Somewhat similarly, I have looked at the different socio-political systems and their characteristics, recasting the left-right paradigm in a way I believe makes clear under what arrangements justice arises. The term I use to describe this set of conditions is "cooperative individualism." I then look at "liberalism" as a set of policy positions to explain why liberalism has never been able to foster the just society. An introductory essay on liberalism and an HTML chart detailing the characteristics of each socio-political system historically advocated can be viewed (and printed out, if desired) at: http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/dodson_liberalism.html. The left-right chart is linked from the essay, or you can look at it directly at: http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/dodson_left-right_chart.html. I will be interested to see how our thinking corresponds or disagrees. Edward J. Dodson

Dear Ed,

I'm impressed at how you present your case for "Cooperative Individualism." With the exception of the single tax on land and natural resources and your rejection of property rights over land and natural resources, your principles and that of Kelso and other advocates of binary economics are virtually identical.

What you call "Cooperative Individualism" is similar to the paradigm of political economy that those of us in CESJ, the Global Justice Movement and the newly-formed American Revolutionary Party call "the Just Third Way". Pope John Paul II and the French philosopher Emmanuel Mounier offered a similar humanistic philosophy to yours they called "Personalism," drawing a moral distinction between the "individual" and the human "person" as a social being with personal rights and responsibilities. (Ayn Rand's "individual" glorifies selfishness, turning the vice of greed into a virtue, creating an individualistic society with no sense of or commitment to the good of others or the common good; that's the moral flaw in capitalism.)

If people need an "ism" to describe a moral-political-social-economic order that's superior to the other four alternatives in your matrix (i.e., Totalitarianism, State Socialism, Communitarian Socialism and Anarchism), I like the Pope's and Munier's term. A human cannot be a social being without being cooperative in his or her relations to others. But your descriptions of these less just socio-political systems make sense to me.

I also share what appears to be your position -- that natural law should be the basis of all man-made or positive law, and to the extent, positive law does not conform to natural law and reasoned principles of justice, natural law should prevail in guiding human society.

Ed, you'll note in the Ninth Amendments to the Constitution (a sadly neglected "sleeping giant" in constitutional law) a strong endorsement of natural law theory: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." The first ten amendments, the so-called Bill of Rights, would not have been added were it not for the protests of George Mason, one of the most highly respected thinkers at the constitutional convention and strong proponent of natural law as the basis of all law. Mason refused to sign the document because it did not contain a Bill of Rights, reflecting his earlier work as principal draftsman of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which preceded and gave rise to the assertion of natural law rights in the Declaration of Independence. The opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence opened with the assertion of the power of the people "to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them." It continues with the famous passage: We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." One of the great mistakes in the history of America, in my opinion, is that Jefferson did not incorporate Mason's closer adherence to natural law language in Section one of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which reads:

All men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. The Virginia Declaration of Rights, Section 1, June 29, 1776, Annals of America, 2:432.

Mason not only was supporting the natural law rights of property, but he insisted that governments, created with the consent of the people, has a fundamental responsibility to provide every man (meaning every human person) with equality of access to "the means of acquiring and possessing property." Had Jefferson been as wise as Mason in his understanding of the moral and political significance of private ownership of property, America would have evolved into the world's first economic democracy (a nation of owners), and political democracy in America might have ended chattel slavery even sooner than it did.

Both John Locke and Thomas Paine were early natural law proponents of property as the basis of civilization. They and other thinkers influencing the thinking of America's founding fathers viewed the securing of property as the main purpose for forming civil government. And, besides the primitive tools available to people, property rights in land were the main kind of assets accessible to most citizens.

As you know, in pre-industrial American history, land was fairly abundant and it was the main asset to which property rights under natural law theory could be extended to immigrants from the Old World. (Slavery is inherently a violation of the natural law rights of the slave, and that's why it was morally condemned long before its abolition.)

The tradition of providing homesteaders access to property rights in frontier land was carried forward under Lincoln's homestead acts of 1862, which some of us argue was the most important piece of Federal economic legislation ever enacted. Through the incentives of land ownership the productiveness on America farms skyrocketed compared to countries with similar soil and environmental conditions. Such abundance in farm products released millions from farm work who then build America's cities and ever-growing industrial frontier, a frontier, unlike land, that has no known physical limits. But, not heeding Mason's and Lincoln's insights on the importance of widespread ownership of property to an effective political democracy, America acquiesced in the monopolization of ownership of the industrial frontier and control over capital finance, turning once economically self-sufficient and independent farmers into wage slaves for a highly privileged ownership elite.

Now let's define the term "Property".

Property is an aggregate of the rights, powers and privileges, recognized by the laws of the nation, which an individual may possess with respect to various objects. Property is not the object owned, but the sum total of the "rights" which an individual may "own" in such an object. These in general include the rights of (1) possessing, (2) excluding others, (3) disposing or transferring, (4) using, (5) enjoying the fruits, profits, product or increase, and (6) destroying or injuring, if the owner so desires. In a civilized society, these rights are only as effective as the laws which provide for their enforcement. English common law, adopted into the fabric of American law, recognizes that the rights of property are subject to the limitations that (1) things owned may not be so used as to injure others or the property of others, and (2) they may not be used in ways contrary to the general welfare of the people as a whole. From this definition of private property, a purely functional and practical understanding of the nature of property becomes clear. Property in everyday life is the right of control.

In the definition above, we can see the difference between the "thing" that is owned (including land, structures, tools, patentable systems and copyrights, and even ownership of one's own body), and the rights, powers and privileges an "owner" has with respect to those things. Private property refers to the latter, and it is a set of rights that is subject to the limitations of natural law and thus naturally terminable upon one's death, i.e., you can't take your property with you to any afterlife.

Ed, we agree completely with you that justice and natural law demands that no one should have special privileges or a monopoly over land and natural resources. Henry George put his finger on this problem. So did Karl Marx. You're right, special privileges and monopolies are not handed down by the Creator. They're handed down by government, and that's wrong. Since they are byproducts of unjust man-made laws, institutions and systems, they can be transformed into inclusionary laws, institutions and system that provide all citizens with equal opportunities to own and share control over "things." Kelso agreed with George and Marx in their condemnation of special privileges and monopolies. And Kelso's binary theory of economics democratizes rights of ownership and control over things.

Our Capital Homestead Act is a comprehensive package of fundamental economic reforms that is aimed at eliminating the monopolies and special privileges you rightfully condemn. (http://www.cesj.org/publications/capitalhomesteading/whatif-flyer.pdf)

So where do we differ? You would forbid anyone from owning land and other natural resources and you would channel all "rents" from the use of land and natural resources to the government. You argue in your paper that "socio-economic arrangements allowing natural law to operate freely may create equality of condition, but cannot generate equality of opportunity. Only Cooperative Individualism, by prohibiting sanctioned inequalities to occur, establishes conditions necessary for equality of opportunity to flourish."

While I'm on your side in opposition to monopolies and special privileges, you're not correct in that assertion. Capital Homesteading would systematically eliminate sanctioned inequalities. And it would systematically minimize some of the dangers of abuse and corruption in government and possible "tyranny of the majority" that I think would be inevitable as a result of your elimination of property rights in land and natural resources. Even a democratically elected government would not eliminate these dangers. In fact, by socializing the ownership and control over land and natural resources, I can envision your path eventually leading to government ownership and control over all productive enterprises, the ultimate in wage slave systems.

Under Capital Homesteading, we treat land and natural resources as "things", along with all other "things" that producers incorporate into the labor-capital mix that produces all marketable goods and services, so that rent and other forms of income from productive assets flow directly and personally to a universal base of capital owners. We have developed a for-profit legal entity we call a "Community Investment Corporation" (CIC) that is owned by all residents of a community, who as equal shareholders can participate in the process of land use planning, development of infrastructure, ecological safeguards, recycling of reources, leasing of land for housing, industry, commerce, schools and recreation, etc., and sharing in the rentals and royalties for the use of nature's resources. If administratively and politically possible, ownership of resources can be expanded to cover regional or state resources, or even a national or global resources under a Global Natural Resources Bank where every world citizen would have an equal share, leaving planning decisions and infrastructural development and leasing to citizens in their local communities through their CICs.

Why is this difference important? Because government, as a "necessary evil" for a world where humans are not angels, is civilization's only legitimate monopoly. By controlling all instruments of coercion as well as control over money and credit, as important as it is, government is an ever-present threat to human freedom and other natural law rights. It's a question of power, and I subscribe to Lord Acton's principle that "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." So if it's a question of where ownership should lie, in the government or in the people, I would always choose to decentralize and democratize power by structured systems that put ownership control into the hands of every person. Daniel Webster was right when he declared that "Power naturally and necessarily follows property." And so was Benjamin Leigh in the Virginia Convention when he declared: "Power and Property can be separated for a time by force or fraud-but divorced, never. For as soon as the pang of separation is felt…Property will purchase Power, or Power will take over Property." And John Adams added in his defense of the Constitution: "The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence."

Ed, if every man, woman and child were entitled to a free, lifetime, non-transferable ownership share in a for-profit natural resources development company that held the legal title and rents the land and auctions licensing rights to extract natural resources to competing mining and refining companies, then the "rentals" you mention would flow directly to each person to meet their living expenses and to pay taxes for the governments that serve them. Such a free "right of citizenship" (or if you prefer "privilege of citizenship") would be similar to a citizen's right or privilege of access to the political ballot. Why not? Which would best insure fundamental human freedoms and natural law rights? Is it really better for government to trickle-down dividends from land rentals, than to force government to be dependent on the will and independent incomes of its citizens? Is the top-down approach you advocate more or less likely to have transparency and accountability of government officials and politicians than the bottom-up we have built into Capital Homesteading?

Under the philosophy of the Just Third Way, anything that can be owned by government, can and should be owned by the people. Kelso, Adler and I make our case on the basis of universal principles of justice. How can you make a good case to the contrary? I admire your general clarity of thought, but I am not convinced by any arguments that I've read from you so far.

Incidentally, do you oppose our Oil-to-People proposal for Iraq (http://www.cesj.org/thirdway/paradigmpapers/iraq-nationbuilding.htm)? A similar proposal was endorsed (without attributing it to us) in the lead editorial of the Wall Street Journal on August 17th. (http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112424320463815192,00.html?mod=todays_us_opinion)

Ed, do I have your permission to post our exchanges so far on COG's "Kelso's Binary Economics" discussion group? I'd like to get Jeff Smith into these discussions also and invite him to join the Kelso discussions.

With great respect and admiration, Norm Kurland Center for Economic and Social Justice www.cesj.org