A fundamental critique of the current property regime calling for radical social and political
change. In The Abuse of Property Daniel Loick offers a multifaceted philosophical critique of
the concept of property broadly understood. He argues that property should not be the dominant
framework in which human beings regulate the use of things that property is not the same as
use. Property rights in his view are not conditions of freedom or justice but deficient
dysfunctional and harmful ways of interacting with other people and the natural environment.
He dissects not only the classic justifications of property (from John Locke's justification of
property as a natural right based on individual freedom to Hegel's justification of property as
a form of mutual recognition) but also the classic critiques of property from Proudhon and
Marx up to Adorno and Agamben. Through an innovative critical approach to legal studies Loick
demonstrates how the concept of property historically applied to things and people and still a
linchpin of our distorted relation with the world forms a direct line from the Occupy movement
to Black Lives Matter and beyond.
