Insight into the problem of ownership from Howard Richards
Richards, a political philosopher of social science, lawyer and activist, addresses the problem of ownership and property from a critical perspective that links the history of Roman law to the contemporary structures of capitalism. In his analysis—especially in Understanding the Global Economy and other writings—he argues that the modern concept of private property, as an absolute and exclusive right to use, enjoy, and dispose of a good, derives from a liberal interpretation of property as codified in the ius civile of Roman law. He particularly emphasizes how the Roman notion of dominium established a form of social relation that placed control of resources in the hands of individuals, detached from social or communal obligations.
Richards interprets this legal legacy as a structural impediment to resolving issues of poverty, exclusion, and sustainability. While Roman law helped stabilize property relations within a slave-based empire, its modern recreation—especially in the 19th-century European civil codes—became functional to industrial capitalism and capital accumulation. In his view, this model makes it difficult to imagine and legitimize cooperative, solidarity-based, or communal forms of ownership and use, since any deviation from the private individual ownership paradigm is seen as anomalous or threatening.
Drawing on Latin American critical thought, communitarian personalism, and alternative legal traditions, Richards proposes a shift in how property is understood—from a focus on the rights of the owner to a concern with the social consequences of property regimes. He advocates legal frameworks that ensure universal access to the means of livelihood, in accordance with human dignity and the common good.
Richards contends that transforming ownership structures under capitalism requires not merely legal reform, but a profound cultural and epistemological shift—a “transvaluation of values” grounded in new institutional logics. He argues that capitalist property regimes, rooted in Roman law's dominium, are institutionalized expressions of a logic of exclusion: they assume that ownership entails the right to deny others access to what they need to live. This legal foundation reinforces systemic inequality and makes poverty appear as a natural consequence of market failure rather than as a structural design.
To advance toward social change, Richards emphasizes creating “pilot projects” or “islands of another world”—practical, small-scale institutions where alternative ownership models can be lived, tested, and expanded. These include worker cooperatives, commons-based peer production, solidarity economy initiatives, and land trusts. Such experiments, although marginal within the dominant system, serve a pedagogical and prefigurative role: they demonstrate that economies based on inclusion, reciprocity, and democratic governance are viable and desirable.
Critically, Richards argues that change is hindered not just by vested interests but by presupposed rules of the game—what he, following philosophical pragmatism and Lonerganian dialectics, calls “background assumptions” (baises). Thus, structural transformation entails changing the cultural meaning of property. This involves educational processes that help people reinterpret ownership as stewardship or trusteeship rather than dominion, echoing traditions from indigenous thought, Catholic social teaching (e.g., the universal destination of goods), and Gandhian economics.
Richards calls for a “transcendence without negation”: not a violent overthrow of the system, but a patient construction of new institutions and new meanings from within, re-grounding law and economy in ethical commitments to human dignity, sustainability, and mutual care. This is a long, dialogical process of cultural evolution, enabled by what he terms “unbounded organization,” where social norms can be reimagined beyond the constraints of property-as-exclusion.
Richards reinterprets ownership not as dominium—the absolute and exclusive right rooted in Roman law—but as stewardship or trusteeship, emphasizing relational, ethical, and functional responsibilities over formal legal title. This view is grounded in a synthesis of philosophical anthropology, liberation theology, Gandhian economics, and indigenous cosmologies. In Understanding the Global Economy (2004), Richards critiques the exclusionary logic of private property in capitalist systems and advocates for institutions that ensure access to the means of life. He writes: “If ownership is redefined in terms of function rather than title, we can ask not who owns but what needs are being met, and who is accountable for meeting them.”
Richards draws inspiration from the Catholic social tradition, particularly the principle of the universal destination of goods, as formulated in Gaudium et Spes (1965) and later in Centesimus Annus (1991). The latter affirms: “God gave the earth to the whole human race for the sustenance of all its members.”
This principle relativizes the moral status of private property, subordinating it to the common good. Richards emphasizes that this theological-ethical framework supports legal and economic innovation toward inclusive ownership models (Richards & Swanger, The Dilemmas of Social Democracies, 2006).
In resonance, indigenous traditions often reject individual dominion in favor of communal custodianship. Richards aligns with scholars such as Enrique Dussel and Arturo Escobar in recognizing that indigenous cosmologies embody non-dualist, relational ontologies where land and life are interconnected. In Letters from Quebec (1995), Richards reflects on this dialogical interculturality: “The commons is not a nostalgic idea, but a living reality among people who never accepted the ontology of property-as-thing-to-be-controlled.”
In this view, ownership-as-stewardship becomes an ethical practice rooted in care, accountability, and interdependence—open to legal institutionalization through models like cooperatives, trusts, commons governance, and social charters. For Richards, this reinterpretation is not only morally necessary but ontologically grounded in a broader, post-dualist understanding of person, community, and nature.