Property and Freedom

by Richard Pipes

Book Overview

A superb book about a topic that should be front and center in the American political debate (National Review), from the acclaimed Harvard scholar and historian of the Russian Revolution An... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375404988
• ISBN13: 9780375404986
• Release Date: April 1999
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.6" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

The Central Role of Property in Society

In this book, Richard Pipes examines the role of property in the cause of human freedom from every angle. One, Pipes discusses ideologies of property: what classical thinkers thought about property, what later Europeans thought, especially the philosophes and utopians of the early modern era, and so on. Two, Pipes discusses the anthropology of property. I consider this chapter to be the most valuable in the book because I've never seen a discussion like this anywhere as it relates to property rights and political theory. I have studied anthropology and sociobiology, so the terminology and the science is familiar, but the application is different. Pipes notes that property is universal; land is not always considered property, but all peoples have things which are considered such, and even when communist regimes outlawed property, theft became rampant. This was human nature revolting against ideology. He notes that human beings know property intrinsically; parents have to teach their children to share, not to covet. He notes that other primates, and many nonprimates, have property, and that across species females tend to find propertyless males unattractive. There has never been a society without property, and the contrast between reality and the mythical visions of propertyless societies is clear.Three, Pipes discusses and compares the historical development of property rights in England and Russia, the latter being his field of expertise. Whereas secure property rights gave English landowners leverage against the monarchy, in patrimonial Russia there was nothing to check Tsarist absolutism. The submission of the country to Soviet totalitarianism and the current move toward "managed democracy" in Vladimir Putin's Russia have been natural consequences of Russia's heritage. (Pipes has an article in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs about popular acceptance of authoritarianism in modern Russia that is very insightful as to the current situation.)Four, Pipes discusses the politics of property. He argues that, while property rights were essential to the foundation of democracy, democracy can become a threat to property rights as people begin to realize that they can regulate the property of others and redistribute some of it to themselves through the electoral system. Unfortunately, the last few decades of Western history seem to bear this out.Overall, I would suggest this book for anyone seeking to understand the role and importance of property in the development and freedom of human societies.

Property and Freedom: Historical Perspective

Richard Pipes is one of the leading academic authorities on Russian and Soviet history. He starts this book by admitting that its subject matter is outside his area of special expertise. Despite this discalimer, he has produced a useful and interesting work on the relationship between property rights and freedom.Pipes' approach draws on his expertise as a historian. He describes the historical development of the idea of property rights with particular emphasis on the contrasting experiences of England and Russia. He demonstrates that the development of political and economic freedom in England is directly linked to the early establishment of property rights in that country while the total lack of freedom in Russia (prior to 1991 and excluding the brief 1905-1917 period) is equally linked to the total lack of property rights there.This book is not a complete answer to the very broad question of how property and freedom are related. It does, however, make a valuable contribution from the historical perspective. To more fully understand this question, I recommend the following: For an economic perspective: Mancur Olsen, Power and Prosperity; for a legal/social perspective, Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital. Together, these three books provide a fairly complete answer to the question.

An Unfinished Masterpiece

What is it about freedom that causes authors who write about it to end their works prematurely or lamely at best?Richard Pipes, our greatest historian of Russia, has written a brilliant and learned study of the historical relationship between property and greedom. He argues persuasively that property rights are the necessary, but not sufficient, cause of individual and political liberty. He documents the history of freedom's repeated rise and fall around the world, first as property rights are discovered, defined, and protected, and then as they are swept away by periods of royal absolutism, socialism, or fascism.The first four parts of the book reflect a life-time of learning and scholarship. Pipes demonstrates complete control over primary as well as secondary sources (despite his humble disclaimer in the introduction). The writing is succinct and fast paced, with disagreements among leading experts quickly identified and the author's own position stated in a sentence or two. This is great research and writing.Part 5, on "Property in the Twentieth Century," and a brief conclusion titled "Portents," hardly seem to have been written by the same author. Here the text is long-winded and tendentious, the sources are seldom peer reviewed or leading experts (except Richard Epstein, who is quoted many times). It is a mystery why the historian felt he had to become a policy analyst in this final section of the book, rendering his opinions on everything from affirmative action and school busing to wetlands regulation.I'm reminded of another great book about freedom, "Freedom in the Making of Western Civilization," by Orlando Patterson. That book, too, ended poorly, with a hastily written account of freedom in the Middle Ages and the unconvincing claim that everything thereafter was "merely a long series of footnotes" to what came before.Richard Epstein's books, especially "Takings" and "Principles for a Free Society," remain the best texts on freedom in the 20th century. But Epstein, a legal scholar, is an acquired taste. We await a history of freedom and property in the 20th century that rises to the bar that Richard Pipes sets in the first four parts of this book.

Superbly Written and Organized Story of Property's Role

This is the first of Richard Pipes's books that I've read. It won't be the last. Pipes shows -- with a style that is as engaging and as smooth as any that I've ever read -- that private property rights are essential to the maintenance of human dignity, human flourishing, liberty, and widespread prosperity. He does so not just with economics (although his understanding of economics is deep), but with history. And it is the history of private property rights that ultimately convinces the skeptic that such rights are indispensable for the good society. As with any great book, nits can be picked with this one. But all are minuscule. This is a remarkable and learned book.

It's Quite Clear: No Property, No Liberty

Pipes does an excellent job of tracing the history of the concept of property, as well as refuting the laughable utopian idea (still held by many writers and even anthropologists) that the original form of society was communistic, with no concept of private property. The author saw the necessity of also refuting environmental determinism--the idea that mankind is infinitely malleable, with behavior shaped completely by "cultural conditioning" rather than by human nature (as if culture arrived from outer space, instead of being itself a human creation)! He musters an impressive and diverse array of facts to prove his case, but his text never becomes dense or boring, remaining easily accessible to the average reader and quite stimulating. Pipes demonstrates that contrary to the contentions of the intelligentsia, acquisitiveness is universal and has never been eliminated by conditioning, despite numerous attempts. After all, as he points out, even animals are territorial. He also shows that private property arises more by mutual agreement than by forceful appropriation. Using England and Russia as his main historical reference points, he shows how the existence of (and respect for) property has limited the power of monarchs and the state, prevented oppression, and fostered both freedom and progress (in England, "property" and "liberty" were almost synonymous), while the absence of a concept of property rightfully owned by individuals (as in Russia throughout most of its history) has inevitably fostered oppression and general impoverishment. Property, as he points out, is a bulwark between the state and the individual, and property rights allow the people to be co-sovereign with the state--as opposed to having sovereignty vested in the state alone, a condition only too conducive to abuse. In the case of Russia, he is able to draw upon his expertise on the subject of Russian history, in which he is one of the world's leading authorities. (His massive book, THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, is sure to become a standard reference work on the subject.)The only missing item I would like to have seen in this book is a very important and much-neglected one--an attempt to explain WHY so many writers and intellectuals remain hostile to property, while poor and working-class people are not, seeking to acquire it rather than to denigrate it. Perhaps the identity of the contestants supplies the answer: intellectuals, almost by definition, tend to feel guilty about having a much easier life than working-class people. (In the case of today's journalists, this has blossomed into out-and-out self-hatred, as watching the "news" confirms. Is there ANYTHING that journalists believe in that doesn't involve SOME form of self-punishment?) As Arthur M. Schlesinger once noted, such theories as Marxism appeal to intellectuals partly because of "the intellectual's sense of guilt over living pleasantly by his wits instead of unpleasantly by his han