ABSTRACT
The original impulse was philosophy or theory. Like economics, political science has been deeply permeated by Neo-Lockian thinking linking freedom and property. To Locke property was (as the word’s etymology suggests) linked to a sense of self. Property was the means to vindicate liberty. Even socialistwelfare concepts like that of T.H.Green (1895) and John Rawls (1971) accept that linkage and infer a social obligation to further a sense of worth and a vindication of rights. So too does the anti-Leninist literature of Martov (1938) and Djilas (1957), Popper (1945) and Wittfogel (1957) which warns against the dangers of folding property ownership back into the arms of political leaders. At this juncture in history the ideological dispute seems resolved firmly in favor of that school and decisively rejecting not merely the East European brand, but the Marxist generic as well. Of course, history teaches us that grandiose pronouncements such as “the end of ideology” often appear silly a decade or two later (Bell 1963; Fukuyama 1992).
