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The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages

The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages
By Tom Bethell

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Product Description

In The Noblest Triumph, Tom Bethell looks at the history of property rights and shows that the key role played by the institution of private property has been misunderstood by Western elites for more than a century. Beginning with the ancient Greeks and arriving at the present day, Bethell looks at basic ideas about property found in the writings of Plato, Adam Smith, Blackstone, Bentham, Marx, Mill, and others. He shows that the institution of property is inextricably tied to traditional conceptions of justice and liberty, and he argues that prosperity and civilization can only arise where private property is securely held by the people. The Noblest Triumph is an indispensable book for anyone interested in this fundamental aspect of civilization and the progress of humankind through the ages.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #567441 in Books
  • Published on: 1999-10-20
  • Original language: English
  • Dimensions: .1 pounds
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 384 pages

Editorial Reviews

From Amazon.com
The phenomenal success of Western civilization and the remarkable economic expansion fueled by modern capitalism, says Tom Bethell, depend chiefly on the institution of private property and the development of secure property rights, yet this simple, striking idea is misunderstood by elite opinion leaders in the United States and around the world. Bethell, a reporter for the American Spectator, offers a history of property as an idea and a reality around the world. His sweeping narrative will appeal to fans of David Landes's The Wealth and Poverty of Nations and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. Yet, in many crucial respects, The Noblest Triumph (the title comes from British philosopher Jeremy Bentham's line that property laws represent "the noblest triumph of humanity over itself") is better than both, displaying a keener understanding of human nature and of how incentives shape behavior. In a chapter sure to inspire controversy, Bethell argues that the Irish potato famines of the 1840s were due primarily to Ireland's lack of stable property rights in the 19th century. Full of astute observations and written with real clarity, The Noblest Triumph makes a unique and welcome contribution to the debate over why some countries thrive while others languish. --John J. Miller

From Publishers Weekly
Marx preached the abolition of private property; utopian William Godwin inveighed against property and marriage as evils; and British socialist Robert Owen, who subsidized a failed collectivist community in New Harmony, Ind., in the 1820s, taught that private property warped human character. In their wake, argues American Spectator Washington correspondent Bethell, the concept of private property has been tarnished. In a signal contribution to the debate over capitalism's future, he contends that economic prosperity and social justice are possible only when property rights are widespread?and protected by a legal system that holds all equal before the law. These factors, he maintains, explain the vast gulf separating the world's prosperous nations and underdeveloped economies. All over the Third World, he notes, most people are permanently at risk of eviction, seizure, squatters' or police-state depredations. It follows, he argues, that the solution to poverty is not expropriation of land and redistribution of wealth, but rather, creating an infrastructure that will secure title rights to land, homes and businesses, making private enterprise feasible. A shrewd analyst of the abortive Soviet experiment, Bethell offers a novel analysis of the mid-19th-century Irish famine, arguing that shortsighted Anglo-Irish landlords acted against their own best interests by denying tenant farmers long-term leases. Yet Bethell struggles unsuccessfully to fit undemocratic, economically booming China into his framework, and at times sounds like an apologist for China, disputing the U.S. State Department's designation of it as an authoritarian state.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In this marvelous, wide-angled look at the concept of property rights, its historic roots, and its impact on life, liberty, justice, peace, and prosperity, the Washington correspondent for the American Spectator cites a broad range of illustrative examples. Among them are the failure of Robert Owen's New Harmony, IN, commune; what Boris Yeltsin described as the failure of the "Soviet experiment"; the legal and political factors that made England ripe for the Industrial Revolution; recent interest in intellectual property; the early communal failures at Jamestown and Plymouth; and the radical reforms that have brought economic growth to China. The author effectively integrates Marx, Engels, Locke, Rousseau, Plato, Malthus, Ricardo, Keynes, Hume, Roman civil law, and British common law while affirming that prosperity and civilization can arise only when property is securely held by the people. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.?Norman B. Hutcherson, Kern Cty. Lib., Bakersfield, CA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.