But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its nonexistence in the hands of these nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property the necessary condition for whose existence is the nonexistence of any property for the immense majority of society. In one word, you reproach us for intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend. .

             Both lines of argument hold that individuals have an interest in owning things which is important enough to command respect and to constrain political action. This is a basic human interest which everyone has: owning property contributes immensely to the ethical development of the individual person. On the Locke an approach, the interest which commands respect is one which people have only on account of what they happen to have done or what has happened to them. A man who has mixed his labor with a piece of land, or acquired it legitimately from someone else, has an interest in ownership which the government must respect; but a man who has done neither of these things, but would simply rather like to own something, has no such constraining interest. The Lockean right to property, in other words, is a special right. .

             Locke's argument about mixing one's labor is incoherent, and does provide a good argument for a general right of a rather different sort: a general right to subsistence which imposes welfarist constraints on whatever property system there may be. But no such general right is recognized in Nozick's theory. I maintain that this is a fatal flaw: no theory of the kind that could possibly be made acceptable in the absence of a background general right to subsistence. .

             Throughout his work, Marx is adamant that the indictment against capitalism is not merely the fact that private property happens to be distributed unequally or in a way that leaves millions without any guaranteed access to the means of production; the problem is that private ownership is a form of property that has this characteristic necessarily.