# Crosscurrents (Vol. 1 No. 3) **URL:** **Published:** September 1, 1982 --- “Basically, whoever is the first user becomes the first owner—this right to ownership being limited to what is actually used in some manner.” ## Resource Ownership and Pollution When one reads John Locke’s _Second Treatise of Government_ one is immediately aware that here is a powerful theoretical tool which explains and justifies how men and women come to own property. Basically, whoever is the first user becomes the first owner—this right to ownership being limited to what is actually used in some manner. Given this “Doctrine of Prior Appropriation,” it is not always clear how this principle may operate in practice, and considerable work needs to be done in elucidating the operation of Locke’s principle in complex real-world situations. Recently, some very important papers have been written on the practical application of Locke’s powerful insights on the justice and usefulness of the prior appropriation principle. With regard to the ownership and control of water, Alfred Cuzán (University of West Florida) completed a paper on “Appropriators vs. Expropriators: The Political Economy of Water in the West” while a Liberty Fund Fellow at the Institute for Humane Studies in 1981. Cuzán shows that until the turn of the century, the law on water use and ownership developed spontaneously, in tune with the needs of farmers and consistent with the voluntary Lockean notion of ownership. He also traces the twentieth-century history of the Bureau of Reclamation and the Department of Water and Power of the City of Los Angeles to show how vested interests used the power of the State to destroy that system of private ownership and development of water in the west, replacing it with a system of subsidies and privileges for a few at the expense of the taxpaying many. Cuzán concludes with a call for a return to the older, more Lockean system of ownership and use. The second paper which has come to our attention has been published by the Cato Institute in their _Policy Analysis_ series. Milton Mueller has written an excellent piece on “Property Rights in Radio Communication: The Key to the Reformation of Telecommunications Regulation.” Unlike previous efforts to formulate a Lockean approach to the use and ownership of radio and television, Mueller argues that individual broadcasters do not “own the airwaves” _per se_ but rather own the right to use particular “channels of communication.” Using a Lockean “prior appropriation” approach to the problem, he describes a system in which the first user of a particular frequency at a particular signal strength thereby stakes out a property claim to the channel of communication that is developed between the transmitter and the receiver. New-comers have the right to enter the market only as long as they do not interfere with the first user’s rights. Mueller makes a convincing case for this new approach to property rights in radio communication and we look forward to great interest to his forthcoming book on the subject. The _Cato Journal_, ed. James Dorn, continues to put out interesting essays on public policy questions. The most recent issue presents the results of a symposium on pollution which was held in Palo Alto in December, 1981. Although all the essays are interesting and important contributions to a little-worked area in libertarian thought, the most important contribution is made by Murray N. Rothbard in his essay “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution.” Rothbard adopts a strict Lockean view of the nature of property (including the right of first use and homesteading unowned property) and combines this theory with the idea of strict liability of the aggressor in cases of injury to third parties. (On strict liability see the innovative work being done by Richard A. Epstein, “A Theory of Strict Liability,” _Journal of Legal Studies_, January, 1973). In the case of pollution, the transgression of an individual’s rights occurs when one property owner directly causes material of a noxious and unwanted nature to intrude upon the property of another. His solution for the problem of pollution is to allow individuals to sue for damages under tort law. Indeed, this solution was in fact first used in the early years of the Industrial Revolution, but was abandoned when the courts intervened on behalf of the polluters. It is hoped that Rothbard’s piece will stimulate others to look more closely at the requirements of a legal system which will adequately and justly defend property rights. It is also imperative that the historical reasons for the legal protection of polluters, at the expense of other property owners, be analysed in more depth. Robert Bradley, Jr. has a work in progress for the Cato Institute, the essay “Government and Energy: The U.S. Experience.” It will not be published until late 1983. The first drafts we have seen indicate that it will be an important contribution to the debate on the so-called “energy crisis.” Bradley has chapters on the history of state intervention in the production, exploration, sale, and conservation of energy resources. He convincingly demonstrates that the inevitable result of this intervention is chaos. To overcome these seemingly intractable problems, he develops a Lockean homesteading theory for the ownership of energy resources and is able to push this theory into completely new areas in a section entitled “The Advantages of Sub-surface Homestead Law.” With all these examples we have mentioned, a powerful theory of property which was first presented in the late seventeenth century has been found to produce very rich results when applied to problems of ownership in the late twentieth century. In ways that Locke could never have envisaged, Lockean ideas of homesteading and first use have been used to untangle problems created by government intervention and the prevention of spontaneous market solutions to changing technology and economic growth. Cuzán, Mueller, Rothbard, and Bradley have shown that water, radio and television, pollution, and oil and natural gas can all be rationally and justly owned and exchanged—if only people are permitted to do so. The research into these questions has really only just began. These papers indicate that it is a good beginning. ## English Individualism In trying to understand why the Industrial Revolution began in England rather than on the continent of Europe, one is faced with the problem of trying to understand why English society was so different from that of Europe, only a few hundred miles away across the channel. The Cambridge historian and social anthropologist Alan Macfarlane, in a provocative book on _The Origins of English Individualism_ (Cambridge University Press, 1979), argues that (unlike the traditional view of the peasantry put forward by Max Weber, Karl Marx, and Thomas Babington Macaulay), from the late thirteenth century onwards England did not possess a peasantry along the lines of the classic European model. Instead, there existed a vigorous market in land, considerable social and economic mobility, a large, landless workforce, practical equality in private law between men and women, and, most importantly, a spirit of independence and individuality. According to the classical definition of peasantry, land is not held by individual property-owners (who can bequeath it, sell it, or otherwise dispose of it as they will), but rather by families or kin groups. Macfarlane argues that it was the absence of this kind of familial land ownership which marked off the English “peasantry” from the peasantry of Europe and Asia. The lack of restrictions on the ownership of property, a relatively free market in land, and the growth of an independent land-owning class laid the groundwork in England for first the commercial revolution of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and finally the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth, many centuries before the standard accounts admit. The accepted view is that it was not until the sixteenth or even seventeenth centuries that the traditional peasantry began to disappear and capitalism and its intellectual offshoot, individualism, began to emerge. Macfarlane’s thesis seriously challenges this older interpretation and is particularly destructive of Marxist interpretations of the origins of English capitalism. According to Marx, the transition from feudalism to capitalism requires violent class struggle in order to move from one mode of production to the next. If Macfarlane’s view is correct, then the presence of “capitalist” institutions as early as the thirteenth century leads one to seriously question the common view of the origins of capitalism based upon Marx and Weber. For those who would like a summary account of Macfarlane’s thesis his article, “The Origins of English Individualism: Some Surprises,” _Theory and Society_, September, 1978, can be recommended. ## The Literature of War The first principle of real liberal philosophy is the non-aggression principle: that no person shall initiate force against a non-aggresor. Why then should a person espousing libertarian views want to know anything about war, especially the literature on warfare? For the reason that those we oppose—those believing in a strong State—have found that a state of war enables them to accomplish their goals, to make the State ever stronger. In our own defense, we need to know how they have accomplished this in the past. All of us know a piece of literature that illuminates best the tragedy and pointless destruction of warfare. It seems that the brute facts of lives lost, houses and factories razed to the ground, the profiteering of war contractors, and the posturing and power-wielding of politicians is not enough to satisfy our curiosity about war. Furthermore, we can read innumerable histories, the unforgiving economic analyses of the great liberal opponents of war, and view the depressing sights of homeless and hopeless refugees in documentary films to gain insights into the nature of war. However, neither the written words of the history books nor the images of the documentaries are as compelling as fiction in recreating what it was like to engage in the ultimate use of force. So we turn to poetry and novels to experience that which none of us hopes ever to live through or participate in. Amongst the large number of guides and anthologies of war literature, the compilation by Lucy Dougall, _War and Peace in Literature_ (Chicago, Ill.: World Without War Publications, 1982) is outstanding. It introduces the reader to the incredible diversity of writings on the subject of war, ranging from the exaltation of Ernst Jünger’s _Storm of Steel_ (1929) to the rage and sustained horror of Dalton Trumbo’s _Johnny Got His Gun_ (1939). > The Grumbler: . . . _One would be horrified by the inconceivable crime perpetrated by the scoundrels who engendered the war and are prolonging it—this inconceivable crime which is terrible enough in its effect on even a single destiny, but which is inflicted upon millions—the tearing apart and trampling of every individual’s happiness, the torture of expecting disaster for years, of a tension that trembles at the silence and dreads that it will be broken by a message of death from either the trenches or the home front_. > > — Karl Kraus, _The Last Days of Mankind_ In a book of this size, it is inevitable that some works would have to be left out. One of my favorites, which unfortunately did not make the grade, is Karl Kraus’s _Die letzten Tage der Menschheit_ (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1926, 1964, 1980), abridged and edited by Frederick Unger in English, _The Last Days of Mankind: A Tragedy in Five Acts_ (New York: Frederick Unger, 1974). The Austrian literary critic, Karl Kraus, was a remorseless and savage social critic of the declining Hapsburg empire. His massive documentary drama of the war (perhaps the first of its kind to interweave real documents, reports, and newspaper articles with the dialogue of fictional and non-fictional characters) describes the “spiritual and moral misery” which always accompanies the loss of life and property occasioned by war. He relentlessly attacks those in positions of authority—the army, the royal family, and the politicians of Europe—who called down this disaster upon the heads of innocent bystanders. A good introduction to Kraus and the Vienna in which he lived is Frank Field’s _The Last Days of Mankind: Karl Kraus and his Vienna Circle_ (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1967). For those who wish to read of another aspect of Kraus’s thought, see Thomas Szasz, _Karl Kraus and the Soul Doctors: A Pioneer Critic and his Criticism of_ Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976). ## Liberal Sociology The classical liberal tradition consists of more than just the political philosophy of individual rights and limited government and the economic theory of the market. Whether one refers to Adam Smith’s interest in the political economy of mercantilism and the sociology of vested interests, or to Herbert Spencer’s desire to create a massive, unified theory of society and the individual, one is struck by the continual effort of the great classical liberals to extend the theory of individual rights and the market to the broader field of society itself. The Italian classical liberal Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), one of the giants of economic thought, also made fundamental contributions to sociology. Although best known for the exchange criterion known as the Pareto optimality, he was also a well-known commentator on Italian political and economic affairs, frequently writing for the French _Journal des économistes_. > The sums which the ruling class appropriates illicitly, thanks to protective duties, from premiums on navigation, on sugar, and many related products, to enterprises subsidized by the State, the syndicates, trusts, etc., are enormous and certainly comparable to the sums which, during other periods, were extorted by other ruling classes. The only advantage for the nation is the fact that the method of clipping the sheep has been perfected. > > — Vilfredo Pareto, _The Rise and Fall of the Elites_ Pareto’s magnum opus is the _Trattato di Sociologia Generale_ (1916) where he develops at some length his theory of classes based upon what he called “residues” and “derivations.” The complete English translation of the _Trattato_ was published in 1935 in a four-volume edition, _The Mind and Society_, ed. Arthur Livingstone (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1935). It was later issued in a two-volume edition as _The Mind and Society: A Treatise of General Sociology_ (New York: Dover, 1963). Because these editions are out of print and somewhat unwieldy in their length and complexity, it is welcome to have a shorter edition, the _Compendium of General Sociology_, abridged by Giulio Farina, ed. Elisabeth Abbott (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980) in print. The lengthy introduction by Joseph Lopreato provides a useful guide to Pareto’s thought and to the considerable secondary literature on his economic and sociological ideas. However, the best general introduction to Pareto remains the collection edited by S. E. Finer, _Vilfredo Pareto, Sociological Writings_, trans. Derick Mirfin (New York: Praeger, 1966). Along with his introduction to this collection, Finer has also written “Pareto and Pluto-democracy: The Retreat to Galapagos,” _American Political Science Review_, vol. 62, 1968, pp. 440–450. If one carefully reads the Finer introduction and the relevant passages from the _Trattato_ on classes, it is possible to reconstruct a coherent Paretian class theory. The most sustained effort by Pareto to outline his theory of class can be found in a little-known essay, “Un applicazione di teorie sociologiche,” which appeared in the Italian sociological journal, _Rivista Italiana di Sociologia_, in 1901. Fortunately, this has been translated as _The Rise and Fall of the Elites: An Application of Theoretical Sociology_, introduced by Hans L. Zetterberg (Totowa, New Jersey: Bedminster Press, 1968). In this essay, Pareto attempts to explain why one ruling élite is replaced by another one. It is his view that no élite remains forever in power. Rather, there is constant motion as new vested interest groups try to oust the old guard, to replace them with “new blood” more sympathetic to their particular needs. This process of the “circulation of élites” is especially important in times of considerable social and economic change, such as was the case when Pareto was observing and writing about Italian and European society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pareto is a complex—and sometimes confused—thinker who should be seriously studied by those seeking to understand the wider implications of classical liberal social theory. The best place to begin is with the Finer collection for an overview of Pareto’s thought. One is then in a better position to tackle the complex _Trattato_, either in its abbreviated form, or at length. ## Voluntary Servitude There seems to be a reawakening of interest in the subject of obedience to authority. The current issue, both here and abroad, is involuntary military service. Perhaps occasioned by this debate, there has been a spate of books in French, German, and English on the sixteenth-century French humanist, Etienne de La Boétie. We have already mentioned La Boétie in the first issue of this _Review_, where we cited the Kurz/Rothbard and William Flygare editions of _The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude_. Since then, the following works have come to our attention and deserve to be mentioned. The collection by Miguel Abensour, _Le Discours de la Servitude Voluntaire_ (Paris: Payot, 1978) includes a modern French transcription of the sixteenth-century original (which can be found in Flygare’s edition), reprints of important nineteenth-century introductions to reeditions of La Boétie’s essay, as well as some very useful essays on the problem of obedience to authority by Simone Weil, Pierre Clastres, and Claude Lefort. This French edition is very similar to a recent German edition which likewise includes introductions to previous editions and extracts from discussions of La Boétie’s work by eminent political philosophers such as Bacon, Spinoza, Seldon, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tolstoi, Landauer, and Nettlau. The German Edition by Horst Günther, _Von der freiwilligen Knechtschaft_ (Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1980) is particularly well done, with its reproductions of old woodcuts and its bilingual reprinting of La Boétie’s essay on voluntary servitude. Having read La Boétie’s essay, one must then be able to place it in the political framework of its time. Pierre Mesnard’s _L’Essor de la philosophie politique au XVI^e siècle_ (Paris: Boivin, 1936) was previously the best guide; it is out of date and can be partly replaced by the recent overview of French renaissance political thought by the Stanford political philosopher, Nannerl O. Keohane, _Philosophy and the State in France: The Renaissance to the Enlightenment_ (Princeton University Press, 1980). The entire chapter three of Part one, “Individualism and Humanism,” deals with La Boétie and his times. It can be profitably consulted by those wishing to know more of this important political philosopher. ## Recent Dissertations Don C. Lavoie, recently appointed a professor of economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, completed his dissertation under Israel Kirzner at New York University on “Rivalry and Central Planning: A Re-examination of the Debate over Economic Calculation under Socialism” in May 1981. We have had occasion to mention Lavoie before (_HSR_, vol. 1, no. 1, “Critiques of Socialism”) as the editor of the special issue of the _Journal of Libertarian Studies_ on Socialism. His essay in that issue, “A Critique of the Standard Account of the Socialist Calculation Debate,” is taken from his thesis and is a review and critique of the important literature that arose in the 1920s and 1930s, as the failures of the Soviet experiment became apparent. For those who wish to learn more about this historic debate on the viability and rationality of socialism and central planning, Lavoie’s thesis is must reading. Lawrence H. White completed his dissertation on “Free Banking in Britain: Theory, Experience, and Debate, 1800–1845” under Axel Leijonhufvud at U.C.L.A. in early 1982. Larry White has uncovered a fascinating history of a completely free banking system in Scotland prior to the restrictive regulations introduced by Peel’s Act of 1844. With the freedom to establish banks and to issue currency, the Scottish banking system was remarkably stable and was very efficient at serving the needs of its customers. White’s thesis is both an attempt to present a theoretical model of free banking and an excellent piece of intellectual history of Scottish and English economic thought. The monetary turmoil and instability of the post-Second World War era strongly suggests that we have much to learn from the eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century defenders of free banking, such as Samuel Bailey, Thomas Hodgskin, and the American, William Leggett. We also look forward to seeing White’s compilation of Leggett’s writings, tentatively entitled, “Essays in Jacksonian Political Thought.”