What Is It?

A Property-Owning Democracy (POD) is a social system where the ownership of productive assets is widely dispersed across society’s members. Productive assets include wealth and physical forms of capital but also ‘human capital’ like education and trained skills. By focusing on the widespread ownership of productive property, a POD doesn’t aim to rectify inequalities after they occur but instead aims to prevent inequalities arising in the first place.

A POD’s emphasis on the distribution of privately owned productive capital as opposed to social ownership, in combination with its utilization of markets, is what makes it ‘property-owning.’ A POD is ‘democratic’ because the aim of such widespread ownership is in part to prevent any one class in society exploiting their economic power to control others. To achieve this latter ideal, a POD also puts limits on inheritances (through say estate taxes) and tries to protect the political process from economic influence (through say publicly financing elections).

What Values are at Stake?

As the name suggests a key aim of a POD is the realization of democratic values. A POD aims to address the effective disenfranchisement caused by wealth inequality and ensure individuals have equal influence in the political process. Furthermore, a more equal distribution of productive assets reduces power inequalities in the market and thereby allows individuals to participate in economic life in ways that are free and nondominated, and in ways that better satisfy fair equality of opportunity. A POD can also help achieve relational equality, insofar as widespread ownership of productive assets gives each individual a stake in society and allows them to interact and cooperate together as equals.

Some Readings

• O’Neill, Martin and Thad Williamson (eds.). 2012. Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell
  
• Thomas, Alan. 2022. “Property-Owning Democracy” in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. New York: Routledge.
  
• Williamson, Thad. 2013. “Constitutionalizing Property-Owning Democracy” Analyse & Kritik 35(1): 237-253.