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Remember Rousseau: Property Rights and Human Rights Are Still At War
The conflict between property rights and human rights has entered a new chapter. It is a debate that goes back to the challenge by landowners and merchants behind the American Revolution’s war on British control over the colonial economy.
Only today, as those speaking in the name of the 99% challenge the super wealthy of the 1% (actually the .001 %) there is a new battleground in what’s known as the housing market with as many as 14 million Americans in or facing foreclosure.
The defense of property rights is the holy of the holies for the propertied classes with a whole industry set up to enforce their claims of ownership.
We have seen how this plays out with the courts, run by often bought off and complicit judges rubber-stamping claims by banks and realty interests even when laws are disregarded amidst fraudulent filings, biased contracts, and phony robot signings. They control the marshals who seize your property, and constantly denigrate the real victims as “irresponsible.”
It’s not surprising any more to read about banks foreclosing on properties they don’t even own.
Jean-Jacques RousseauJean-Jacques Rousseau who postulated the “social contract” that gives property rights a moral claim would be turning in his grave if he knew of the many abuses that homeowners in the US face daily.
According to one scholarly presentation I read, “In order to clearly present Rousseau's views on property in the Social Contract, we must first define what he means by property. Property according to Rousseau is that which is obtained legally thereby purporting legitimate claim to ones holdings. Now we must consider what gives an individual the right to openly claim ownership.
Rousseau points out that right does not equal might. In other words, having a right can never derive from force. A right must be given legitimately which means it is attached to moral and legal code. This makes it contractual whereby the rights of one are applied to the rights of all. Once a right is established, it is beneficial and necessary for the individual to apply this right effectively for his best interests and those of the whole. This motivation is directed at the formation of community thereby creating a social contract between individuals that come together to act as a group.
Now a combination of rights is formed whereby each individual is protected by the whole group that stands together as a community. The concept is that man standing alone is more vulnerable than many men united each in defense of the other. This condition makes it impossible for one to hurt an individual without hurting the whole group or for one to hurt the group without affecting each individual.
There is now a social contract where individual rights are combined. In this case, it is in the best interest of the individual to give over his rights to the group since he has a more powerful protective base than standing alone.”
And yet many of us today do “stand alone:” in the commercial marketplace where borrowers are seen as suckers by lenders and fraud is pervasive, abuse, lying, and theft is built into the equation.
Now President Obama says, four years after the markets melted down and the sub prime mortgages were exposed a sub-crime, which he will crack down on these abuses.
Hallelujah.
It sounds good, and you want to believe, especially because Obama has tapped New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman who has rejected settling with some banks engaged in massive frauds because it’s a deceptive deal, as a top gun for the effort.
Now, the Justice Department has announced the details to the press, minus the official who will run the effort and who was “traveling” and couldn’t make the press conference.
(Lanny Breuer is his name, and before joining the Department that calls itself Justice, was working for a law firm representing big banks, perhaps not a topic he wanted to answer questions about.)
Attorney General Holder was there to reveal that there will be 55 people working on this full time, 30 attorneys and support people, and 10 FBI agents who first blew the whistle on “pervasive real estate fraud” back in 2004.
Yves Smith of NakedCapitalism.com who follows details like this closely was underwhelmed, writing:
“During the Savings and Loan crisis, Bill Black reminds us that there were about a thousand FBI agents working on the various cases. That’s one hundred times the number of people working on a scandal that is about forty times larger and far more complex.
To put it another way, let’s say that this scandal cost the American public $5-7 trillion in lost home equity. That’s about $100 billion of lost home equity per person assigned to this task force. If someone stole $100 billion a corporation, like say, if somehow Apple’s entire cash hoard which is roughly that amount, suddenly disappeared, I’m guessing that the FBI would assign more than one person to the case.”
Ok, these are tough times and the government is pressed and the President is running for reelection with his “bundlers” (i.e . the people who raise the big money) pressing the flesh on Wall Street to find more 1% donors. Will this fund raising effort stymie his hell raising effort?
Stay tuned.
Adds Smith: “For the last eight weeks, nearly 200 federal examiners have labored inside some of the nation’s biggest banks to determine how those institutions would hold up if the recession deepened.
Yup, roughly four times as many people were assigned to conduct sham stress tests as are assigned to investigate the causes of the financial crisis and prosecute the people responsible. So we see that this is a not a serious deployment of government resources to unmask a complex economy-shaking financial scheme. It just isn’t.”
No surprise there.
And, as for the causes of the financial crisis, remember the Commission that was created by Congress and that found the while disaster “avoidable.”
It offered plenty of analysis but quickly led to paralysis with partisan bickering fogging the issues and no agenda for change forthcoming.
Like the 911 Commission report years earlier or the Warren Commission’s findings before that, it was read by many but believed by few.
Matt Stoller, a former aide to former Congressman Alan Grayson tries to unravel a massive contradiction that rises to the man at the top:
“There are two underlying structural problems with the new(ish) Federal task force on financial fraud,” he writes:
"One, it is the policy of the administration to protect the banking system’s basic architecture, which means the compensation structure and the existing personnel who run these large institutions. Any real investigation into the financial collapse will inevitably lead to the collapse of this architecture. Thus, any real investigation will be impeded when it begins to conflict the basic policy framework of the Obama administration. And this framework is set by Obama. It’s what he believes in. He made this clear in his first State of the Union, when he said a priority of the administration was to ensure that “the major banks that Americans depend on have enough confidence and enough money to lend even in more difficult times.”
Perhaps this is why so few bankers have spoken out loudly about this latest effort to target their financial frauds. They know it’s not serious and recognize that political business like the news business is now a branch of show business.
And John-Jacques Rousseau is not talking either He has been dead for hundreds of years along with his social contract.
26 Comments so far
Show AllThe conflict between property rights and human rights has entered a new chapter. It is a debate that goes back to the challenge by landowners and merchants behind the American Revolution’s war on British control over the colonial economy.
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columbus arrived on an outer island of a long inhabited continent. so? how did the british colonists gain lawful title to the land in the first place? of course, those who had lived here "undiscovered" century after century were primitive tribes who could only benefit from a haircut and an injection of civilization, right? the word "lord" derives from the word for law. therefore, the landlord lives as a law unto himself. now, do "primitive" tribes develop cultural advantages as culinary arts, pottery making, music, dance, fashion and martial arts? well, yes they do! do primitive peoples appreciate the natural resources? yes they do? then what's the big difference between primitive and civilized people?
civilization is a military coup!
Social contract also includes family. When huge swaths of suburbia go under water due to the sub - crime contracts many turn to gangs as alternative families in order to survive. This sub culture seems to mimic the larger nation state colonialism and plunder of new lands for the “landlord”.
One of the qualifications for Presidential hopefuls is membership in an accepted “Christian” faith. The main message of this faith or brotherhood seems to run exactly counter to the policies that nation states adhere to.
Why Give a Rip Bout Police, Bloods, & Crypts? ePie Jan. 29th, 2012
Police, Bloods, and Crypts.
The uniformed and the hooded families of underwater hoods
Why should anybody give a rip?
Ain’t Blood Feuds gettin kinda old?
A shame when your out and kinda cold
A tooth for a tooth is v v old
The toothless old ones
they not so very bold
Don’t you recall the new commandment
“that you love one another as I have loved you”
What about that is so hard to understand?
Last stands are for: .... the trumpy studs & pusses that think they livin grand;
The Trumps of the towers, .... the privileged of the powers
The Police, Bloods, and Crypts;
The uniformed and the hooded families of underwater hoods; ....
Why should anybody give a rip?
nice work, e-pie! who can watch the world-wide occupy movements and not catch that police and military are but the gang enforcement arm for the godfathers of the imperial fruit company? people keep calling to "get our democracy back!" and i think we still need to establish the idea for the first time. those who brought civilization-at-gunpoint to this continent in the first place still presume their authority to write the laws and the privilege of living above those law. from wikipedia
"When the country was founded, in most states, only white men with property were permitted to vote (freed African Americans could vote in four states). White working men, almost all women, and all other people of color were denied the franchise."
"people keep calling to "get our democracy back!" and i think we still need to establish the idea for the first time. those who brought civilization-at-gunpoint to this continent in the first place still presume their authority to write the laws and the privilege of living above those law."
Thank you hummingbird. Can we get some exclamation points after that first sentence?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau would certainly recognize the Bankster kleptocracy that America has become, as it has many disturbing parallels to Ancien Regime France, though with the bought off and duped electorate of the later era Roman Republic. Both were ruled by a rapacious patrician class who were in equal measure sociopaths and narcissists whom wound up being the prime reason for those regimes' respective inevitable and violent collapses.
In the United States of America, property rights were always seen as taking precedent over Human rights.
The clauses in the Constitution were intended to protect the "property rights" of the Wealthy from the mob . Furthermore what gave the greatest impetus to the Revolution was NOT Human rights. The Colonists and Europeans that had settled the Americas looked with lust upon the lands of the native Americans to the West and wanted to call these their own.
There was no human rights involved in this whatsoever. It was a lust for property. The Bill of Rights was added as an afterthought and while it did allow some Human Rights , many of these already existed under Common Law.(And they most certainly did not extend to the Slaves, women, the Natives or the poor they extended to men of property)
The Constitution of the United States of America by design and the way in which its Government structured was to ensure the rights of "Property". This was why it was ok to own slaves and to steal lands by slaughtering those that lived on them. This is why it was OK to crush Shays rebellion and this was what drove the USA to Empire by the seizing of the territories of others and extinguishing the human rights of their inhabitants.
GW,
So much for the constitution of the United States of America. I agree with your above comment. The founding "fathers" were the elites of their day. "We the people" indeed........
Some things seem to never change.
Excellent comment.....
Thomas Gilbert-
I wish more Americans would take this sensible and thoughtful approach to the 1787 constitution. Instead, too many treat it much the same way fundamentalists treat the Bible (or the parts they like) -- as if it was handed down by god herself as an Eternal Truth.
The authors of the constitution, who knew how much of it was the result of compromises, deals, and horse trading, would be surprised and outraged to see how it is treated by people 225 years after they patched it together.
Frankly, I think Jefferson would now be rallying support for a new constitutional convention to replace the outdated, antiquated, and ineffective Oldest Written Constitution Still in Force in the Whole World. After all, he was a revolutionary, wasn't he?
I agree with the author, this new populism expressed by Obama is a sham and not to be believed AT ALL. If Obama was serious he would have started prosecuting Bush administration officials. He would have prosecuted the banksters and mortgage hustlers. He would stopped the wars. He would have ..... well the list has no end.
Obama is a lying fake!
obummer exposed once again - good work danny
obummer's "hope" is that he can have no "change" in the bank scam
obummer is a shoe shine boy for the white shoe boys on wall street
they pay him off with bribes - oops i mean contributions
you know the fix is in for 2012 when all the gop can throw against him are the tax dodging romney and the evil lizard gingrich
obummer is a shoe in and the country will probably be done in totally before this manchurian candidate is finished his second term
i figure we will have no property or rights, either one, by the time obummer is done
maybe that explains his goofy smile and those empty eyes...
I am disgusted by the pretty open racism of your comment, medmedude.
Obama is no "shoe shine boy". He is a Harvard graduate, an expert in constitutional law, and, last but not least, president of the United State, duly elected by a clear majority. If he were white it would never have entered your mind to call him a "shoe shine boy".
His smile is not goofy. It is the best smile of any president since the famous Eisenhower grin. I'm sure he's won lots of support with that smile. Nor are his eyes empty. They are a major part of what makes him so handsome. America can be proud of having a leader who, unlike Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, Stephen Harper, or Hu Jintao, is a pleasure to look at.
BTW I think he's a lousy president. I wouldn't vote for him, but i enjoy watching him.
sorry - he's a shoe shine boy
romney or gingrich wannabe shoe shine boys - nothing to do with race
you must be a liberal or a progressive - your righteous disgust notwithstanding
your racism is apparent though - who said that shoe shine boys are black
your racism disgusts me liberal progressive - enjoy your trip to the fema prison - they'll probably have obummer's picture on the wall and you will have some time to admire that dashing mouthful of empty teeth
you should also consider taking a racism sensitivity course - get in touch with your inner being or something
btw. if obummer is a constitutional expert as you claim then why is he in favor of destroying every right and protection in it
I don't know how many of the "founding fathers" read Rousseau, but the social contract that influenced people like Jefferson came from the wrintings of John Locke, who felt that property rights included human rights.
I'm sure many of the "Founding Fathers" were familiar with Rousseau's thinking, since he was one of the most famous writers of the 18th century, when they were "founding".
In any case, since when do the "Fathers" set the terms of discussion in America? They were not divine messengers, but property (including human "property") owners who managed to get control of the process of writing a constitution.
The basis for the "right to property' lies exclusively in the willingness of society to recognize that right. This is shown every day by the many restrictions imposed by society on how property may be used, under what conditions it may be transferred, developed, etc.
You may not use the public highway without obtaining a license for your vehicle. You are mandated to buy insurance to cover possible accidents caused by your use of that vehicle. You are required to wear a seat belt, to drive within the speed limit, to drive on the correct side of the road, to obey instructions from a traffic cop, to obey traffic signs. Subject to those conditions, and subject to your having paid the previous owner for the vehicle, and subject to your registering that change in ownership,you are allowed to own a car.
Land is subject to similar restrictions, since society has come to the conclusion that uncontrolled land use leads to unbearable chaos, and that the cost of servicing land with roads, sewers, etc costs money, and that money must be raised through taxes.
So the right to property is not even close to being absolute, never has been, never will be. Property is a creation of society. And society has the right to change the terms of property ownership in accordance with its view of what is best for the members of that society.
The problem nowadays is that the decision making functions of the whole society have passed more and more into the hands of the very rich, who impose their views on the rest of us by force and intimidation. We need to liberate ourselves from their dominance, peacefully if possible, otherwise if necessary.
Or we will be their slaves soon enough.
Right to property (or its use) stems first and foremost from the Natural Contract and only secondarily from any social contract.
Since all major human societies are currently violating the natural contract for their species, human social contracts are understandably confused and more or less irrelevant, ecologically speaking.
But, this issue is vitally important. Who does have property rights and what exactly are those rights? For instance, if one has the right to access/use a particular place, does one also have the right to cut its trees? plant non indigenous species? murder other animal life that inhabit it? etc., etc.
http://allinharmony.org/from_empire_to_ecology/private_property_in_nature
What rights humans have in any given place they occupy are spelled out quite clearly in the Natural Contract. Too bad most don't know one exists, or how to recognize it if they do stumble upon it. http://allinharmony.org and http://allinharmony.org/from_empire_to_ecology
Owning land in US America is like what Archie Bunker said about beer," you can't buy beer you can only rent it". The government tells you what it will allow you to do on your "own" land, and if you comply it will allow you to use the land as long as you pay rent to them. If you don't pay the property tax or use the land as they say then it is no longer "your" land. If the government wants your land or wants to give to a corporation, it is no longer your land. Most people through out history and even today are able to house themselves without a thirty year mortgage. In Austin TX we have "public property" where it is illegal to sit or stand still. Soon we will reach the tipping point. When there is no place left to stand, we the people will have to make a stand.
Why focus on the government, which supposedly evicts people from their "land" when they fail to pay taxes?
Why not focus on the banks that evict people when they fail to pay inflated mortgages?
Why not focus on the landlords who evict people because they can't pay exorbitant rents?
Housing is a right. People should not have to rely on the whims of banks and landlords to have decent housing.
And yes, if that means getting rid of a capitalist system that rations housing according to income and wealth. to the point of denying it to many people, then let's get rid of it.
Why are so many Americans so worried about keeping their puny little bits of property? Could it be that they have been sucked in by the propaganda of the people who really own most of the property? I think so.
The rich people in America have done a brilliant job of rallying behind them a mass movement of people who they screw every day, on the slogan "We're all property owners."
You own a heavily mortgaged house, I own several estates outright. You own a credit card with rapidly accumulating interest. I own bank accounts and investments worth millions, which are growing in value while I play golf or run for president. But we're really all in this together, as Property Owners.
And now that insane dictator Obama is trying to set up a Communist tyranny to tax away our hard earned Property. We property owners have to get together to stop him! Rich or not, loaded with debt or loaded with cash, we're all really just property owners. Together, resisting Socialism.
Has any bigger pile of bullshit ever been gobbled up by so many people? I can't think of any.
"You can have democracy or you can have wealth in a few hands, but you can't have both"
Justice Louis Brandeis
Direct democracy
"You can have democracy or you can have wealth in a few hands, but you can't have both"
Absolutely!
Human Rights must of course include property rights. How else could the right to personal privacy be grounded?
But as most major Enlightenment thinkers noted: all rights defined as human can only be meaningful if they're agreed-upon as shared conditions of human existence within an agreed-upon, Nature-given hierarchical order. Thus for example, one person's property rights can legitimately be subject to modification or outright denail by other, more fundamental human rights, such as any other person's right to life via his/her efforts to gain natural sustenance from the land -- [Rousseau and Thomas Paine were very clear about this -- J. Locke less so.]
Paine, iterating Rousseau's dictum that one person's rights stop at another person's nose, puts it simplest in his 'The Rights of Man' essay:: ... ownership and use of one person's property for that owner's betterment ceases to be his Natural Right when it deprives another person of his right to act toward that same benefit.....and if we claim to justify the contrary principle, then no person in that order has any Natural Right which the state need honor, whether of property of life, except as those with the most property control the state to say so....
Many of the USA's allegedly Enlightenment-inspired revolutionaries loved Paine and Rousseau, but only for the latters' easily-understood populist exegetics against British elitist premises. But when it came time to craft post-Articles of Confederation charter, at Philadelphia in 1787, Paine's deepest insights about human governance, arguably anticipatory of Hegel's and Marx's later insights, clearly seemed just as much a threat to them as those of the pigs around King George III.
Privacy rights can be seperated from property rights and indeed MUST be. When you couple them together your are in essence stating a person without property is not entitled to privacy.
I don't know how far down the food chain you want to apply this philosophy on property rights, but I've worked hard to buy a home and a pick-up truck. They are paid for, and so I believe that they are my property. If you think that they belong to someone else, you owe me an explanation.
I don't want your house or your truck nor do I think that anyone else should have them. It just dawned on me that it is not the individual that I should be concerned about. It is the "bundle" of corporate realty owners who have accumulated wealth (power to buy politicians) that concerns me. I as a renter have no less Bill of Rights than you do as an owner. It is just that a property owner is kind of like a King in that he can pass along to and increase his "kingdoms" wealth in perpetuity and thereby diminish my one man one vote "right" . This can and has become a feudal system when you add in the "Corporate Kingdom" along with the home owners which has now caused the "peasants" of the free society to form an anti-feudal system called OWS.
America is a Republic but it is a Democracy to the common people and not a land of feudal lords.
Good article! Love the much needed historical perspective!
"....you are inn essence stating that a person without property is not entitled to privacy."
_____________________________________________________________
No, I'm not in essence or otherwise stating any such thing.
You could make that logical deduction from the premises only if the privacy of one's physical "person" fails to be included in the legal equation that also protects one's [chattel] property..
But the US Fourth Amendment purposely includes both one's"person" and one's "property" under its protection, and equates them as co-equal human rights, thereby disallowing your premise and disallowing your conclusion .
4th Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated.....":
There is no way the 4th Amendment can be read to mean or logically reduce to: '...if you don't own property, then you have no other rights to privacy...'
The amendment intends to identify a person's own body as inclusive of his/her rightful property. And although the text's authors never intended to include anyone else's body [ i.e. another "person"] as potentially being your rightful "property," it unfortunately took the Civil War to disabuse southern slaveholders of that obviously unintended assumption.