Last week we looked at what Cicero had to say about private property Private Property as a Commodity (and a derivative at that) Part IV
Thomas Hobbes hedges his political bets
       Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679), was not a champion of the common people, but he was one of the proponents (along with Locke, Hume, and Rousseau), of the theory that a social contract evolved out of the state of nature. Also, like other philosophers before him, he listed three types of governments which he called Commonwealths. In chapter XIX of his book, Leviathan, he writes: “The difference of Common-wealths, consisteth in the difference of the Soveraign, or the Person representative of all and every one of the Multitude” (Hobbes [1651], 142). He explains that the sovereign can be one man or an assembly of men. (That was how he was able to appeal to both sides in the English civil war. He was always a loyal monarchist, but Cromwell allowed him back into England because of this quasi-parliamentary idea, where he bided his time until the restoration of his favorite pupil, Charles Stuart II.) He named the three sovereigns who represent all men in a commonwealth: one man is a Monarchy, a few men are an Aristocracy, and all men are a Democracy. Then he points out, sarcastically I think, that these three kinds of governments had different names in the past. “But they are not the names of other Formes of Government, but of the same Formes misliked” (Hobbes [1651], 142). Monarchy (when misliked) is called Tyranny, Aristocracy is called Oligarchy, and Democracy is called Anarchy.
       Hobbes had some interesting things to say about property as it relates to society as a whole. Those who would look to him for verification of their “right to private property” ideology will not find it in Leviathan. In Chapter XXIX he lists several “doctrines repugnant to the commonwealth.” The fifth of these bad ideas is “that every private man has an absolute propriety in his goods; such, as excluded the right of the sovereign” (Hobbes [1651], 250). He explains that this right only excludes other citizens from his property, but property, rather than being a natural right, is a right only granted by the sovereign. The sovereign, whether it be a king or a parliament, is part of the social contract that people set up to protect themselves from the viciousness of the original state of nature. So the sovereign can protect one man’s property from the encroachment of another, but the sovereign itself cannot be excluded from the property or he couldn’t “perform the office they have put him into”(Hobbes [1651], 250), which means collecting taxes to pay for the military and police protection that the government affords. Those passages included personal items as property, but then he gets more specific about landed property. In chapter XXIV, he writes that the division of land is apportioned according to only the sovereign, and not to the judgments of any subjects (Hobbes [1651] 190). As we shall see, not all theories of the social contract evolving out of the state of nature, describe either the original state of nature the same way, or of the same form of social contract.
      Tuesday: "John Locke Labors For A Living".
My rants on racial identity began on July 9th
My rants on private property began on July 14th

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