Sorting out Property and Ownership Rights in Law

Abstract

In his defence of labour vis-à-vis the inequalities of property, the fiery French anarchist, Pierre Joseph Proudhon, attacked property as incompatible with justice, and pronounced, ‘Property is theft!’¹ Rejecting counterpoint that property is legitimately anchored in civil law, Proudhon contended that law, in the final analysis, is essentially disingenuous social convention which masks the harsh injustice of capitalist society. Marx later elaborated on a similar theme of the oppression of living labour by dead capital. While disagreeing with Proudhon’s general theory, Marx was just as blunt: ‘… the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property’.² Marx also claimed that under capitalism the real economic position of labour and capital ‘… is no concern of the law’. For Marx, there was no real equality between capital and labour in contract law to begin with, and it is what happens ‘behind legal curtains’ that is really important.³