One can first speak of the countermanding “duty” arising from rights when one has a right that obliges one to a debt of responsibility. We first are loved by our Creator before we experience our debt of charity in return as faith. To deny a debate on natural “rights” simply because the supernatural end was not enunciated is rather conceited no? How does Crusoe help Friday learn about “justice to the creator” if he simply lets him freeload? How does Mr Boat help Crusoe and Friday learn about the gulf that separates us from our eternal rest other than posting his prices to embark a precious cargo to the other side of the waters?

The obsession with authoritarian coercion of the end is a perversion of justice – a mother who evicts her foetus from its uterine abode by abortion has failed to understand ends do not justify means, she has an end in sight (maintain her intact relationships before adding to them) her sight is just tragically occluded by sin. To want the end (make a good match before becoming a parent) is the reason she chooses the incorrect means (murder the nascent person produced by the parenting relationship entered into prematurely to preserve other opportunities to find the right parenting partner). Private property is not sacred (nor is self-ownership a sacrament) but making house and home somehow obligatory co-equal runs the risk of encouraging the contraceptive mindset – enjoy the facsimile abode without paying the price of occupancy.

Re: biblical antecedents in this Pauline year of the tentmaker par excellence (he could travel light, and even repair his shipwrecked sailboat with one of the spare tarpaulins in his backpack!) let us not travel too far down the “An Englishman’s home is his castle” before we recall the miseries of droit de seignor (watch Charlton Heston in The Warlord to be reminded if necessary)
The tabernacle is a temporary abode first alluded to by Jonah as he rests under the shade of the pumpkin patch (anyone who knows how prodigious the growth of gourd vines is will comprehend they can way exceed the confines of any imaginary tent a boy scout could muster up in a hurry, easily encompassing a family or two if the need arose!). The mysteries on the altar are a window to what awaits when we ‘cross the threshold’ … dignified abodes that endure for three score years and ten are possible, are indeed the only thing for sale on most of the Roman Catholic Duke of Westminster’s private property as leasehold rights in the city of London!

To say as Clare does that housing is not a means of production assumes two things. One is that “production” means only material commodity production, rather than the production of more intangible goods. Thus Clare presents an opposition between production and nurture. This opposition is grounded on the second assumption, that the home is a receptacle for the flow in and out of commodities, rather than a place where one at least makes meals to share, and may also make clothing, music, and artwork, write, grow food.

In general, the passages Clare provides discussing these matters simply assume answers to everything that is at issue.

Clare does raise a distinct consideration about how all this relates to Biblical revelation, which I will address in a later post.

In a nut shell, that’s why “rights” talk sounds so attractive: it tries to eliminate the need to talk of ends and purposes in relation to the life of the rights-holder. It speaks only of what he has inalienably, not what or who he might or must become.

Mark demolishes this. Private property is important not because it is a precondition to the pursuit of happiness, but because it is bound up with the activities of man’s pursuit of the good; consequently it can only be understood properly in terms of that end.

I apologize for tacking my short essay onto the end of a very long post, but there’s something of great value that MS has given us here that I want to celebrate and think about.

“The man, “Crusoe” (from Robinson Crusoe), is on an island all alone, knowing nothing, and with no way to leave. We’ve established Crusoe’s right to his body and to do what he wishes with it — referred to as ‘free will’, ‘labor’, or ‘liberty’. He has the natural right to preserve that body — giving him the natural right to take nature and use it for his nourishment; he must labor to survive. Sitting still, he will die of hunger and thirst. He must labor his body toward the water, cup his hands, and bring the water to his mouth in order to quench that thirst. He must pick fruit from the tree to gather food in order to feed that hunger. If he wishes to eat the fish he sees in the water, he’ll have problems grabbing it with his hands (those slippery little fuckers), so what does he do?

Crusoe decides to take a stick from a tree and sharpen one end in order to puncture the fish so it’s lodged into his stick and still. It’s still difficult, so he takes a larger branch to grip with another to sandwich the fish in order to stabilize it. The stick, in and of itself, is of no use to Crusoe’s survival — neither in a primitive, nor aesthetic sense here. The stick is a means to an end. Crusoe must labor to produce what he needs to survive: the fish. The modified stick is a piece of nature transformed by Crusoe’s hands as a means to produce the fish. The ’spear’ is Crusoe’s means of production.

Crusoe has the natural right to his body, to labor for its survival, and the production of that labor — life, liberty, and property.

Interpersonal Relations: Another man comes along and sees Crusoe sitting on a rock in front of a little makeshift hut with a coconut shell full of berries roasting a fish over a fire..

Who is this man? We don’t know him or how he got there. What we do know is that he is alive and a social, rational animal just as Crusoe — possessing the universal natural rights to life, liberty, and property. We call him, “Friday”. Then, Friday nor Crusoe, have any right to infringe on each other’s life by killing or physically molesting each other, liberty by telling the other how sharp their sticks are supposed to be, or property by taking the fruits of each other’s labor.

Let’s say that Friday is hungry. In order to preserve his life, is he justified in exercising his freedom to labor in gathering the strongest branch to knock Crusoe unconscious and remove Crusoe’s berries from his possession to feed Friday’s personal needs? Absolutely not. They each have the same, equal rights to not be physically molested. Friday’s act would be an act of violence that he couldn’t justify. Natural rights are according to objective reason, not subjective need.

see http://littlealexinwonderland.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/the-ethics-of-liberty-part-iv-the-individual-and-interpersonal-relations/

Housing is a revocable consumption expense, not a capital asset (a means of production).
A home is a relational locus where irrevocable bonds of human dignity are nurtured and held secure. The sand beneath the tents of our forefathers was the “home” from which we sprung forth… inhospitable dessicating barrenness maintained millennia of human civilization down to the present. What makes land “property” is the life-giving labor that renders it fruitful for human habitation… feeding the hungry mouths born of the loving that prevails amid the scarcity! For traditional truths to have traction ought they not have some biblical antecedants? Excepting pedigrees older than Noah of course… they’re deluge-delusionals like ourselves, awash in effluent!

For tips on staying afloat, try part v of the “Ethics of Liberty”, introducing the labor of Mr Boat, here …
http://littlealexinwonderland.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/the-ethics-of-liberty-part-v-capital-labor-and-aggression/

But, then again, this cabin of ours that had been in the family now for several generations was only a summer cabin. We would leave it dormant and snowed in all winter. These new homes were year-rounders. They have, essentially, a greater tie to the land because it is their home, regardless if we have more history there. What we valued for its seclusion, for this fantastical place – the river, the mountains, the dark woods and huckleberry covered mountaintops – they value for its quality as home, a place to stay when not working, a place to raise their children.

In any case, I’ve stumbled off on a tangent. I think you make excellent points. I only wonder how this competing vision of property, this value in the human attachment to property rather than just property as a good to be bought and sold, can ever be practically implemented, though I suppose this is my concern with the entire agrarian, front porch movement – how to move beyond theory and into the realm of doing…