Privacy, Private Property and Collective Property

Abstract

In this paper I respond to Judith Thomson's claim that privacy is just private property in disguise and draw out their significance for contemporary arguments for property-owning democracy. As we will see, privacy-based justifications of private ownership are not always unappealing. However,privacy is sometimes promoted, rather than threatened, by collective ownership. Hence, claims to privacy cannot be reduced to claims to property-ownership, as Judith Thomson contends.

Keywords: privacy, private property, collective property, property-owning democracy, equality, freedom, homelessness, judith thomson, john rawls, jeremy waldron, j.d. salinger, joyce maynard