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Title: Property and Freedom by Richard Pipes ISBN: 0-375-70447-7 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 13 June, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.76 (21 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Property and Freedom: Historical Perspective
Comment: Richard Pipes is one of the leading academic authorities on Russian and Soviet history. He starts this book by admitting that its subject matter is outside his area of special expertise. Despite this discalimer, he has produced a useful and interesting work on the relationship between property rights and freedom.
Pipes' approach draws on his expertise as a historian. He describes the historical development of the idea of property rights with particular emphasis on the contrasting experiences of England and Russia. He demonstrates that the development of political and economic freedom in England is directly linked to the early establishment of property rights in that country while the total lack of freedom in Russia (prior to 1991 and excluding the brief 1905-1917 period) is equally linked to the total lack of property rights there.
This book is not a complete answer to the very broad question of how property and freedom are related. It does, however, make a valuable contribution from the historical perspective. To more fully understand this question, I recommend the following: For an economic perspective: Mancur Olsen, Power and Prosperity; for a legal/social perspective, Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital. Together, these three books provide a fairly complete answer to the question.
Rating: 5
Summary: An Unfinished Masterpiece
Comment: What is it about freedom that causes authors who write about it to end their works prematurely or lamely at best?
Richard Pipes, our greatest historian of Russia, has written a brilliant and learned study of the historical relationship between property and greedom. He argues persuasively that property rights are the necessary, but not sufficient, cause of individual and political liberty. He documents the history of freedom's repeated rise and fall around the world, first as property rights are discovered, defined, and protected, and then as they are swept away by periods of royal absolutism, socialism, or fascism.
The first four parts of the book reflect a life-time of learning and scholarship. Pipes demonstrates complete control over primary as well as secondary sources (despite his humble disclaimer in the introduction). The writing is succinct and fast paced, with disagreements among leading experts quickly identified and the author's own position stated in a sentence or two. This is great research and writing.
Part 5, on "Property in the Twentieth Century," and a brief conclusion titled "Portents," hardly seem to have been written by the same author. Here the text is long-winded and tendentious, the sources are seldom peer reviewed or leading experts (except Richard Epstein, who is quoted many times). It is a mystery why the historian felt he had to become a policy analyst in this final section of the book, rendering his opinions on everything from affirmative action and school busing to wetlands regulation.
I'm reminded of another great book about freedom, "Freedom in the Making of Western Civilization," by Orlando Patterson. That book, too, ended poorly, with a hastily written account of freedom in the Middle Ages and the unconvincing claim that everything thereafter was "merely a long series of footnotes" to what came before.
Richard Epstein's books, especially "Takings" and "Principles for a Free Society," remain the best texts on freedom in the 20th century. But Epstein, a legal scholar, is an acquired taste. We await a history of freedom and property in the 20th century that rises to the bar that Richard Pipes sets in the first four parts of this book.
Rating: 1
Summary: Philosophically weak
Comment: Philosophically speaking, this is weak on argument and analysis and high on invective. Its author is a specialist in history, or rather the use of history for political ends during the Cold War. He served on a far right wing CIA advisory panel. This book is good at showing the theoretical impoverishment of the ideology of this cold warriors.
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Title: The Noblest Triumph : Property and Prosperity Through the Ages by Tom Bethell ISBN: 0312223374 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 20 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Vixi: Memoirs of a Non-Belonger by Richard Pipes ISBN: 0300101651 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: Communism : A History by Richard Pipes ISBN: 0679640509 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 04 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Russia Under the Old Regime by Richard Pipes ISBN: 0140247688 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime by RICHARD PIPES ISBN: 0679761845 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 04 April, 1995 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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