The Political Needs of a Toolmaking Animal: Madison, Hamilton, Locke, and the Question of Property

Summary

Aristotle's definition is really this–that man is by nature the citizen of a city (Stadtbürger). This definition is just as characteristic for classical antiquity as is Franklin's definition for Yankee civilization (das Yankeetum)–that man is by nature a maker of instruments.

–Karl Marx

INTRODUCTION

Karl Marx was arguably right in contending that Aristotle's claim that “man is by nature a political animal” was an accurate reflection of the spirit of classical civilization. Was he similarly correct in singling out, as the distinguishing feature of das Yankeetum, the notion that man is really first and foremost a fabricator of tools? To sort out this question, one must consider what the American founders had in mind when they spoke of the right to property. One must trace their understanding to its roots, and one must ponder its consequences.

Property rights are the appropriate starting point because within the political ruminations of those whom our French cousins persist in calling les Anglo-Saxons property has long loomed large. “Abstract liberty,” Edmund Burke observed, “like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.”

Liberty inheres in some sensible object; and every nation has formed to itself some favorite point, which by way of eminence becomes the criterion of their happiness. It happened … that the great contests for freedom in this country were from the earliest times chiefly upon the question of taxing. Most of the contests in the ancient commonwealths turned primarily on the right of election of magistrates, or on the balance among the several orders of the state. The question of money was not with them so immediate. But in England it was otherwise.