Propertarianism, the right-libertarian habit of making property the root of every right, stands on three planks: you own yourself, no one may start force against you or what you own, and property comes first. This part keeps what each gets right and turns the order around, because a theory that starts from property can’t say where property stops. Then it puts back the worker Locke left out.
The self. Why “no one owns you” is firmer ground than “you own yourself.” Whatever can be owned can be sold.
Aggression. Non-aggression as a strong presumption, not an axiom. On its own it can’t tell attack from defense, it needs a theory of property before it can name a theft, and the attempts to prove it from logic prove less than they claim.
Property. What liberty looks like when it meets scarce things, keeping the limits of the people it serves. A title ends where another person begins, and authority can be lent but not sold. Own the field. No one owns the farmer, not even the farmer.
Labor. Whose crop it is when the farmer works someone else’s land with someone else’s tractor for someone else’s wage. The answer a court gives when it asks who did a thing: the people who do the work, together, own what it makes and owe for what it uses up. That is the labor theory of property, and it needs no theory of value.
Chapters
20. The Propertyless Self
21. What Counts as Aggression
22. Property Without Propertarianism
23. Labor and Property