On the Origins of Private Property Rights and the Family by Hans-Hermann Hoppe >> <<
Human history is justified from 5 million years ago, when we humans parted ways along evolutionary paths with our closest non-human closest relative, the chimpanzees. It is also reasonable to start with the first appearance of homo habilis 2.5 million years ago, or from the appearance of the first representative of "anatomic modern man" 200,000 years ago, or from the anatomically modern man becoming the standard human form 100,000 years ago. But without the above points in time, I just want to start 50,000 years ago. This is also a very reasonable point in time. By this time, human beings had developed a fully mature language that involved a fundamental improvement in learning and innovation, and the "anatomic modern man" had evolved into a "behavioral modern man." That is, humans have adopted a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, which still exists even in some corners of the land today.
About 50,000 years ago, the number of "modern humans" may be less than 5,000, confined to northeast Africa. They live in societies made up of small groups (10-30 people). These small groups meet occasionally, forming a common gene pool of about 150 people, perhaps as many as 500 people (geneticists have found that this population size is necessary to avoid inferior effects). The division of labor is limited, and the main division of labor exists between women (usually as gatherers) and men (usually as hunters). Still, life initially seemed good for our ancestors. As long as you work regularly for a few hours, you can live a comfortable life, have good (high-protein) nutrition and plenty of leisure time.
However, the lives of hunters and gatherers face fundamental challenges. Hunter-gatherer societies largely lived parasitic lives. That is, they add nothing beyond the supply of goods conferred by nature. They just ran out of supplies. They do not produce (except for a number of tools), they consume only. They do not grow (crops) or raise (livestock), but wait for nature to regenerate and replenish. This form of parasitism encounters the inevitable problem of population growth. In order to maintain a comfortable life, the population density must be maintained at an extremely low level. It is estimated that a square mile of territory is needed for 1-2 people to live comfortably, and even a larger area is needed in areas where the product is less abundant.
One can certainly try to prevent this demographic pressure from emerging, and in fact, hunter-gatherer societies have tried their best in this regard. Primitive societies used artificial abortions and also engaged in infanticide, especially female infanticide, in which women reduced the number of pregnancies through prolonged breastfeeding (combined with the low body fat content of women who were regularly active, reduced their fertility). However, while these approaches alleviate the problem, they do not address the root cause. The population maintains growth.
Given that the size of the population cannot be maintained at a stable level, there are only three options for the emerging "surplus" population:
Humans can abandon the hunter-gatherer life and find a new model of social organization;
Humans can scramble for a limited food supply; or
Humans can migrate.
Migration is by no means without cost (after all, people have to leave their familiar homeland and travel to unfamiliar territory), but it seems to be the lowest-cost option. So, starting from their homeland in East Africa, group after group of relatives bid farewell, formed a new society in the areas that had not been occupied by humans so far, and conquered the entire earth one after another.
The process is largely consistent: one group invades a territory, population pressure rises, some stay where they are, and their "subgroups" move on, passing on from generation to generation. Once dispersed, there was almost no connection between the various hunter-gatherer societies. These societies, although initially closely related to each other through direct kinship, have thus formed their own different gene pools, and in the face of very different natural environments, they have shown a distinctly different appearance over time as a result of the interaction of genetic mutations and genetic drift with natural selection.
This process also seems to have begun about 50,000 years ago, shortly after the emergence of "behavioral modern man" and the acquisition of shipbuilding skills. From this era onwards, to about 12,000-11,000 years ago, global temperatures gradually dropped (and since then we have been in a period of interglacial warming), and sea levels have fallen with it. [Note: In fact, the last warm period has ended about 120,000 years.] During this period, that is, more than 120,000 years ago, hippos lived on the Rhine and Thames rivers, and Northern Europe took on a certain "African look". Since then, the glacier has moved steadily southward, eventually dropping sea level by more than 100 meters. The Thames and elbe rivers become tributaries of the Rhine before flowing into the North Sea and from there into the Atlantic Ocean. When this period came to an abrupt end about 12,000 years ago, glaciers receded rapidly and sea levels rose, not at an annual rate of millimeters but at a rate of flooding. In a short period of time, England and Ireland, two places previously connected to the European continent, became islands. The Baltic Sea and much of the seas of the contemporary North Sea were thus formed. Similarly, much of today's Persian Gulf can only be traced back to about this time. People crossed the Red Sea at the Gate of Sorrow, which at that time was just a narrow inlet dotted with islands, and landed at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula (which was in a relatively humid period at the time). Since then, preferring to stay in an already adapted tropical climate, people have continued to migrate eastward. Travel was largely by boat, and it wasn't until about 6,000 years ago when humans learned how to tame horses, which was a much faster and more convenient way of transportation than hiking.
As a result, people migrate along the coastline – from where they travel through river valleys into the interior – first all the way to India. Since then, population movements seem to have split into two directions. On the one hand, humanity continued to bypass the Indian Peninsula, reaching Southeast Asia and Indonesia (then connected to the Asian continent), and finally to the now sunken continent of Sahur (a continent that contains present-day Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania, which were connected to each other until about 8,000 years ago), separated by only a 60-mile-wide waterway dotted with islands that allowed short -- "island hopping"; and along the coast, it traveled north Chinese mainland, eventually reaching Japan. Human migration, on the other hand, is from India to the northwest, through Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, and finally to Europe. At the same time, the people separated from this migratory flow advanced northeastward to southern Siberia. Later human migrations are most likely divided into three, the first being around 14-12,000 years ago, crossing the Bering Strait from Siberia – then across a land bridge (to about 11,000 years ago) – to the American continent, and apparently not reaching Patagonia (east of the Andes in South America and south of the Colorado River) about 1,000 years later. The last migration route was from Taiwan, which was occupied by humans about 5,000 years ago, across the Pacific Ocean to the Polynesian Islands, and only about 800 years ago, humans finally reached New Zealand.
Analysis of genomic data inferred the major migrations of humans around the world
Regardless of all these intricate details, the area of land available to help humanity meet its needs can no longer be expanded at some point in time. In economic terms, the supply of "land" as a factor of production becomes fixed, and every increase in population size must be sustained by the same, constant-size land. We know from the economic law of earnings that this situation necessarily leads to malthusian problems. The law of income states that there is an optimal combination of any combination of factors of production — in this case: land and labour-power. If this optimal value is deviated from and only one factor input is added, in this case: the input of labour-power, and the other element, the land input, remains unchanged, then the material output either does not increase at all, or at least does not increase in proportion to the increase in the input. That is to say, other conditions remain the same, and when the population size grows more than a certain extent, the wealth growth does not increase proportionally. If this is crossed, the per capita material output will decrease. On average, the standard of living will decline. The population has reached the level of (absolute) surplus.
What should we do in the face of such a challenge? In response to growing demographic pressures, there have been three options: migrate, fight, or find a new model of social organization, but only the latter two options remain open. Here, I will focus on the last response, which is also the response of peace.
This challenge has been met with a twofold response: on the one hand, through land conservation, on the other hand, through the "privatization" of offspring, and in short, through the family system and the private property system.
To understand this response, we must first look at the treatment of the "land" of the factor of production by hunter-gatherer societies.
It can be safely assumed that private property exists within the framework of tribal families. The existence of private property involves personal clothing, tools, utensils and ornaments. On the one hand, these goods are considered personal property as long as they are produced by identifiable individuals (in their own leisure time) or by others who have received them from the original maker through gifts or exchanges. On the other hand, these goods are regarded as collective goods as long as they are the result of some kind of joint effort. This undoubtedly applies to means of subsistence: the berries collected and the prey hunted are the result of a division of labour within the tribe. (There is no doubt that collective property played a very prominent role in hunter-gatherer societies, and because of this, the term "primitive communism" was often used to describe primitive tribal economies: each providing "income" to the family according to his own ability, and each taking it from the collective income according to his own needs.) ）
So, where is the land where all tribal activities are played? One can safely rule out the possibility that the land is considered private property. But is this collective property? This is the usual view. In fact, however, land is neither private property nor collective property, but part of the environment or, more specifically, a general condition for action.
The external world in which human behavior takes place can be divided into two very different parts. On the one hand, some things are considered means or economic goods; on the other hand, some things are considered environments. There are three necessary conditions for classifying an element of the external world as a means or economic goods.
First of all, in order for an item to become an economic commodity, there must be a human need.
Second, one must have a certain perception of something, that is, to think that there is a causal connection between certain assigned properties of the thing and the satisfaction of this need.
Third, in the present circumstances, and most importantly, an element of the external world that is so perceived must be under human control in order for it to be used to satisfy a given need.
That is to say, only when a causal relationship is formed between it and man's needs and is under human control can one say that the entity is possessed—it has become a commodity—and is therefore the property of someone. On the other hand, if there is a causal relationship between an element of the external world and human needs, but no one controls and interferes with this element, then this element must be regarded as part of an unoccupied environment and therefore not the property of anyone.
In the context of these considerations, we can now answer questions about the place of land in hunter-gatherer societies. Of course, berries picked from bushes are also a property, but what about shrubs that have a causal relationship with the berries they are picked? When a shrub is possessed, it can emerge from its original position as an environmental condition for action and merely as a contributing factor for the satisfaction of human needs to the status of property and a real factor of production: that is, man purposefully intervenes in the natural causal relationship between the bush and the berries, for example, by watering the shrub or pruning the branches of the shrub in order to produce certain results: the increase in the production of berries is higher than that achieved by nature.
In the same way, there is no doubt that the animal to be hunted is a property; but what is the status of the herd to which the beast belongs? As long as man does not do anything that can be interpreted as (and this is in his own mind) causally related to the satisfaction of perceived needs, then the herd must be regarded as masterless nature. The herd becomes property only when the necessary conditions for (human) interference with the natural chain of events to produce some desired result have been met. For example, this is how things evolve when a person begins to graze animals, that is, when he actively tries to control the movement of herds.
But what about the status of lands where controlled herd activity takes place? By our definition, a pastoralist cannot be considered a landowner. Because herders simply follow the herd's natural movements, their intervention in nature is limited to bringing the herd together so that it is easier to obtain from any one of them when a supply of livestock meat is needed. The herders did not interfere with the land in order to control the movement of the herd, they only interfered with the movement of the members of the herd. Land becomes property only when herders abandon grazing and move to animal husbandry, that is, when they use land as a (scarce) means to control animal movement by controlling it. This requires some way of enclosing the land and building fences or other barriers to restrict the free and natural movement of livestock. Thus, land is no longer merely a contributing factor in herd production, but a real factor of production.
These considerations suggest that it is a mistake to think that land is the property of hunter-gatherer societies (collectively owned). Hunters are not herders, they are not animal husbandry, and gatherers are not gardeners or farmers. They do not control the flora and fauna of nature by caring for or feeding. They just collect something from nature for people to enjoy. Land for them is nothing more than a condition of activity, not their property.
It can be said that the first step for a growing hunter-gatherer society to deal with the Malthusian trap it faces is to establish property rights on the land. Under the pressure of absolute overpopulation leading to a decline in living standards, tribal members (individually or collectively) continue to occupy more and more of the previously unowned nature (land). This practice of land-holding immediately has a double effect. First, more goods are produced, and more demand can be met. Indeed, this fact is precisely the motivation for the possession of land: the insight into the existence of a causal relationship between the land and the satisfaction of human needs, and that it can be controlled. By controlling the land, man actually began to produce goods, not just consume them. (Importantly, the production of such goods also involves conserving and storing goods in the present for later consumption.) Second, and therefore, the productivity increased through the economic use of land allows more people to survive on the same, given area of land, even if the land area remains the same. In fact, it is estimated that as land tenure and the corresponding shift from hunter-gatherer to farming and livestock, a population 10 to 100 times larger than before can sustain its livelihoods on the same area of land.
However, the economic use of land is only part of the solution to the problems posed by growing population pressures. Through land appropriation, land is used more efficiently and the livelihoods of larger populations are sustained. But the land tenure system itself does not affect the other side of the problem: new and more offspring continue to multiply. A solution is also needed to this aspect. Humanity must find a social system to control this reproduction. The system that aims to accomplish this task is the family system. As Thomas Malthus first explained, in order to solve the problems of overpopulation and the property system, the "social relations between the sexes" must also undergo some fundamental changes.
What has the social relationship between the sexes looked like in the past? In this regard, what about the institutional innovation brought about by the family? From the point of view of economic theory, the above can be described as a shift in which both the benefits of creating offspring (creating an additional potential producer) and (in particular) the cost (creating an additional consumer) are socialized, i.e., from a situation in which society as a whole, rather than the "producer" of that offspring, obtains (such benefits) and pays (such costs), This becomes a situation where the benefits and costs involved in childbearing are internalized by individuals who are causally responsible for it and are financially borne by those individuals.
Regardless of the exact details, stable monogamy, as well as polygamy between men and women, now associated with the term family, seems to have emerged only recently in human history, and previous institutions could be broadly defined as "unrestricted" or "unfettered" sexual intercourse or "group marriage" (sometimes referred to as "free sex"). At this stage of human history, the social relations between the sexes do not preclude the existence of a temporary pairing relationship between a man and a woman. However, in principle every woman is considered a potential sexual partner for every man and vice versa. In the words of Friedrich Engels: "Men live in polygamy, their women live in polygamy at the same time, and their children are considered to belong to all of them... Every woman belongs to every man, and every man belongs to every woman. ”
However, in extolling the past and future system of "free sex", what Engels and many later socialists failed to notice was that this system had a direct impact on the reproduction of offspring. As Ludwig von Mises commented: "It is certain that socialist society, even if it can bring 'free sex', cannot bring free birth." Mises's meaning of this sentence is that "free sex" has consequences, that is, pregnancy and childbirth, and fertility has both benefits and costs. As long as the benefits outweigh the costs, that is, as long as an additional member of society contributes more as a producer of goods than he takes as a consumer, it does not matter – this may continue for some time. But following the law of returns, this situation cannot last forever. Inevitably, the moment will come when the cost of additional fertility outweighs its benefits. Humanity must then cease any further procreation — moral abstinence must be exercised — unless willing to endure a gradual decline in the average standard of living. However, if a child is considered to belong to everyone or to be fatherless and motherless because everyone has sex with everyone else, then the motivation to inhibit fertility disappears, or is also greatly reduced. Due to human biological nature, everyone, male or female, is driven to pass on their genes to the next generation of humanity. The more offspring a person creates, the better, because the more his or her genes remain. There is no doubt that this natural instinct of man can be controlled by rational thinking. But if he or she acts spontaneously and follows his or her animal instincts, doing so with little or no financial sacrifice, and since all children are raised by society as a whole, then the use of reason in sexual matters, that is, the motivation to practice any moral moderation, is almost nothing. Mises points out: "The actor rationalizes some of his sexual satisfactions."] The satisfaction of sexual desire is the result of the trade-off between pros and cons. Man, like a bull, will not blindly obey sexual stimuli; man will suppress the desire to mate if he thinks that the cost—the expected drawback—is too high. We can apply malthusians' term "moral temperance" in this sense, without any value judgment or ethical implications. --Translator's Note]
From a purely economic point of view, then, the solution to the problem of overpopulation should be obvious. Child ownership (or rather, child custody) must be privatized. Children should not be regarded as collectively owned by "society" or entrusted to "society", or as some kind of uncontrolled and uncontrollable natural event that should be regarded as owned by or entrusted to anyone, but as privately produced and entrusted to private care.
In addition, with the formation of monogamous or polygamous families, another decisive innovation finally emerged. Previously, a tribal member formed a single, unified family, and the division of labor within the tribe was basically the division of labor within the family. As the family is formed, a unified family disintegrates into separate families, and with it comes the formation of "each"—that is, private land ownership. That is to say, the occupation of land described above is not only the transition from previously ownerless to the present owner, but more precisely, the former ownerless to belong to different families (thus also allowing for the emergence of a division of labour between families).
As a result, the higher social income generated by land ownership is no longer distributed to every member of society on a "need- basis" basis, as was previously the case. On the contrary, the share of each independent household in total social income depends on the products economically attributed to the family (i.e., its labour and property into production). In other words, the "communism" that was previously prevalent may still persist in every family, but communism has disappeared from the relationships between different family members. The income varies from family to household, depending on the quantity and quality of labor and property invested, and no one has a claim on the income of family members except their own members. Therefore, "free riding" has become basically impossible, if not completely impossible. Those who don't work can no longer expect to be able to eat.
Thus, in response to increasing population pressures, a new model of social organization emerged, replacing the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that characterized much of human history. As Mises summed it up:
"Private ownership of the means of production is a principle of regulation that, within society, balances the means of social disposable subsistence, whose growth is limited, with the less restricted consumption capacity. By making each member of society's share in the product of society dependent on the output economically attributable to him (the labor and property invested), and by eliminating the surplus population by means of the fierce struggle for survival prevailing in the kingdom of flora and fauna, it is replaced by a decline in the birth rate caused by various social forces. 'Moral temperance', the restriction of social status on procreation, replaces the struggle for survival. ”