> Property is granted by governments. Why? Because it's a useful abstraction.
This is where that 'broad intellectual foundation' comes in. You may think that it is, sure, but why? Not everyone does, and there's a whole lot of philosophical discussion on this very topic. Our conception of 'private property' has only been around ~200 years, and humanity's been around just a bit more than that.
I'm a pragmatist. I find the philosophical 'discussion' on the metaphysical "purpose" of private property to be uninteresting and mostly worthless.
I am, however, perfectly willing to entertain many possible critiques, if they are shown to be practical and better than the alternatives. Feudal property law, for example, I don't find to be nearly as flexible or efficient (which was around for quite a while, as well). It's no accident that our notions of property came into greater strength with the industrial revolution. If you look at the states with both strong public and private property systems, like the Scandinavians, you'll find that our system has also been far from static.
Speaking as someone with a minor in philosophy, I have to agree with Paul Graham[1] that unfocused philosophy based on general principles (like "what is 'property?'") is terribly useless. If you want to make a difference, innovate.
I never said I disagreed with Marx's critique! However, I would note that goal and result are not necessarily the same.
I would say Marx succeeded in producing a lot of interesting practical results which could actually be implemented. On the other hand, some of his stuff smacks more of religion than it does of praxis. His "law of value," for example, seems very unfalsifiable, in a sense. He speaks of the approach to true value when supply and demand equilibriate, but his conditions of equilibrium are often either poorly defined or simply tautological (e.g., the true value of a good is when it meshes with the law of value, thus the law of value is the true value of commodities).
Indeed, many of Marx's ideas have been through the crucible. Some, like a command economy, have mostly been burned to disintegration. Others, like the provision of health care to anyone who needs it, financed by the people according to their ability, seems to have had huge success among most of the civilized world.
All in all, I don't have problems with Marx's approach, just the idea that rehashing ideas from a century ago in pretty much identical ways counts as innovation.
... yes, I meant exactly 200 years, to the letter. Obviously. The tilde, which is generally taken to mean 'approximate', was absolutely superflous. In a thread about John Locke's conception of property and its effects on modern day states, I plant the turning point at 1813. You got me.
(the ~200 figure comes from the Inclosure acts, which, as Wikipedia says, "the majority were passed between 1750 and 1860". Even that is obviously a rough time period, and only one of many significant historical events. Even if we take Locke's birthday, 29 August 1632, as the birth of private property in the current sense, that's still roughly 380 years ago, which is still pretty new as far as human history goes.)
Property isn't a philosophical or legal concept. It's a practical aspect of human psychology that has always existed. If you've ever watched two kids fight over an ice cream cone you've witnessed private property in action. People aren't emotionless robots or hyper-rational homo economi. If you can't be bothered to learn even a little bit about humanity, your political philosophies will be every bit as disastrous as Bolshevism (and Castroism, and whatever the hell North Korea does).
Even if we just want to talk about private property as a legal institution, we can go back at least to the code of Hammurabi, and probably further if I could be bothered to do the research, which I can't. Even during the middle ages there was an active merchant class. And arguably feudalism is just the extension of the property concept to encompass ownership of people.
Property has not always existed and it's not a fundamental "aspect of human psychology". If you said possession, I'd probably agree with you but you could say the same thing about sharing and cooperation.
This is where that 'broad intellectual foundation' comes in. You may think that it is, sure, but why? Not everyone does, and there's a whole lot of philosophical discussion on this very topic. Our conception of 'private property' has only been around ~200 years, and humanity's been around just a bit more than that.