Karl Widerquist is Professor of Political Philosophy at SFS-Qatar, Georgetown University. He is co-editor of Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy(with Grant S. McCall, Edinburgh University Press, 2017), Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research (with Yannick Vanderborght, Jose Noguera, and Jurgen De Wispelaere, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform around the World (with Michael W. Howard, Palgrave-MacMillan, 2012), The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee (with Michael Anthony Lewis and Steven Pressman, Ashgate, 2005) and co-author of Economics for Social Workers: The Application of Economic Theory to Social Policy and the Human Services (with Michael Anthony Lewis, Columbia University Press, 2002). He was a founding editor of the journal Basic Income Studies, and he has published dozens of scholarly articles. Grant S. McCall is Associate Professor in Anthropology at Tulane University, as well as the director of the Center for Human-Environmental Research, a New Orleans-based nonprofit research institute aimed at exploring and improving human responses to environmental change. His publications include Prehistoric Myth and Modern Political Philosophy (co-editor with Karl Widequist, Edinburgh University Press, 2017), Strategies for Quantitative Research: Archaeology by Numbers (Routledge, 2018) and Global Perspectives on Lithic Technologies in Complex Societies (co-editor with Rachel Horowitz, University of Colorado Press, 2019).

This book fills an important interdisciplinary need in joining anthropology to philosophy. It continues the argument Widenquist and McCall started in their earlier book, Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy. Both books debunk out-of-date and incorrect assumptions about human society that somehow remain foundational in political philosophy. The prior book focused on the ideas of Thomas Hobbes, and The Prehistory of Private Property develops and expands this line of thought. The authors do a real service by opening up comparative scholarship to new perspectives about the inevitability of inequality, capitalist markets, and private property. Anyone interested in how human societies operate—and how western scholars have portrayed them—will find this a compelling read.

• PrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroductionPart I: The inequality hypothesis2. Hierarchy’s Apologists, Part One: 5,000 years of clever and contradictory arguments that inequality is natural and inevitable3. Hierarchy’s Apologists, Part Two: Natural inequality in contemporary political philosophy and social science4. How small-scale societies maintain political, social, and economic equalityPart II: the market freedom hypothesis5. The Negative Freedom Argument for the Market Economy6. The Negative Freedom Argument for the Hunter-Gatherer Band EconomyPart III: The individual appropriation hypothesis7. Contemporary Property Theory: A story, a myth, a principle, and a hypothesis8. The History of a Hypothesis9. The impossibility of a purely a-priori justification of private property10. Evidence Provided by Propertarians to Support the Appropriation Hypothesis11. Property Systems in Hunter-Gatherer Societies12. Property Systems in Stateless Farming Communities13. Property Systems in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern States14. The Privatization the Earth, circa 1500-200015. The individual appropriation hypothesis assessed16. ConclusionIndex

Karl Widerquist is Professor of Political Philosophy at SFS-Qatar, Georgetown University. He is co-editor of Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy(with Grant S. McCall, Edinburgh University Press, 2017), Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research (with Yannick Vanderborght, Jose Noguera, and Jurgen De Wispelaere, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform around the World (with Michael W. Howard, Palgrave-MacMillan, 2012), The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee (with Michael Anthony Lewis and Steven Pressman, Ashgate, 2005) and co-author of Economics for Social Workers: The Application of Economic Theory to Social Policy and the Human Services (with Michael Anthony Lewis, Columbia University Press, 2002). He was a founding editor of the journal Basic Income Studies, and he has published dozens of scholarly articles. Grant S. McCall is Associate Professor in Anthropology at Tulane University, as well as the director of the Center for Human-Environmental Research, a New Orleans-based nonprofit research institute aimed at exploring and improving human responses to environmental change. His publications include Prehistoric Myth and Modern Political Philosophy (co-editor with Karl Widequist, Edinburgh University Press, 2017), Strategies for Quantitative Research: Archaeology by Numbers (Routledge, 2018) and Global Perspectives on Lithic Technologies in Complex Societies (co-editor with Rachel Horowitz, University of Colorado Press, 2019).

This book fills an important interdisciplinary need in joining anthropology to philosophy. It continues the argument Widenquist and McCall started in their earlier book, Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy. Both books debunk out-of-date and incorrect assumptions about human society that somehow remain foundational in political philosophy. The prior book focused on the ideas of Thomas Hobbes, and The Prehistory of Private Property develops and expands this line of thought. The authors do a real service by opening up comparative scholarship to new perspectives about the inevitability of inequality, capitalist markets, and private property. Anyone interested in how human societies operate—and how western scholars have portrayed them—will find this a compelling read.

• PrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroductionPart I: The inequality hypothesis2. Hierarchy’s Apologists, Part One: 5,000 years of clever and contradictory arguments that inequality is natural and inevitable3. Hierarchy’s Apologists, Part Two: Natural inequality in contemporary political philosophy and social science4. How small-scale societies maintain political, social, and economic equalityPart II: the market freedom hypothesis5. The Negative Freedom Argument for the Market Economy6. The Negative Freedom Argument for the Hunter-Gatherer Band EconomyPart III: The individual appropriation hypothesis7. Contemporary Property Theory: A story, a myth, a principle, and a hypothesis8. The History of a Hypothesis9. The impossibility of a purely a-priori justification of private property10. Evidence Provided by Propertarians to Support the Appropriation Hypothesis11. Property Systems in Hunter-Gatherer Societies12. Property Systems in Stateless Farming Communities13. Property Systems in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern States14. The Privatization the Earth, circa 1500-200015. The individual appropriation hypothesis assessed16. ConclusionIndex

Karl Widerquist is Professor of Political Philosophy at SFS-Qatar, Georgetown University. He is co-editor of Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy(with Grant S. McCall, Edinburgh University Press, 2017), Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research (with Yannick Vanderborght, Jose Noguera, and Jurgen De Wispelaere, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform around the World (with Michael W. Howard, Palgrave-MacMillan, 2012), The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee (with Michael Anthony Lewis and Steven Pressman, Ashgate, 2005) and co-author of Economics for Social Workers: The Application of Economic Theory to Social Policy and the Human Services (with Michael Anthony Lewis, Columbia University Press, 2002). He was a founding editor of the journal Basic Income Studies, and he has published dozens of scholarly articles. Grant S. McCall is Associate Professor in Anthropology at Tulane University, as well as the director of the Center for Human-Environmental Research, a New Orleans-based nonprofit research institute aimed at exploring and improving human responses to environmental change. His publications include Prehistoric Myth and Modern Political Philosophy (co-editor with Karl Widequist, Edinburgh University Press, 2017), Strategies for Quantitative Research: Archaeology by Numbers (Routledge, 2018) and Global Perspectives on Lithic Technologies in Complex Societies (co-editor with Rachel Horowitz, University of Colorado Press, 2019).

This book fills an important interdisciplinary need in joining anthropology to philosophy. It continues the argument Widenquist and McCall started in their earlier book, Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy. Both books debunk out-of-date and incorrect assumptions about human society that somehow remain foundational in political philosophy. The prior book focused on the ideas of Thomas Hobbes, and The Prehistory of Private Property develops and expands this line of thought. The authors do a real service by opening up comparative scholarship to new perspectives about the inevitability of inequality, capitalist markets, and private property. Anyone interested in how human societies operate—and how western scholars have portrayed them—will find this a compelling read.

• PrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroductionPart I: The inequality hypothesis2. Hierarchy’s Apologists, Part One: 5,000 years of clever and contradictory arguments that inequality is natural and inevitable3. Hierarchy’s Apologists, Part Two: Natural inequality in contemporary political philosophy and social science4. How small-scale societies maintain political, social, and economic equalityPart II: the market freedom hypothesis5. The Negative Freedom Argument for the Market Economy6. The Negative Freedom Argument for the Hunter-Gatherer Band EconomyPart III: The individual appropriation hypothesis7. Contemporary Property Theory: A story, a myth, a principle, and a hypothesis8. The History of a Hypothesis9. The impossibility of a purely a-priori justification of private property10. Evidence Provided by Propertarians to Support the Appropriation Hypothesis11. Property Systems in Hunter-Gatherer Societies12. Property Systems in Stateless Farming Communities13. Property Systems in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern States14. The Privatization the Earth, circa 1500-200015. The individual appropriation hypothesis assessed16. ConclusionIndex