The Beginning of Ownership
    by Thorstein Veblen
    American Journal of Sociology, vol. 4 (1898-9)
    
    
    
        In the accepted economic theories the ground of ownership is
    commonly conceived to be the productive labor of the owner. This
    is taken, without reflection or question, to be the legitimate
    basis of property; he who has produced a useful thing should
    possess and enjoy it. On this head the socialists and the
    economists of the classical line - the two extremes of economic
    speculation - are substantially at one. The point is not in
    controversy, or at least it has not been until recently; it has
    been accepted as an axiomatic premise. With the socialists it has
    served as the ground of their demand that the laborer should
    receive the full product of his labor. To classical economists
    the axiom has, perhaps, been as much trouble as it has been
    worth. It has given them no end of bother to explain how the
    capitalist is the "producer" of the goods that pass into his
    possession, and how it is true that the laborer gets what he
    produces. Sporadic instances of ownership quite dissociated from
    creative industry are recognized and taken account of as
    departures from the normal; they are due to disturbing causes.
    The main position is scarcely questioned, that in the normal case
    wealth is distributed in proportion to - and in some cogent sense
    because of - the recipient's contribution to the product.
        Not only is the productive labor of the owner the definitive
    ground of his ownership today, but the derivation of the
    institution of property is similarly traced to the productive
    labor of that putative savage hunter who produced two deer or one
    beaver or twelve fish. The conjectural history of the origin of
    property, so far as it has been written by the economists, has
    been constructed out of conjecture proceeding on the
    preconceptions of Natural Rights and a coercive Order of Nature.
    To anyone who approaches the question of ownership with only an
    incidental interest in its solution (as is true of the classical,
    pre-evolutionary economists), and fortified with the
    preconceptions of natural rights, all this seems plain. It
    sufficiently accounts for the institution, both in point of
    logical derivation and in point of historical development. The
    "natural" owner is the person who has "produced" an article, or
    who, by a constructively equivalent expenditure of productive
    force, has found and appropriated an object. It is conceived that
    such a person becomes the owner of the article by virtue of the
    immediate logical inclusion of the idea of ownership under the
    idea of creative industry.
        This natural-rights theory of property makes the creative
    effort of an isolated, self-sufficing individual the basis of the
    ownership vested in him. In so doing it overlooks the fact that
    there is no isolated, self-sufficing individual. All production
    is, in fact, a production in and by the help of the community,
    and all wealth is such only in society. Within the human period
    of the race development, it is safe to say, no individual has
    fallen into industrial isolation, so as to produce any one useful
    article by his own independent effort alone. Even where there is
    no mechanical co-operation, men are always guided by the
    experience of others. The only possible exceptions to this rule
    are those instances of lost or cast-off children nourished by
    wild beasts, of which half-authenticated accounts have gained
    currency from time to time. But the anomalous, half-hypothetical
    life of these waifs can scarcely have affected social development
    to the extent of originating the institution of ownership.
        Production takes place only in society-only through the
    co-operation of an industrial community. This industrial
    community may be large or small; its limits are commonly somewhat
    vaguely defined; but it always comprises a group large enough to
    contain and transmit the traditions, tools, technical knowledge,
    and usages without which there can be no industrial organization
    and no economic relation of individuals to one another or to
    their environment. The isolated individual is not a productive
    agent. What he can do at best is to live from season to season,
    as the non-gregarious animals do. There can be no production
    without technical knowledge; hence no accumulation and no wealth
    to be owned, in severalty or otherwise. And there is no technical
    knowledge apart from an industrial community. Since there is no
    individual production and no individual productivity, the
    natural-rights preconception that ownership rests on the
    individually productive labor of the owner reduces itself to
    absurdity, even under the logic of its own assumptions.
        Some writers who have taken up the question from the
    ethnological side hold that the institution is to be traced to
    the customary use of weapons and ornaments by individuals. Others
    have found its origin in the social group's occupation of a given
    piece of land, which it held forcibly against intruders, and
    which it came in this way to "own." The latter hypothesis bases
    the collective ownership of land on a collective act of seizure,
    or tenure by prowess, so that it differs fundamentally from the
    view which bases ownership on productive labor.
        The view that ownership is an outgrowth of the customary
    consumption of such things as weapons and ornaments by
    individuals is well supported by appearances and has also the
    qualified sanction of the natural-rights preconception. The
    usages of all known primitive tribes seem at first sight to bear
    out this view. In all communities the individual members exercise
    a more or less unrestrained right of use and abuse over their
    weapons, if they have any, as well as over many articles of
    ornament, clothing, and the toilet. In the eyes of the modern
    economist this usage would count as ownership. So that, if the
    question is construed to be simply a question of material fact,
    as to the earliest emergence of usages which would in the
    latter-day classification be brought under the head of ownership,
    then it would have to be said that ownership must have begun with
    the conversion of these articles to individual use. But the
    question will have to be answered in the contrary sense if we
    shift our ground to the point of view of the primitive men whose
    institutions are under review. The point in question is the
    origin of the institution of ownership, as it first takes shape
    in the habits of thought of the early barbarian. The question
    concerns the derivation of the idea of ownership or property.
    What is of interest for the present purpose is not whether we,
    with our preconceptions, would look upon the relation of the
    primitive savage or barbarian to his slight personal effects as a
    relation of ownership, but whether that is his own apprehension
    of the matter. It is a question as to the light in which the
    savage himself habitually views these objects that pertain
    immediately to his person and are set apart for his habitual use.
    Like all questions of the derivation of institutions, it is
    essentially a question of folk-psychology, not of mechanical
    fact; and, when so conceived, it must be answered in the
    negative.
    
        The unsophisticated man, whether savage or civilized, is
    prone to conceive phenomena in terms of personality; these being
    terms with which he has a first-hand acquaintance. This habit is
    more unbroken in the savage than in civilized men. All obvious
    manifestations of force are apprehended as expressions of
    conation - effort put forth for a purpose by some agency similar
    to the human will. The point of view of the archaic culture is
    that of forceful, pervading personality, whose unfolding life is
    the substantial fact held in view in every relation into which
    men or things enter. This point of view in large measure shapes
    and colors all the institutions of the early culture -and in a
    less degree the later phases of culture. Under the guidance of
    this habit of thought, the relation of any individual to his
    personal effects is conceived to be of a more intimate kind than
    that of ownership simply. Ownership is too external and colorless
    a term to describe the fact.
        In the apprehension of the savage and the barbarian the
    limits of his person do not coincide with the limits which modern
    biological science would recognize. His individuality is
    conceived to cover, somewhat vaguely and uncertainly, a pretty
    wide fringe of facts and objects that pertain to him more or less
    immediately. To our sense of the matter these items lie outside
    the limits of his person, and to many of them we would conceive
    him to stand in an economic rather than in an organic relation.
    This quasi-personal fringe of facts and objects commonly
    comprises the man's shadow; the reflection of his image in water
    or any similar surface; his name; his peculiar tattoo marks; his
    totem, if he has one; his glance; his breath, especially when it
    is visible; the print of his hand and foot; the sound of his
    voice; any image or representation of his person; any excretions
    or exhalations from his person; parings of his nails; cuttings of
    his hair; his ornaments and amulets; clothing that is in daily
    use, especially what has been shaped to his person, and more
    particularly if there is wrought into it any totemic or other
    design peculiar to him; his weapons, especially his favorite
    weapons and those which he habitually carries. Beyond these there
    is a great number of other, remoter things which may or may not
    be included in the quasi-personal fringe.
        As regards this entire range of facts and objects, it is to
    be said that the "zone of influence" of the individual's
    personality is not conceived to cover them all with the same
    degree of potency; his individuality shades off by insensible,
    penumbral gradations into the external world. The objects and
    facts that fall within the quasi-personal fringe figure in the
    habits of thought of the savage as personal to him in a vital
    sense. They are not a congeries of things to which he stands in
    an economic relation and to which he has an equitable, legal
    claim. These articles are conceived to be his in much the same
    sense as his hands and feet are his, or his pulse-beat, or his
    digestion, or the heat of his body, or the motions of his limbs
    or brain.
        For the satisfaction of any who may be inclined to question
    this view, appeal may be taken to the usages of almost any
    people. Some such notion of a pervasive personality, or a
    penumbra of personality, is implied, for instance, in the giving
    and keeping of presents and mementos. It is more indubitably
    present in the working of charms; in all sorcery; in the
    sacraments and similar devout observances; in such practices as
    the Tibetan prayer-wheel; in the adoration of relics, images, and
    symbols; in the almost universal veneration of consecrated places
    and structures; in astrology; in divination by means of
    hair-cuttings, nail-parings, photographs, etc. Perhaps the least
    debatable evidence of belief in such a quasi-personal fringe is
    afforded by the practices of sympathetic magic; and the practices
    are strikingly similar in substance the world over-from the
    love-charm to the sacrament. Their substantial ground is the
    belief that a desired effect can be wrought upon a given person
    through the means of some object lying within his quasi-personal
    fringe. The person who is approached in this way may be a
    fellow-mortal, or it may be some potent spiritual agent whose
    intercession is sought for good or ill. If the sorcerer or anyone
    who works a charm can in any way get at the "penumbra" of a
    person's individuality, as embodied in his fringe of
    quasi-personal facts, he will be able to work good or ill to the
    person to whom the fact or object pertains; and the magic rites
    performed to this end will work their effect with greater force
    and precision in proportion as the object which affords the point
    of attack is more intimately related to the person upon whom the
    effect is to be wrought. An economic relation, simply, does not
    afford a handle for sorcery. It may be set down that whenever the
    relation of a person to a given object is made use of for the
    purposes of sympathetic magic, the relation. is conceived to be
    something more vital than simple legal ownership.
        Such meager belongings of the primitive savage as would under
    the nomenclature of a later day be classed as personal property
    are not thought of by him as his property at all; they pertain
    organically to his person. Of the things comprised in his
    quasi-personal fringe all do not pertain to him with the same
    degree of intimacy or persistency; but those articles which are
    more remotely or more doubtfully included under his individuality
    are not therefore conceived to be partly organic to him and
    partly his property simply. The alternative does not lie between
    this organic relation and ownership. It may easily happen that a
    given article lying along the margin of the quasi-personal fringe
    is eliminated from it and is alienated, either by default through
    lapse of time or by voluntary severance of the relation. But when
    this happens the article is not conceived to escape from the
    organic relation into a remoter category of things that are owned
    by and external to the person in question. If an object escapes
    in this way from the organic sphere of one person, it may pass
    into the sphere of another; or, if it is an article that lends
    itself to common use, it may pass into the common stock of the
    community.
        As regards this common stock, no concept of ownership, either
    communal or individual, applies in the primitive community. The
    idea of a communal ownership is of relatively late growth, and
    must by psychological necessity have been preceded by the idea of
    individual ownership. Ownership is an accredited discretionary
    power over an object on the ground of a conventional claim; it
    implies that the owner is a personal agent who takes thought for
    the disposal of the object owned. A personal agent is an
    individual, and it is only by an eventual refinement - of the
    nature of a legal fiction - that any group of men is conceived to
    exercise a corporate discretion over objects. Ownership implies
    an individual owner. It is only by reflection, and by extending
    the scope of a concept which is already familiar, that a
    quasi-personal corporate discretion and control of this kind
    comes to be imputed to a group of persons. Corporate ownership is
    quasi-ownership only; it is therefore necessarily a derivative
    concept, and cannot have preceded the concept of individual
    ownership of which it is a counterfeit.
        After the idea of ownership has been elaborated and has
    gained some consistency, it is not unusual to find the notion of
    pervasion by the user's personality applied to articles owned by
    him. At the same time a given article may also be recognized as
    lying within the quasi-personal fringe of one person while it is
    owned by another - as, for instance, ornaments and other articles
    of daily use which in a personal sense belong to a slave or to an
    inferior member of a patriarchal household, but which as property
    belong to the master or head of the household. The two
    categories, (a) things to which one's personality extends by way
    of pervasion and (b) things owned, by no means coincide; nor does
    the one supplant the other. The two ideas are so far from
    identical that the same object may belong to one person under the
    one concept and to another person under the other; and, on the
    other hand, the same person may stand in both relations to a
    given object without the one concept being lost in the other. A
    given article may change owners without passing out of the
    quasi-personal fringe of the person under whose "self" it has
    belonged, as, for instance, a photograph or any other memento. A
    familiar instance is the mundane ownership of any consecrated
    place or structure which in the personal sense belongs to the
    saint or deity to whom it is sacred.
        The two concepts are so far distinct, or even disparate, as
    to make it extremely improbable that the one has been developed
    out of the other by a process of growth. A transition involving
    such a substitution of ideas could scarcely take place except on
    some notable impulse from without. Such a step would amount to
    the construction of a new category and a reclassification of
    certain selected facts under the new head. The impulse to
    reclassify the facts and things that are comprised in the
    quasi-personal fringe, so as to place some of them, together with
    certain other things, under the new category of ownership, must
    come from some constraining exigency of later growth than the
    concept whose province it invades. The new category is not simply
    an amplified form of the old. Not every item that was originally
    conceived to belong to an individual by way of pervasion comes to
    be counted as an item of his wealth after the idea of wealth has
    come into vogue. Such items, for instance, as a person's
    footprint, or his image or effigy, or his name, are very tardily
    included under the head of articles owned by him, if they are
    eventually included at all. It is a fortuitous circumstance if
    they come to be owned by him, but they long continue to hold
    their place in his quasi-personal fringe. The disparity of the
    two concepts is well brought out by the case of the domestic
    animals. These non-human individuals are incapable of ownership,
    but there is imputed to them the attribute of a pervasive
    individuality, which extends to such items as their footprints,
    their stalls, clippings of hair, and the like. These items are
    made use of for the purposes of sympathetic magic even in modern
    civilized communities. An illustration that may show this
    disparity between ownership and pervasion in a still stronger
    light is afforded by the vulgar belief that the moon's phases may
    have a propitious or sinister effect on human affairs. The
    inconstant moon is conceived to work good or ill through a
    sympathetic influence or spiritual infection which suggests a
    quasi-personal fringe, but which assuredly does not imply
    ownership on her part.
    
        Ownership is not a simple and instinctive notion that is
    naively included under the notion of productive effort on the one
    hand, nor under that of habitual use on the other. It is not
    something given to begin with, as an item of the isolated
    individual's mental furniture; something which has to be
    unlearned in part when men come to co-operate in production and
    make working arrangements and mutual renunciations under the
    stress of associated life - after the manner imputed by the
    social-contract theory. It is a conventional fact and has to be
    learned; it is a cultural fact which has grown into an
    institution in the past through a long course of habituation, and
    which is transmitted from generation to generation as all
    cultural facts are.
        On going back a little way into the cultural history of our
    own past, we come upon a situation which says that the fact of a
    person's being engaged in industry was prima facie evidence that
    he could own nothing. Under serfdom and slavery those who work
    cannot own, and those who own cannot work. Even very recently -
    culturally speaking - there was no suspicion that a woman's work,
    in the patriarchal household, should entitle her to own the
    products of her work. Farther back in the barbarian culture,
    while the patriarchal household was in better preservation than
    it is now, this position was accepted with more unquestioning
    faith. The head of the household alone could hold property; and
    even the scope of his ownership was greatly qualified if he had a
    feudal superior. The tenure of property is a tenure by prowess,
    on the one hand, and a tenure by sufferance at the hands of a
    superior, on the other hand. The recourse to prowess as the
    definitive basis of tenure becomes more immediate and more
    habitual the farther the development is traced back into the
    early barbarian culture; until, on the lower levels of barbarism
    or the upper levels of savagery, "the good old plan" prevails
    with but little mitigation. There are always certain conventions,
    a certain understanding as to what are the legitimate conditions
    and circumstances that surround ownership and its transmission,
    chief among which is the fact of habitual acceptance. What has
    been currently accepted as the status quo-vested interest - is
    right and good so long as it does not meet a challenge backed by
    irresistible force. Property rights sanctioned by immemorial
    usage are inviolable, as all immemorial usage is, except in the
    face of forcible dispossession. But seizure and forcible
    retention very shortly gain the legitimation of usage, and the
    resulting tenure becomes inviolable through habituation. Beati
    possidentes.
        Throughout the barbarian culture, where this tenure by
    prowess prevails, the population falls into two economic classes:
    those engaged in industrial employments, and those engaged in
    such non-industrial pursuits as war, government, sports, and
    religious observances. In the earlier and more naive stages of
    barbarism the former, in the normal case, own nothing; the latter
    own such property as they have seized, or such as has, under the
    sanction of usage, descended upon them from their forebears who
    seized and held it. At a still lower level of culture, in the
    primitive savage horde, the population is not similarly divided
    into economic classes. There is no leisure class resting its
    prerogative on coercion, prowess, and immemorial status; and
    there is also no ownership.
        It will hold as a rough generalization that in communities
    where there is no invidious distinction between employments, as
    exploit, on the one hand, and drudgery, on the other, there is
    also no tenure of property. In the cultural sequence, ownership
    does not begin before the rise of a canon of exploit; but it is
    to be added that it also does not seem to begin with the first
    beginning of exploit as a manly occupation. In these very rude
    early communities, especially in the unpropertied hordes of
    peaceable savages, the rule is that the product of any member's
    effort is consumed by the group to which he belongs; and it is
    consumed collectively or indiscriminately, without question of
    individual right or ownership. The question of ownership is not
    brought up by the fact that an article has been produced or is at
    hand in finished form for consumption.
        The earliest occurrence of ownership seems to fall in the
    early stages of barbarism, and the emergence of the institution
    of ownership is apparently a concomitant of the transition from a
    peaceable to a predatory habit of life. It is a prerogative of
    that class in the barbarian culture which leads a life of exploit
    rather than of industry. The pervading characteristic of the
    barbarian culture, as distinguished from the peaceable phase of
    life that precedes it, is the element of exploit, coercion, and
    seizure. In its earlier phases ownership is this habit of
    coercion and seizure reduced to system and consistency under the
    surveillance of usage.
        The practice of seizing and accumulating goods on individual
    account could not have come into vogue to the extent of founding
    a new institution under the peaceable communistic regime of
    primitive savagery; for the dissensions arising from any such
    resort to mutual force and fraud among its members would have
    been fatal to the group. For a similar reason individual
    ownership of consumable goods could not come in with the first
    beginnings of predatory life; for the primitive fighting horde
    still needs to consume its scanty means of subsistence in common,
    in order to give the collective horde its full fighting
    efficiency. Otherwise it would succumb before any rival horde
    that had not yet given up collective consumption.
        With the advent of predatory life comes the practice of
    plundering - of seizing goods from the enemy. But in order that
    the plundering habit should give rise to individual ownership of
    the things seized, these things must be goods of a somewhat
    lasting kind, and not immediately consumable means of
    subsistence. Under the primitive culture the means of subsistence
    are habitually consumed in common by the group, and the manner in
    which such goods are consumed is fixed according to an elaborate
    system of usage. This usage is not readily broken over, for it is
    a substantial part of the habits of life of every individual
    member. The practice of collective consumption is at the same
    time necessary to the survival of the group, and this necessity
    is present in men's minds and exercises a surveillance over the
    formation of habits of thought as to what is right and seemly.
    Any propensity to aggression at this early stage will, therefore,
    not assert itself in the seizure and retention of consumable
    goods; nor does the temptation to do so readily present itself,
    since the idea of individual appropriation of a store of goods is
    alien to the archaic man's general habits of thought.
        The idea of property is not readily attached to anything but
    tangible and lasting articles. It is only where commercial
    development is well advanced - where bargain and sale is a large
    feature in the community's life-that the more perishable articles
    of consumption are thought of as items of wealth at all. The
    still more evanescent results of personal service are still more
    difficult to bring in under the idea of wealth. So much so that
    the attempt to classify services as wealth is meaningless to
    laymen, and even the adept economists hold a divided opinion as
    to the intelligibility of such a classification. In the
    common-sense apprehension the idea of property is not currently
    attached to any but tangible, vendible goods of some durability.
    This is true even in modern civilized communities, where
    pecuniary ideas and the pecuniary point of view prevail. In a
    like manner and for a like reason, in an earlier, non-commercial
    phase of culture there is less occasion for and greater
    difficulty in applying the concept of ownership to anything but
    obviously durable articles.
        But durable articles of use and consumption which are seized
    in the raids of a predatory horde are either articles of general
    use or they are articles of immediate and continued personal use
    to the person who has seized them. In the former case the goods
    are consumed in common by the group, without giving rise to a
    notion of ownership; in the latter case they fall into the class
    of things that pertain organically to the person of their user,
    and they would, therefore, not figure as items of property or
    make up a store of wealth.
        It is difficult to see how an institution of ownership could
    have arisen in the early days of predatory life through the
    seizure of goods, but the case is different with the seizure of
    persons. Captives are items that do not fit into the scheme of
    communal consumption, and their appropriation by their individual
    captor works no manifest detriment to the group. At the same time
    these captives continue to be obviously distinct from their
    captor in point of individuality, and so are not readily brought
    in under the quasi-personal fringe. The captives taken under rude
    conditions are chiefly women. There are good reasons for this.
    Except where there is a slave class of men, the women are more
    useful, as well as more easily controlled, in the primitive
    group. Their labor is worth more to the group than their
    maintenance, and as they do not carry weapons, they are less
    formidable than men captives would be. They serve the purpose of
    trophies very effectually, and it is therefore worth while for
    their captor to trace and keep in evidence his relation to them
    as their captor. To this end he maintains an attitude of
    dominance and coercion toward women captured by him; and, as
    being the insignia of his prowess, he does not suffer them to
    stand at the beck and call of rival warriors. They are fit
    subjects for command and constraint; it ministers to both his
    honor and his vanity to domineer over them, and their utility in
    this respect is very great. But his domineering over them is the
    evidence of his prowess, and it is incompatible with their
    utility as trophies that other men should take the liberties with
    his women which serve as evidence of the coercive relation of
    captor.
        When the practice hardens into custom, the captor comes to
    exercise a customary right to exclusive use and abuse over the
    women he has seized; and this customary right of use and abuse
    over an object which is obviously not an organic part of his
    person constitutes the relation of ownership, as naively
    apprehended. After this usage of capture has found its way into
    the habits of the community, the women so held in constraint and
    in evidence will commonly fall into a conventionally recognized
    marriage relation with their captor. The result is a new form of
    marriage, in which the man is master. This ownership-marriage
    seems to be the original both of private property and of the
    patriarchal household. Both of these great institutions are,
    accordingly, of an emulative origin.
        The varying details of the development whereby ownership
    extends to other persons than captured women cannot be taken up
    here; neither can the further growth of the marriage institution
    that came into vogue at the same time with ownership. Probably at
    a point in the economic evolution not far subsequent to the
    definitive installation of the institution of ownership-marriage
    comes, as its consequence, the ownership of consumable goods. The
    women held in servile marriage not only render personal service
    to their master, but they are also employed in the production of
    articles of use. All the noncombatant or ignoble members of the
    community are habitually so employed. And when the habit of
    looking upon and claiming the persons identified with my
    invidious interest, or subservient to me, as "mine" has become an
    accepted and integral part of men's habits of thought, it becomes
    a relatively easy matter to extend this newly achieved concept of
    ownership to the products of the labor performed by the persons
    so held in ownership. And the same propensity for emulation which
    bears so great a part in shaping the original institution of
    ownership extends its action to the new category of things owned.
    Not only are the products of the women's labor claimed and valued
    for their serviceability in furthering the comfort and fullness
    of life of the master, but they are valuable also as a
    conspicuous evidence of his possessing many and efficient
    servants, and they are therefore useful as an evidence of his
    superior force. The appropriation and accumulation of consumable
    goods could scarcely have come into vogue as a direct outgrowth
    of the primitive horde-communism, but it comes in as an easy and
    unobtrusive consequence of the ownership of persons.