud, seem anything but desirable to mil- as such.
lions of European and American soldiers; and the post-
William H. McNeill
war boom, followed by the Great Depression (1929–
1938) and World War II (1939–1945) broadened and See also Modernity; Postmodernism
deepened that skepticism. Renewed economic growth
after 1950 was counterbalanced by fears of sudden
atomic annihilation and by uneasy awareness that rapid Further Reading
population growth in Africa and Asia was widening the Bury, J. B. (1932). The idea of progress: An inquiry into its origin and
growth. New York: Macmillan. (Original work published 1920)
gap between the rich and poor peoples of the earth. Dyson, J. (2001). A history of great inventions. New York: Carroll &
By the beginning of the twenty-first century, though Graf.
Rydell, R.W., Findling, J. E., & Pelle, K. M. (2000). Fair America:World’s
nearly all the world’s politicians still promised to ac-
fairs in the United States. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books.
complish all sorts of good things if elected to office,
most writers and commentators on public affairs took
a much gloomier view of the future. Emphatic rejection
of the nineteenth-century faith in progress became gen- Property Rights
eral.That was partly because continuing improvements
in human comfort and diet as experienced by people in and Contracts
the world’s wealthiest countries, like air conditioning in
summer, and fresh fruit and vegetables in supermarkets uch contemporary political and popular discourse
all year round, swiftly came to be taken for granted, Mposits “property” as modern capitalist private prop-
while innumerable medical breakthroughs, like antibi- erty whose owner has the right to use the property, to
otics and heart surgery, had the immediate effect of pro- exclude others from it (or regulate their use of it), and to
longing life and thereby multiplying the pains and de- alienate it. Private property is frequently seen as natural,
bilities of old age. desirable, or inevitable because it allows us to express or
Destructive capabilities of biological, chemical, and follow our self-interest, do as we please with what we
nuclear weapons also multiplied; while gaps between own, or to enact the final stage of a linear developmen-
rich and poor, rivalries among ethnic and religious tal history of which contemporary private property is the
groups, and the decay of local communities seemed only culmination.The history of property and contracts, how-
to increase. All too obviously, change was everywhere, ever, shows that property has taken many different forms
but was it really for the better? Did happiness increase and a contract is but one type of exchange.
with longer life and more things to own and look after? In thinking about the diversity of property practices,
Or did accumulating material goods merely get in the some important questions need to be asked. Who can
way of leading a good life? own property? Private property can be owned by an
These are valid reproaches against rosy nineteenth- individual person, a partnership, a corporation (a “legal
century predictions of moral and political progress. But person” in the eyes of the law), a family, a group, a tribe,
material progress remains undeniable. No one can doubt or the state.“Common property” is open for use by a spe-
that increasing knowledge and skills have enlarged cific set of people, such as all townspeople. Sometimes
human command of energy flows at a very rapid rate not all individuals are eligible to own property: Histori-
since 1750, and have done so more slowly throughout cally women (or married women), children, prisoners,
history. The resulting increase in human capabilities, and noncitizens have been disqualified.