This is not about extreme forms of private property. It is about the rights ownership of private property in the face of someone in severe or extreme need who is without.
Catholic Social Teaching (CST) includes a standard doctrine on private property. If one parses the many attempts to lay out CST appropriately, the first, and by far the most important (in my view) element of that teaching is that private property is part of the natural law. I heartily endorse this teaching. Private property does not arise merely as a result of social choices to allot and allocate to a man powers over certain goods.
Probably the second most common element of that teaching as found is that the “right” to private property is not absolute: it has limits. A man’s right to his property (or, to ‘his’ property) runs up against other goods, other demands, and must give way in some cases to other rights, needs, or demands of human nature.
I have no problem with this caveat on private property doctrine. I have repeatedly mentioned 2 or 3 of the implied limitations on private property. The most obvious one (arguably) is that having the right to property doesn’t give you the right to do something intrinsically evil with it: you cannot murder someone in cold blood merely because the gun you use is “your property”. Ownership of the gun, while real, does not extend to doing anything and everything you can physically manage with the gun.
Another limitation on your ownership is the right of the state to tax you, and this too I have strongly endorsed in multiple discussions here. Since by nature man is social, and since there cannot be peace among many without an ordering principle, man by nature belongs in a state which is that ordering principle. And states require resources to operate. Since nature does not provide the state with its OWN resources, it must get them from people. The state, and the common good of which it has the care, can demand of men some portion of their goods. This constitutes a limitation on a man’s ownership: he can own property, but not so firmly that the state cannot take a portion thereof.
One of the common sub-theories for the principle that man’s private property claims are limited (though probably not so universally agreed as the above 2 examples) is one supposed to spring from the tenet named “the universal destination of goods”, namely, the right of destitute people to the goods necessary for life. While this proposed teaching is quite common, you won’t find universal agreement among Catholic teachers on it – or at least on how to present the notion - for it harbors rather severe disputed aspects. But you will find it throughout the literature. Here is one:
Cases of extreme need set a strict limit on property rights. This means not only that those in extreme poverty are justified in taking resources, but that those with resources must provide and not withhold them: "No one is justified in keeping for his exclusive use what he does not need, when others lack necessities."
I will note that not all of these offered are stated in absolute terms.
Domingo de Soto makes the analysis more complex when saying that the person “in extreme need” can take remedy on the neighbor’s bread, but not to sell it; therefore it seem that in this case it is not ownership but the right to use that is transferred.
Our own recent discussion on distributism produced this exchange between Mike and Nice Marmot on the very point:
But it seems to me that in the classical/Christian understanding of wealth-getting, the poor man's needs take precedence over the wealthy man's wantsAnd herein is the problem for public policy. If a poor man is sexually promiscuous (which many young, poor men are) and gets a disease, is it incumbent upon the rich man to sacrifice his wealth?Fundamentally, I'd say yes, if we're working within a Christian context. Exactly how that works out policy-wise is another matter.
If I may summarize the theory: a man’s right to reserve his excess or idle property to himself is qualified by the needs of others. In particular, if a man has excess beyond his needs, and another comes who is destitute and in grave or extreme need and has not the goods needed for life, the first man’s claim to his excess property does not obtain, the second has a right to those good he needs for life. (In a second form, or in a sub-component of the theory, this extends not only to the goods necessary for life, but also to the goods necessary to human dignity. I will not directly take up this latter form here. Let me just say in passing that many are those who profess the former but not the latter.)
Now, I am not prepared to simply repudiate outright to theory that the right of a man to own his property is limited by other persons need for basic necessities such that, as said above, the man in extreme need can simply take because the former owner no longer retains the property right over it. But I am prepared to suggest that the theory, as claimed so far, seems to be missing something important – some needed qualifiers, some unstated bases, some added objective, some required conditions. Something(s), perhaps all of the above. And, further, that without these, the theory as claimed so far is more confused than clarifying, more obscuring than enlightening. Perhaps even: more wrong than right.
I could produce any number of practical problems with the theory. I have done so in the past, different problems, which I will list summarily here: (1) A man is a poor judge of his own case. In particular, a poor judge of his own degree of need. (2) A man (as private citizen) is often not a good judge of whether another’s property is ”excess” or “superfluous” or “idle” in sufficient sense to justify appropriating it on his own cognizance. (3) Without certainty about either whether the property being appropriated is truly “excess” or “idle”, or whether the man doing it is truly in need, i.e. that we have “the right circumstances” to limit the private property rights of the one who previously owned the property, violence is like to result.
But before solving questions of how to apply the theory in practice while avoiding evils as great or even greater than the evils the theory exists to address, there are more basic problems. The first I will pose is that of generosity. If a man has an obligation to use his excess wealth to better the condition of those in need, if he has an obligation to spiritual and (especially) corporal works of mercy like feeding the hungry, how can he do so if that property which would have been his excess is not his because his right to such (excess) property ceases to obtain in the face of others’ need? That is to say, how can a man GIVE AWAY, out of charitable zeal, what is not even his own property? If it ceases to be his own when another is in need, he cannot “give it away”, he has no authority over what is not his.
The second problem is like to it: if a man who receives beneficence as a gift owes anything to the giver, it is that of gratitude. He owes it to those who help in his misery to lift him up, that he be thankful for their kindness (first to God, and then to them). But if all they are doing is allowing him to use property that he already has a right to, he has no debt of gratitude to them at all. Or, are we to say that while a man's need is minor and petty, he has a debt of gratitude to him who helps out, but when it has advanced rather to severe or extreme condition the debt of gratitude passes away? Is this not insanity? Has any man rescued from extreme need ever so acted? Would the beaten and robbed man, when the good Samaritan returns to the inn, not shower him with thanks?
Suppose the ship is sinking, everyone gets into the lifeboat, and when Sam jumps into a lifeboat with the others, his backpack holds a 6-pack of water bottles because he is a boy scout, is always prepared, and has a particular concern for not going thirsty. And suppose that there is no other water aboard, and rescue (if it will happen at all) is certain to be some time in coming. Now, the practical problems with the theory proposed run something like this: when can we say that “rescue is taking too long, we have to ‘rely on our own resources’ to survive, so we can simply expropriate the water bottles and dole them out”? And “how do we decide when Bill, who is fat and sweating, is more ‘in need’ than Jane who is skinny and tends to dehydrate herself even when there is water available” – and none of us is a doctor to tell which has physical need versus which merely has the desire? I think that these problems, though somewhat difficult, have possible solutions.
But the principled problem is more worrisome: if Sam says: “hey, I have 6 bottles of water, I want to offer them so they are here for everyone on a fair basis”, do the others owe him a “thank you” to Sam? If it his property, they do.
Or, do we say rather that Sam is being outrageously proprietary to even have used the word “offer”, his only proper course of action is to POINT OUT the water, and (perhaps, if he feels it is not perfectly clear) that the water has already become common property.
I think we would reject the second and approve the first. Sam is right to make the offer, he is right to take what is, for the moment still his own property, and turn it over to the community at large for the good of many rather than his own good alone. And this act of his is an act of generosity, not merely one of simply recognizing he no longer has _any_ claim at all over the water. And that the others owe him gratitude for his generosity.
These problems obtain generally: If a man is in need, and someone else has excess, he can always ASK for help. And if he gets the help he asks for, he owes thanks for the gift. If a rich man ought to give of his wealth to succor the poor, and the poor asks it of him, and he gives it, then he makes an act of generosity, for “corporal works of mercy” like feeding the hungry are acts of mercy, and mercy is over and above justice. And to the act of mercy is owed not a return of payment for goods received, but a return of thanks. The theory that the excess or idle property ceases to belong to the heretofore owner because another man is in need and has no way of satisfying that need except from the goods of others would do away with generosity and gratitude, in direct contradiction to actual experience.
And these problems with generosity and gratitude unfold still further: if a man is in need, and asks of a rich man, and the rich man says no, but he can ask of another rich man who can say yes…on what basis can he expropriate what he needs from the first rich man who said no when what he needed was available for the asking elsewhere? Or, to put it another way, if a man is in need, and there are 2 or more from whom he can receive the help he needs from excess goods, which one no longer owns the property that the poor man needs?
But suppose we modify the theory with just a nudge: if instead society says to the rich man: “you are free to keep your excess wealth, and if a man in need asks it of you, you have the legal power to say yes or no: but if you say no, your rights to such private property are null and we will expropriate it from you to meet his needs”, then the rich man does not really have the property right to decide whether to give or not to help the poor man as an act of mercy: he is forced to. In order for the rich man to have the noble, loving, and meritorious act of generosity, he has to have the possibility of NOT so acting, the possibility of acting badly, of choosing evil, of the demerit of ungenerosity. And a rule that he will either “give it freely or we will take it away” defeats giving freely.
The third overall problem is that of saving, not of merely setting aside what is excess pure and simple with no particular purpose, but setting aside for some future definite purpose. When Joseph was taken to Egypt, he ended up in charge of a savings program to set aside grain for 7 years for a future need. Are we to imagine that during all that time nobody was in need. In the Pentateuch, Moses sets forth a law (as will apply in the Promised Land), where the people are to harvest for 6 years, but in the 7th year the land is to rest, and THEY are to rest, and to live off the yield from the 6 years – which means they must have saved. Are we to understand that they had no neighbors, neither those near nor those somewhat farther afield, with a sad story of need at which they were obliged to say “sorry, this grain is set aside for another purpose?” More generally, when a man saves and saves and breaks his back to work harder to save for some bigger, better, difficult project that will take much in resources, (a project, we may assume, that is for the good of many including many poor), are we to understand that he must not set aside when a poor person asks of him out of their need? Christ tells the tale of the man who sets out to build a tower: will he not be a fool if he does not determine beforehand if he has enough set aside to finish the job? And if this tower was to help protect the walls of the city in attack? Or (moving forward a few centuries) was to be a factory for making shoes and employing dozens of poor? Or a hospital to take care of the sick, including the poor sick? Or a laboratory to come up with antibiotics?
Every large endeavor in the world, every project needing the excess resources of many men, or of many years output – the dams that protect villages from floods, and produce power for thousands, the city walls that protect from barbarian thugs, the Ag & Tech colleges that teach men to farm well, the library at Alexandria or the statuary of Phidias – they happen only because men have the foresight to see how a great work would benefit the many, and they either receive donation from one who has great excess, or they encourage many to set aside some small excess amount and give it to them, or they request of the many part of what they have already set aside. Not one such project would be possible, if it is wrong to set your excess aside when there is a poor man in need. There is ALWAYS a poor man in need. There is no end to the need.
Ecclesiastes 11:2 Invest in seven ventures, yes, in eight; you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.
Are we to imagine that the man who invests in 7 or 8 ventures does so with money left over after
And even if the goal or project is not some endeavor that will serve for the good of many, but is rather for the superlative good of one, must we ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE forego each and every element of luxury until all the poor have been satisfied? Must we never spend money upon a good wine when we could have bought the lesser (or just managed with water) and spent the rest on the poor? Is there never a time to spend abundantly in joy, in celebration, in exuberance?
But Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples, who was intending to betray Him, said,5"Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and given to poor people?"… Therefore Jesus said, "Let her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of My burial. 8"For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have Me."
The fourth kind of problem is that of idleness or excess that is, but is not, idle. It is excess or idle only in a sense, not absolutely. Above we identified the theory with regard to goods that are excess or idle. If a man has land that he does not use it could be given to those who have no land. But who decides that the land is idle: if the Jew plants for 6 years, and the 7th he allows it to rest, is that “idle”? He does not think so, as Scripture tells him so. But if his neighbor, not being a Jew, thinks “he isn’t using the land”, on what basis is the one or the other to be correct? Or, if a county sets aside land to be a nature reserve, to reduce the encroaching overburden of development, to give nature a place protected, to retain an area of green and living free from man, and a poor man says “I need land to farm and you yourself said ‘you aren’t using this’, on what basis is he to be told no? Or, a man on a lot of half an acre uses 1/10 for the house, and 6/10 for a vegetable garden, and leaves 3/10 for an untouched space on St. Francis’s dictum that in each (Franciscan) priory they set aside a portion for nature to be untouched, but a poor person comes and says “I need a place to build my home, and you aren’t using this, so I am going to use it.”
And the 5th problem is when to stop throwing good money after bad. If a poor woman is in desperate need of a liver transplant – will die in 2 weeks if she doesn’t get it - and there is indeed a liver waiting for her, must we provide the many thousands for health care costs to do it? what if she also has stage 4 cervical cancer that will kill her in 6 months no matter what we do? Must we “save” her from death in 2 weeks if we can? If a drug user keeps spending the welfare check on crack, or the drunkard spends it on booze, must we keep paying them for “basic living needs”? Or, to get back to Mike’s example, if a poor but charming philanderer gets an STD, must we spend money to cure him, when he is going to return to his same old behavior? When are we to say: “we will no longer cooperate in your evil”? Surely, surely, there are limits, there is a BASIS, upon which we can say that we are not obliged to keep contributing to the support of a man who will not (or has not) done his own part to avoid that condition of need.
If a man will not work, neither shall he eat. 2 Thessalonians 3:10
So, if a poor man comes to a rich man’s house where there is food in excess, and he says to himself “I can take and eat that; because of my need and his excess it is not his property any more”, what shall the poor man say when the rich man finds him eating the food, and says to him “I would have given you work to do had you asked, but if you will not work, neither shall you eat” and takes the food away again? And if the rich man has the right to ask the poor man to work and then pay him wages out of what goods he has, then those goods he has remain his to command in the process, they do not cease - due to the poor man’s need - to be his own property even before he bargains with the poor man for work. And Alejandro Chafuen remarks on the fact that the real claim of the one in extreme need does not, of itself, extinguish the possibility of recompense later – which again implies that the claim is one of use, not of ownership. The original owner can (be obligated to) make over the property, but may do so as a loan, and then receive back the same or like in the future as a matter of justice.
These are not easy problems to solve while maintaining the theory. In fact, I have hardly seen anyone of a liberal bent even try for real. And I would submit, that without an attempt to address these issues, the theory is so deficient, so troubled, potentially so ready to run us off the rails of good social teaching, that perhaps we need to stop claiming it until there is a solid defense of it. I think the theory, as currently presented has holes you can drive a Mack truck through, and a lot more work needs to be done before it can hold its head up in polite society.
Comments (72)
The point I was trying to make is that by calling it a right, the rich man is obligated to perform it irrespective of why it happened or the future behavior of the philanderer. This applies to all social ills, not just philandering. If we were talking about a pyromaniac whose antics lead to his home being burned down 5 times in 3 years, at some point the rich are entitled to let him die in the cold because his need is entirely self-created and a waste of time (not to mention that he has shown he can't even be trusted to be sent to a shelter).
There are a host of issues that come from elevating personal obligations to impersonal levels like that of the nation. As individuals, we should try to not triage when faced with need, but the state absolutely must triage because it has an obligation to wisely and justly use the resources extracted to protect society's interests and do good by all. Throwing money at people who, through their own choices, repeatedly find themselves "in need" fails to protect the tax payer from people who are content to live as parasites.
Posted by Mike T | October 19, 2015 11:05 AM
"Fundamentally, I'd say yes, if we're working within a Christian context. Exactly how that works out policy-wise is another matter."
To clarify this statement of mine from the other thread, I'd say that the first inclination of the Christian should be, "How can I help?" not "Why should I help?" This help would obviously take different forms in different circumstances. You probably wouldn't give $5 to an alcoholic panhandler, but you might buy him a burger and a coke.
My point was simply that the initial, fundamental response for a Christian should be "yes." This does not mean there aren't circumstances where a "no" might be appropriate. And yes, the state's responsibility and action on these things is going to be different from the individual's. This is a problem with the views of the Christian Left, who mistakenly argue that the state should act like an individual Christian.
I don't really have time to go into this, but it seems that modern "rights talk" throws a bit of a spanner into the works here. When St. John Chrysostom or St. Jerome said that the poor have a right to the superfluities of the wealthy, they certainly weren't thinking of rights in our modern sense. And that's a meaningful distinction. I don't believe it changes the responsibilities of the well-off, but it does alter the way that the dynamic of the thing works out in a pragmatic sense.
Posted by NM | October 19, 2015 11:46 AM
Ironically, it seems you and I were arguing something similar and it did not become apparent until now.
One of the things that I used to get into it with Maximos and Jeff C on was the issue of how welfare inherently carries the risk of "you get more of what you pay for." For example, church can individually choose to run a ministry for single moms and do lasting good with free and open charity, but when single moms are deemed to have a moral right to public money that impairs the incentive for many women to be chaste and pursue marriage. Private action generally cannot scale to the point where it can change incentive structures on these things, but positive rights (especially ones embedded in law) are sweeping and powerful by nature.
Posted by Mike T | October 19, 2015 12:57 PM
That's very well said, NM. I think it is even clearer going the other way around: when they said that the rich have no right to withhold their excess from the poor, I think we could do a translation over as "It is not right that the rich should withhold their excess from the poor." We could then say "It is right that the poor have superfluities from the wealthy" without seeming to imply quite the sense of "rights" that is used post-Locke.
And, unless I am mistaken, this comports with my overall thesis, which is that there is more to be said than simply A has superfluity, B has grave need, then A's superfluity doesn't even belong to him, it is for B to take as already belonging to him.
I agree with this also. Or even, "Can I actually help", which sometimes doesn't have an easy answer. (Except one can always pray for the other.) If a poor drug addict is "in need" of a fix but not in grave need of anything else, perhaps the rich man can "help" by turning him over to the police, but even that is not always suitable - what if he hasn't done anything illegal within the rich man's direct knowledge?
The point of insisting on taking note of what it is right FOR the rich man Dives TO DO, as distinct from "what property rights he has", is to be clear on this: the rich man has a duty to his neighbors, and a duty to use his property well. These are duties he owes to God first, and then to his neighbor. Sometimes the duty to neighbor is in strict justice, sometimes it is in mercy, but an obligation in mercy is no less an obligation. He has no less to answer for at the Pearly Gates about it. If Dives has a property right, ownership of a 3rd house, he has the to moral power to decide what to do with that 3rd house. And if his obligation to see it used well runs to "make it available to Lazarus", he has the RIGHT to exercise dominion over that house by making it over for the use of Lazarus: by exercising dominion over the house well, he is carrying out his ownership rights over the property appropriately. If it is his moral duty, in charity, to do this, then we must say allow that it was his property upon which to exercise that act of dominion. If instead, by Lazarus being in need, Dives the rich no longer even owned the house, the Dives could not even exercise dominion by making it over to Lazarus's use.
Posted by Tony | October 19, 2015 5:47 PM
A little-noticed limitation of the property rights arises from the fact that property rights are defined in a particular rule of law. And if that rule of law is overturned, by foreign conquest or revolution, then the property rights that are defined in that rule of law are rendered null and void.
The conquered people have no right to their old property, in particular, the titles to the land are entirely lost.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 19, 2015 11:17 PM
Mike T,
Totally my position as well. The state acts in justice to the deserving poor while the individuals act in charity to undeserving ones.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 20, 2015 1:40 AM
BI,
This is wildly outside of the natural law and Just War Theory:
You have literally justified the barbarian sacking and pillaging of Rome, among other historic atrocities. Since the barbarians won, no one had a right to complain when they took everything they had.
Posted by Mike T | October 20, 2015 10:40 AM
Title is what you are addressing there, and most titles are implicit titles that are fungible with natural law claims since the government won't issue a formal title for the property because to do so would be crippling to the economy and the government. A formal title is issued for certain things that are non-trivial in importance and difficulty to adjudicate such as real estate and vehicles, but you have a title in a pack of gum purchased from a gas station as well.
It's not little-noticed, it's a non-existent limitation. Property rights are defined in law only to the extent that the law provides regulations on them pursuant to the good of society. Property rights may originate in law to the extent that the claim is not a fundamental property right claim, but a social construct such as a particular use of a property exclusive of other aspects of ownership such as mineral rights to land.
Property rights don't fundamentally arise in law anymore than marriage originates in law.
Posted by Mike T | October 20, 2015 11:19 AM
Thank you, Mike, for ripping this bit of nonsense.
This is wrong. Just wrong, in so many ways.
(my emphasis)
Property rights EXIST prior positive human law, because they exist by nature. As a result, they are also DEFINED, at least sometimes, prior to positive law. (I do not mean merely prior in time, but prior logically and causally.)
It is true that some forms of property rights arise more by law than by nature: intellectual property rights, and trademark naming rights, exist pretty much solely because of positive law. But this represents the minor portion. In most tangible property, the natural law gives property rights, and the positive law recognizes what already is true. In addition to the recognition that positive law provides, to an extent positive law also assists the natural law by making concrete and particular what was before general and inchoate. For example, the natural law allows that a man can give his property to another by gift, or by sale contract. The positive law may prescribe specific forms that make it clear whether the transfer is by gift or by sale (say, a receipt or a bill of sale), for the sake of the community - to prevent disagreements later as to which one took place. The positive law doesn't create the right to transfer by gift or by sale, it merely recognizes the natural law right and puts a specific form onto something that could be done in 50 other ways.
(This is similar to the natural law foundation of marriage: man is ordered toward marriage by nature. The state (or society in general) may formulate the process, may prescribe the _particular_ vows to be used, may set a minimum age for the sake of certainty, may insist on witnesses (again for certainty), but these do not mean the marriage arises by human law, for marriage is written in man's nature.)
Hence, for most tangible property (and some intangible), the state specifies the particulars of how the state shall recognize property rights that are valid and would be valid property rights even apart from state recognition. Therefore, the state recognition thereof is not the source of the property right, it is an overlay on an existing reality. When a conqueror eradicates the state, it may thereby eradicate the prior manner of recognizing the property rights people had, but that doesn't eradicate their property rights.
This is an abomination of a concept. It is repudiated by all decent Christian authorities before Hobbes that I know of. It is, effectively, a repudiation of the Christian teaching that God made man as a social person.
Posted by Tony | October 20, 2015 7:47 PM
It also sounds like the sort of thing that Machiavelli would enthusiastically encourage in a prince whom he wished to have hung, drawn, quartered and ground up into fertilizer by his conquered subjects, and quite possibly with the sympathies of his own army.
Posted by Mike T | October 20, 2015 8:12 PM
I thought about adding Machiavelli, but my (hazy) recollection of his work (I only read "The Prince) is that it is amoral - he doesn't recommend ANY moral perspective.
Posted by Tony | October 20, 2015 9:31 PM
"A little-noticed limitation of the property rights arises from the fact that property rights are defined in a particular rule of law. And if that rule of law is overturned, by foreign conquest or revolution, then the property rights that are defined in that rule of law are rendered null and void."
I don't know if BI is agreeing with this sentiment or simply stating it as a fact. If the latter, it's hard to argue with him: deny the "metaphysical" nature of private property rights, and they exist solely "in a particular rule of law" as he puts it.
There's nothing that I know of in either distributism or agrarianism that calls into question the "natural" understanding of private property rights. On the contrary, this is one of the issues on which Allen Tate saw agreement between the former and the latter when he put forward the idea of an alliance between them in the early 30s. Weaver likewise picked up this baton in the 40s: in Ideas Have Consequences he famously dubbed the right to private property "the last metaphysical right."
Posted by NM | October 21, 2015 8:09 AM
Maybe I am misunderstanding what Bedarz is claiming, but he appears to be saying not merely that property rights as assigned under law will no longer be respected when a conqueror wipes out the legal order, but that they don't even exist metaphysically.
This (that they are no longer respected) is manifestly true with respect to many invasions. It is also manifestly not true with respect to ALL situations where a conqueror comes in a disturbs old law. Not only do some conquerors overturn prior law only with respect to SOME areas but not in all respects, but even when a conqueror simply throws out old law altogether they don't necessarily take ALL property away and hand it over to others. For a farm, if the conqueror doesn't even have people available who want the property, the farmer might be left in place owning the land. If the conqueror doesn't enslave the entire population, they almost have to leave some property in place: homes, clothing, farm tools.
Posted by Tony | October 21, 2015 11:36 AM
"he appears to be saying not merely that property rights as assigned under law will no longer be respected when a conqueror wipes out the legal order, but that they don't even exist metaphysically."
Right, but that would be a highly unusual claim for a distributist to make, I'd say.
Posted by NM | October 21, 2015 11:50 AM
BI did say that inequality is a "social evil" in a previous thread, so BI may not even be a great example of distributism in his arguments. Inequality being obviously a natural consequence of men's choices and inborn differences even in an orthodox distributist economy.
It makes sense for a communist to call inequality a social evil, but not a distributist since inequality is not intrinsically tied to any injustice whatsoever. (I would even say that if every poor person's basis needs were met, it would not be wrong for the rich to keep all of their extra wealth for luxury)
Posted by Mike T | October 21, 2015 12:33 PM
I'm a Libertarian, not a Distrubitist. Except for extreme cases (where property is in some way a clear and present threat to others) or in great need (life or death situations) or in rare cases where the common good is literally impossible without it (For Example: a single hold out preventing a major highway from going through, assuming a majority vote was taken on the project in the first place). I do not think that the state should have the right to steal from it's citizens, especially by force of arms. Therefore I think that most forms of taxation are a form of theft of property by force. I definitely do not think that the state has the right to play Robin Hood i.e. take from the rich and give to the poor, under any circumstances whatsoever.
Posted by Floyd Alsbach | October 24, 2015 5:55 PM
What about when the state takes in order to save people from (literally) starving to death? Since you say earlier
it seems to me that this covers both times when the state is not involved and when it is.
I must say, I have rarely heard a staunch libertarian suggest that the "life or death situations" was the sort of circumstance that provides the state the right to take from me to deal with the situation. Can you elaborate on what you understand the rationale for this would be?
I am not a libertarian. I used to lean that direction somewhat, but realized that (at least in its standard form) it cannot be fully squared with the social teaching of Catholicism, which expressly states that man is a social being and for man the state is a natural good. But I can readily respect a Libertarian who is prepared to argue his principles rather than just take them for granted as universally held.
Posted by Tony | October 24, 2015 7:00 PM
Tony
- I definitely don't think my principles are any thing remotely close to universally held, in fact I'm quite sure they are rather radical in our era.
- I also don't consider myself any sort of amateur philosopher, nor a skilled debater. I'm just an ordinary guy struggling to work these things out for himself.
- Regarding Catholicism and Libertarianism I would suggest "Free is Beautiful, Why Catholics Should be Libertarian" By Randy England, he also has a web site; Freeisbeautiful.net (Generally speaking Libertarians are not anarchists, although there is a school of anarcho-libertarianism.)
-Life or death situation: I can imagine a situation where in extreme necessity (a new Black Plague sweeping across the country) a state must act, but in the general course of events even individual starvation, it should not.
-Catholic Social Teaching: I don't pretend to adhere fully to Catholic social teaching when it comes to Social Justice, because I don't think that administering Social Justice is the job of any State.
- Every time we ask the State to intervene even for the most altruistic of reasons, we give it more power over our private lives which it never gives back, in fact it just keeps taking more. Surely this is obvious to any casual observer of history.
- The Golden Rule: IOW The Gov't should not be able to take from us by force of arms, which is what it does. Basically, I think that in every facet of our private lives what we do, as long as we do no actual harm to others directly, our private lives are none of the States business. Especially the Federal Gov't, the Federal Gov'ts intervention in private matters of any kind are what I most strongly object to. I've had this conversation via email with Lydia, and yeah I know she is much better at this than I am, I still don't accept the Fed's right to intervene, or have any sort of say in the private lives of it's citizens. I think that we as a people have ceded far to much of our lives to the Federal Gov't over the last 100 years and we are just beginning to pay the price for that long series of mistakes. Our encounters with the Federal Gov't should be extremely rare, if ever. (I realize that currently this is impossible, but one can still dream.)
Anyhow please forgive my clumsy attempt to explain myself. My only excuse is that it's been 30 years since grad school and most of my life is spent working with my hands, not my intellect.
Posted by Floyd Alsbach | October 25, 2015 10:25 AM
Robin Hood is a formerly home schooled hipster:
http://www.inc.com/magazine/201511/paul-keegan/does-more-pay-mean-more-growth.html
Posted by Step2 | October 25, 2015 12:02 PM
Step2, can you spell out why the sobriquet "Robin Hood" should be applied to this guy? It seems to rest in this:
But of course this is just the opposite of Robin Hood-esque behavior. Robin stole from others, not from himself. He didn't steal from "the rich" generically (i.e. not all the rich - he didn't steal from the King, or himself). And it makes no sense to even talk of "stealing from yourself", because of course stealing is taking without that person's consent what they have a right to, and when you consent to give up your money to your employee that goes by another name altogether: paying wages. If the employee has a right to those wages, then you (the boss) don't. Etc, etc.
Posted by Tony | October 25, 2015 2:55 PM
How sure one could be that one's landed property has NEVER been owned previously?
PS I am talking of the initial acquisition of the landed property. There are several subtleties lurking. Americans (1) never had the experience of being conquered do not fully appreciate what conquest means, and (2) put the fact that America was conquered from its previous occupiers who were usually evicted without much or any recompense. The word "conquered" means "not purchased".
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 26, 2015 2:17 AM
Consider a hunting tribe that maintains its hunting grounds and holds its land in common. No individually owned land. Now, an agricultural people looks on and sees natural-looking landscape and no individual plots. And they say, Hey virgin undeveloped land and now we can own it.
But don't they miss the mixing of labor done by the hunting people? How does that matter that the hunters did not hold their lands individually?
Moral: Natural law indeed provides that things are owned by mixing one's labor with the things but is silent about how much mixing is required with what things.
That information is provided by the positive law.
Suppose a girl tames a wild deer. She has mixed her labor but does she gets to own it? And suppose this deer gets shot by a hunter? Who owns the deer?. Natural law is silent and the positive law must decide.
There is a futher consideration related to the land which is a special case. The various nations or tribes do not own their territories but merely possess it by force. There is no violation of their rights nor it is stealing if they get to be dispossessed by force.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 26, 2015 4:18 AM
That private property in land is prior to or essentially disconnected with the political context is the fundamental premise of libertarianism. So if Tony disclaims libertarianism, he needs to give an account of the political context of the privately owned land. How is the private land ownership situated within the national or tribal territory?
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 26, 2015 4:36 AM
Huh? What mixing with labor? Hunting ON the land isn't modifying the land.
I have never said that the property has to be held privately in individual hands to be no longer free for the taking by anyone who comes along. I have, rather, said the opposite. If a tribe makes a trail through the jungle to the river, and that jungle becomes the common trail all use on a daily basis, nobody in the tribe can legitimately just put their house in the house in the middle of the trail because "this land is not owned by a person". Communal effort using and changing property implies the property is no longer virgin.
I have a counter-offer. Consider a hunting tribe that maintains its hunting grounds and holds its land in common. No individually owned land. Now, an agricultural people looks on and sees a tribe that is using the land but under-using it in terms of what it could produce. They offer to buy the land for $100. The tribe accepts the purchase price. Then, they continue hunting the land because they have no cultural concept of land as being OWNED.
I am not proposing the latter picture is "what happened" in America with tribal lands. There are way too many variations to fit easily in under one picture. I am just pointing out that we can describe different things, and that doesn't tell us what is right or wrong.
I would generally accept the position that tribal lands held communally are indeed "owned" property. And that, as a consequence, taking it from them simply because "we want it" constitutes theft and is immoral. Even if done as a "conquering people", which more or less happened thousands of times before Europeans came to America. I do not generally consider hunting on land to be a sufficient act to acquire ownership of land privately, but I will allow that the equation might be different in terms of a community. Or it might not (at least not completely): if a bright and inquisitive early Iroquois native decided to take a plot of land and start farming it "just to see what would happen", not yet sure of how farming works, it is plausible that this plot of land ceases to be owned communally and becomes owned individually - that he has a legitimate title under which to say "stop stomping through here in your hunting". That is, it is at least notionally possible that the KIND of ownership implied in communal "hunting" ownership can be overcome by an individual's actions. That a more intense kind of use, that is particular, can overcome a less intense kind of use that is common.
And if that could be true within the tribe, it might be true when the farming occurs by outsiders. If the tribe "usually" hunts within 20 miles of the village, what that really represents is that they heavily hunt within 10 miles, and less heavily within 15, and somewhat sporadically as you get out toward 20 miles - it is a gradation. So if a Cherokee tribesman plants a farm at the 19 mile point, the fact that the Iroquois tribe sometimes has used that land for hunting doesn't clearly imply that the Cherokee is taking land that he cannot have a claim to. Even if there really is a kind of claim of tribal ownership that arises by the tribe's hunting customs.
The event of coming-to-ownership of a property (whether land or not) implied by using and changing it is ALWAYS going to involve judgment calls and gray areas. This does not imply that the underlying principle is man-made. It does not imply that the natural law simply " is silent about how much mixing is required with what things." The natural law provides that more labor and mixing compared to less implies a stronger ownership claim. This isn't "silence". What is true is that the natural law does not specify the exact requirements. The natural law leaves the determination of the exact amounts to the intelligent, prudential judgment of persons - especially of communities and those who have care of the common good. Just like the natural law provides that parents punish their children to teach them good morals and good manners, but does not prescribe specifically how much punishments of what kind are right for which infractions. You cannot say that because it is up to the parents to decide between grounding a kid or making him do an essay or making him weed the garden, that the natural law is silent about the parental role of punishing wayward children. Man's particularizing prudential judgment takes a general precept of the natural law and particularizes it in the concrete instances.
Posted by Tony | October 26, 2015 8:12 AM
Do you realize that you have just justified various national governments in outright slaughtering mass migrations? Not repelling, but meeting them with overwhelming force since the existing nation has no right to its territory except by force?
Posted by Mike T | October 26, 2015 8:19 AM
Doesn't finance capitalism depend inherently on absolute property rights? If a corporation exists solely to make a profit for its owners/shareholders then what it does with its property must represent an absolute freedom. It may choose to do something other than a directly profit-making activity with given properties, but it must retain the legal right ultimately to do whatever it wants with those properties provided it is a lawful activity.
To put this another way, in what sense can corporate-owned property be considered the manifestation of the foundational metaphysical right? Of course, one can consider a corporation in a minimalist sense as merely a group of individuals, but in reality the corp. itself is not the group of persons, but a separate entity which is a creation of the individuals. How does this entity have metaphysical rights?
Posted by NM | October 26, 2015 8:42 AM
Step2, can you spell out why the sobriquet "Robin Hood" should be applied to this guy?
He's got the same enemies - those who've made an idol of gold and worship it.
Posted by Step2 | October 26, 2015 1:47 PM
Not sure what you mean by "absolute" property rights. Around here, it often seems to entail such things as a repudiation of the state to exercise eminent domain to take property for a common need, say, to build a wall around the city. For some, it even repudiates the right of the state to tax at all, though I admit this is an extreme version. But even without the extreme version, the finance capitalism that we have right now is getting along just fine with the state having powers to restrict it in a thousand ways, including environmental regs and building codes and anti-trust rules, not even approaching the outright taking under eminent domain. I don't think finance capitalists care that much about "absolute" rights, as long as they can get the state to help them along by undermining their competitors.
I would say that the answer is tied up with what you said just before:
The presumption for a corporation is that the entity has the right to do whatever its founding document gave it the right to do - within the implied constraints. What are the implied constraints? A corporation is (a) materially, the assets contributed to it by its owners, and (b) formally, the binding agreement they made with each other about the handling of the assets, within the given parameters of law. Generically, if the law says that a homeowner can paint his interior any color he wants, then with a house owned by a corporation because an owner contributed to the house to it, the corporation can paint it any color it wants. The ownership rights that are held by the owner are in turn held by the corporation after contribution. The corporation holds property rights in virtue of having those rights transferred to it by the former owner of property. The principle involved is that of being an owner: if being an owner implies being able to decide to use the property yourself, then it would seemingly imply being able to choose to use the property in concert with others as under a unified deciding entity.
But there are exceptions, stated in law, that in effect limit the act of contributing property to the corporation: the shareholder who contributes a home does not thereby make the corporation a "resident" of the town. Many other laws restrict the rights of corporations, thereby implicitly restricting the power of an individual human person to transfer ALL of the rights of property to the corporation: you can't transfer property so as to establish a monopoly, for example. These limitations are from positive law, not from the natural law, I think. There is nothing in the natural law that prohibits such more complete transfers of property rights. So, the entity has those rights ceded to it by individuals (it doesn't have property rights in its own right), to the extent that the state has not limited the power of human beings to cede some of their ownership rights to a corporation.
Of course, I don't speak for finance capitalism at all, but I don't harbor any concern about the notion that the state can limit a corporation's handling of property. My primary position would be that a corporation presumptively can do with its property what the owners could do severally, unless and until the state imposes a law to constrain that for the sake of some good that requires such a constraint: the burden of proof is on the state choosing to impose limits, not on the right of a corporation to exercise ownership rights. The presumption is in favor of freedom of action.
Posted by Tony | October 26, 2015 4:23 PM
The key to understanding big business is just understanding that the regulations are not their enemy per se, but the application of them. Once they capture the government, those regulations become a weapon to use against their competitors, which is why it's important to ensure that the government only has the powers necessary for the common good.
It's all just an evolution of political patronage, which is why I've never understood why anyone is dumbfounded at it happening today. It's been going on since the beginning of political history. You'd just think that by now people would understand that it can only be restricted by ethics and judicious limits on state power over society.
Posted by Mike T | October 26, 2015 9:28 PM
Mike T,
I have not said anything about slaughters. But this I hold absolutely-no nation or a tribe has a moral claim on the land it occupies. And it can hardly be otherwise. Otherwise you would need to morally justify all the borders of the all the nations. Could you do so?
The national borders are arbitrary products of the balance of forces. They could not possess any moral status. My conclusion follows.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 26, 2015 10:32 PM
Doesn't finance capitalism depend inherently on absolute property rights?
NM,
The finance capitalism is anti-property.. It is based upon anonymous financial property which is a very debased kind of property.
For instance, check the situation in India. The govt there is commonly supposed to be right-wing big business friendly. But it is seizing lands of thousands of poor farmers. So big business friendliness goes hand in hand with a general disrespect for property rights for non-big business.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 26, 2015 10:43 PM
Tony,
One needs to appreciate a key distinction between owning a thing and merely possessing a thing. Your comments betray a confusion here. One owns a thing by law. It is a moral, lawful matter. Thus, the buyer and the seller have this law in common.
So, if one "buys" a thing from someone with whom one does not share the law in sufficient degree than of course, there is no valid transaction.
The hunting tribe may not have the concept of "individual ownership" of parcels of land--that parceling is an internal matter of the tribe.
But even a most primitive tribe has a clear notion of "possessing" the tribal land. For that relates to the external matter of tribal relation with other tribes.
I had written
You kindly appreciate the term "maintains". It requires work-for instance hunting preserves of English lords.
There is a lot that could be added but first we need to clear the basic ground of how ownership is a social reality, indeed a political one. And how it differs from mere possession.
Generally, I remark that you mix a lot of Locke with an initial Catholic pronouncement. As I understand, the Catholic teaching is silent about how people come to own things and the context in which various things can be owned.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 26, 2015 10:56 PM
Tony,
1) "ownership" pertains to internal matter of the tribe. How does that tribe parcels out its territory. It has no bearing on the external relations of the tribe with other tribes.
Thus, the tribal territory is not "owned"-neither individually, nor communally.
2) Thus, taking it from them does NOT constitute theft but conquest.
Theft is always immoral but conquest is not. Conquest may or may not be immoral.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 27, 2015 4:27 AM
BI,
You didn't have to say anything, because slaughter necessarily follows from your argument.
Remember, you said this:
If an unjust invasion and conquest resulting thereof is not theft, then Just War Theory, natural law, etc. do not apply in other areas as well. That includes on matters of homicide. You cannot just cherry pick what aspects of those things apply in these cases. If a nation can just gobble up another nation's land and there is "no right nor is it stealing," then obviously it is not murder if the attacked nation rebuffs the attack and sends its army into the invading nation's territory and burns down every population center while the civilians are still inside.
Posted by Mike T | October 27, 2015 6:44 AM
"finance capitalism is anti-property.. It is based upon anonymous financial property which is a very debased kind of property."
More later in response to Tony, but Weaver, if I recall, makes a similar point about finance capitalism and property -- because f.c. creates a form of abstract property, the organic connection between "real" property and its owners is undermined, and thus the "metaphysical" nature of the right is nullified. The idea of property becomes a sort of legal fiction which excludes the possibility of a metaphysical or "natural" right, which results in what you said about India: the mass accumulation of abstract property by large corporations creates a power which A) easily folds over into state power and B) thus stomps on the rights of smallholders, which are not based on that abstraction. I don't have my copy of Ideas Have Consequences handy, but I'm fairly sure that Weaver makes his argument along those lines.
Posted by NM | October 27, 2015 10:13 AM
It is indeed possible that I am confused, BI, but not about this.
Let's make this perfectly clear, from the top: you are using "ownership" in a highly colored, philosophical-theory driven sense. One that does not readily comport with the meaning extant. You have to separate out the meaning of the word, which arises through its normative and proper use over centuries, and the theory under which you think the reality holds. The Oxford Dictionaries def:
"Ownership" in general parlance adds to "possession" the right of possession. Many other points of language support this: The old saying "possession is 9 tenths of the law" relies on the difference. If I have a car, and I loan it to Bob for a week, Bob has possession of the car during the week but I retain the ownership during the week. The very notion of "loan", which is pretty much universal throughout cultures, relies on the difference. Possession implies having "in hand" or "within your immediate control". But it does not imply "right" in the same sense ownership does. If a robber grabs my phone and runs off with it, he has the possession without the right. I remain the rightful owner.
"Right" enforced by positive law and society is one way to perceive and recognize the ownership of property. But the fact that society erects rules governing the protection and enforcement of ownership rights does NOT IMPLY, of itself, that ownership rights arise by origin from social choices to allot or allocate "ownership". There is, I suppose, a logical possibility that such socially recognized property privileges arise strictly and solely through social action, but it certainly isn't a logical necessity. You would have to ARGUE for the claim, Bedarz. Which you never do. You just claim it as if that's all you need to do. You just posit your theories, and never back them up.
(I note in passing that your position is, effectively, an absolute repudiation of private property being part of the natural law.)
Whereas, I reject completely your explicit claim, that "One owns a thing by law" (assuming you mean "positive law") and the implicit repudiation of private property being part of the natural law, and with good reason. Some of the reasons have already been given. The first is that we would never have called it a property "right" if the thing that society allots between its members regarding control of property were merely driven by society without a shred of basis in a reality that is prior to such social action. It would be called (and would be, actually) a privilege: a special benefit allotted by those in charge, not granted to all. There never would have been a basis to call it a right.
Secondly, if a man were to "own a thing by (positive) law" alone, then he would have no basis for a claim to re-possess it, once taken from him, by anyone who simply declines to accept that law - including those (apparently) within society. Imposing "the law" would be nothing other than the sheer imposition of (hopefully) the superior force of the many, over the one or few. Again, "right" would not come into it, except as a mere charade: possession would constitute 10/10ths of the law. The tyranny of "might over right" wouldn't even be a saying, because there would be no "right" for might to overcome, it would be "might over weakness". (All of which, of course, would in effect undermine civilized society of any sort, and the theory that upholds this is a theory contrary to man being a social entity. Your theory that implies an inherent state of war between peoples, Bedarz, cannot be limited to peoples, it carries over between each and all individual people. It is a theory for crocodiles, not men.)
Thirdly, the theory is contradicted by what man does in the absence of a social construct. We have any number of examples of men who, either by choice or accident, are cut off from any society for an extended time, in a frontier or desert island. Invariably, such a man sees things useful to him, that are not under any dominion or claim of dominion by any other person, and takes hold of them for his use. The act of simply taking hold is, of itself, an act of possession. The moral uprightness of his so acting, of his fulfilling the blessing in Genesis "have dominion over..." provides that not only is his act possessory, but that it constitutes RIGHTFUL possession, i.e. ownership. This is why, uniformly, if another man comes into his sphere and sees a good thing he has made from some natural resource - say, a rope - and takes it without leave, the first feels wronged. He feels wronged because he really and truly had a moral claim to the rope - a moral claim to exercise dominion over it - regardless of the fact that no society granted him its ownership.
And that, by the way, is the foundational, root source of the right to ownership of private property: the "right" (a natural moral claim, not just a social claim) rests in moral rightness, i.e. morally right action. It does not rest ultimately on a social grant of privilege. Rejection of this moral basis amounts to a rejection of man as a free moral agent with an intellectual nature - which is, precisely as Leo XIII says in "Libertas", the basis of his morally right behavior in acting on and in the world.
Well, not really. There are many Catholic teachers, especially in the later Scholastics, who went into depth about how people come to own things. But that aside, this much cannot be denied: official Catholic teaching, from multiple popes, declares that the right to private property arises from the natural law, not from a social grant. I have repeatedly given the quotes, so I won't bother again. What appears to be true, rather, is that you simply reject this basic, documented and commonly taught feature of Catholic doctrine.
Posted by Tony | October 27, 2015 9:22 PM
Maybe you are right, but I am not quite seeing it yet. Perhaps you need to spell out just what facet of "finance capitalism" you are relying on for this. Certainly mere corporate structure isn't co-extensive with finance capitalism, and does not "nullify" the metaphysical nature of property. Is it, perhaps, the de-construction of literal ties between paper money and property backing that money implicit in fractional reserve banking universalized and denatured by a central bank that wipes out the sourcing of property claims each night and records only the net (supposed) value amounts thereof? That is, for me, the most severely radicalizing aspect of our finance capitalism. But this, I think, is quite another thing, and indeed not even in the same category, as indirect property interests through incorporation. (Yes, you can mix the two by getting fractional reserve banking involved with already indirect ownership shares and make both worse - which I have mentioned before.)
Posted by Tony | October 27, 2015 9:38 PM
Mike T,
Conquest is essentially replacement of one rule of law by another. It could even be beneficial to the conquered people and does not necessarily involve any slaughter, violation of civilian rights etc. Witness the British conquest of India.
The Just War theory is unrelated to theft.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 28, 2015 12:25 AM
Tony,
I use the word "ownership" precisely as a moral claim a person has on a thing. Your dictionary cite is imprecise and confounds ownership with mere possession, as you yourself recognize.
Incorrect assumption. The law means both natural and positive law and the Catholic teaching explicitly provides a role for positive law as determining questions of ownership.
Could you cite where I have said that ownership comes from social grant?
Now, restricting to ownership of land. The ownership concept makes sense only within a rule of law. That is, where sufficient number of people agree to resolve their various claims and counter-claims peacefully, using words and arguments. They can do so for they have a certain agreement on basic premises. One premise might be that parcels of land may be owned and how a non-owned parcel of land may get to be owned. These questions are not settled within the natural law and thus require a social consensus. The consensus is provided by the rule of law that exists within a political community.
Whereas, if rule of law does not obtain, there can not be ownership. One merely holds the land by force (since there is no rule of law) and one might be dislodged by force.
This point may be appreciated. In a rule of law, one could not be dislodged by force. Even a child could own much-coveted parcel of land undisturbed by threat of force.
I wonder if you find this reasonable. Then I could proceed further.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 28, 2015 12:53 AM
Wendell Berry on how much land a farmer should own:
WB: A farmer who has understood the dependence of agriculture on nature. The responsible farmer would not own more land than he or she could know well and pay close attention to and care for properly. Farming has to do with everything. We can’t reduce it to a transaction between a technician and a machine.
A diversified farm of reasonable size—100 to 200 acres of good land here—to farm it well is to solve structural problems of the same nature as a novelist encounters. You have to have a spatial structure, the layout of the fields and so on, and a temporal structure that determines what comes first, what next, and so on. Such problems must be addressed by a good farmer on a good farm every day.
MF: How can you tell a good farm?
WB: The looks of it are satisfying. A good farm is recognized as good partly by its beauty: the presence of trees, grass, good livestock on the pastures. If you go up into Holmes County, Ohio, where the Amish are thriving on farms of 80 to 125 acres, you would be impressed by the flowers in the dooryards, the beautifully kept kitchen gardens, the lawns, the birdhouses, the beehives.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 28, 2015 12:55 AM
It is argued by the libertarians that while private property is inviolable, the national borders are not. Thus, they argue for Open Borders. Now, I claim that there is no reasoned way to counter their position unless one takes into account the political context of private (landed) property.
See for example writings of Prof Caplan at GMU at http://econlog.econlib.org/
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 28, 2015 3:45 AM
I am beginning to see why nobody can understand you. Your position is self-contradictory.
It makes no sense to hold that "one owns a thing by _natural_ law" and then say that "
" If I own a thing by the natural law, I own it whether or not you agree to my claim. If my "moral" claim to it rests on my successfully arguing you around to it with words and arguments, then my moral claim to it is based on a SOCIAL arrangement and not on nature. Either my _moral_ claim can exist independently of others' consent, or it cannot. You are saying both. Either my argument "you OUGHT to respect my claim to this property because I have a good claim under the natural law" can be a valid argument, or it cannot. If it can, the OUGHT is real, implies a real moral obligation, whether or not others accept the validity of the claim. The moral obligation is prior to its recognition by others. If the argument cannot be a valid argument, then property rights arise strictly and solely as a social construct and not under the natural law. You are saying incompatible things.And you KEEP saying incompatible things. If the members of a tribe hold land under natural law, if they have moral claims to land by reason of natural law, then they hold it ALSO WITH RESPECT TO ALL OTHER TRIBES, because all humans have the natural law in common. There is no such thing as one community not having "the law" in common with another community, if "the law" you are talking about includes natural law. It can only be positive law that they do not have in common.
Posted by Tony | October 28, 2015 4:30 AM
Conquest is an act of violence that can only be justified under strict criteria, like all wars. Most invasions and conquests in history likely fall very short of meeting those criteria. They are illegitimate, therefore any actions arising from them are not morally licit. If you up and invade your neighbor without a compelling, licit reason, you are not "replacing a rule of law," you are committing an act of morally criminal violence. Hence, if you can just do that as you please because rights do not obtain to those on the receiving end under natural law and Just War Theory, then they can likewise counter-attack and slaughter every man, woman and child in your country in retaliation.
Just War Theory is essential to whether the conquest could ever be morally licit in the first place, since conquest is an act of war.
Posted by Mike T | October 28, 2015 5:27 AM
Only I never said "one owns a thing by _natural_ law"
but one owns a thing by law, natural and positive.
The natural law does NOT determine ownership of land. Proof--tribes in which parcels of land are not owned.
Simply put, if you say that one gets to own land by working it, then does the natural law tell you how much work is needed to own a particular land?
No, and that is determined by the laws and customs of your tribe.
Again, if your tribe claims land A and the neighboring tribe too claims land A, then no amount of natural law could settle the matter. You could claim to own a parcel of A but you could not expect the neighboring tribe to honor your ownership.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 28, 2015 6:03 AM
"ownership" is not absolute, unsocial reality but makes sense only with relative to other people. Now, I can either argue with other people or fight with them.
If I argue, then for arguments to proceed to conclusion, we must share certain premises.
If the other party does not share even premises of rudimentary natural law, then, of course, ownership does not exist.
The premises that need to be shared depend upon the thing in question. For things like your stick you fashion yourself, very few premises suffice.
For ownership of land, a great many shared premises are necessary. These shared premises constitute a rule of law.
Thus, it makes sense to speak of owning land only within a rule of law.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 28, 2015 6:17 AM
The same is true of the neighboring tribe with respect to the matter of killing you, gang raping your wife and selling your kids into slavery if you want to get technical about it. Your incredulity on how this applies to matters not pertaining to property is kinda like the old joke about gun control "murder, rape that's one thing, but #$%^, man, they passed a gun law. We gotta turn these things in now."
Posted by Mike T | October 28, 2015 7:17 AM
Mike T,
Moral status of boundary between two tribes would hardly have the status of prohibition against murder and rape, I imagine.
I invite you to answer the Open Border enthusiasts.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 28, 2015 7:43 AM
BI,
The prohibition of rape and murder is covered under natural law. If natural law does not govern warfare and the conduct pertaining to it, then anything that happens in the context of war is outside of it in that situation. That would mean that even if rape and murder are normally prohibited, they are fair game in a state of war IFF natural law does not cover the conduct of nation against nation.
Posted by Mike T | October 28, 2015 9:47 AM
Here's Weaver, from pages 132-133 of IHC. This is the passage I had in mind when I referred to him yesterday.
"...the last metaphysical right [i.e., the right of private property] offers nothing in defense of that kind of property brought into being by finance capitalism. Such property is, on the contrary, a violation of the very notion of proprietas. This amendment of the institution to suit the uses of commerce and technology has done more to threaten property than anything else yet conceived. For the abstract property of stocks and bonds, the legal ownership of enterprises never seen, actually destroy the connection between man and his substance without which the metaphysical right becomes meaningless. Property in this sense becomes a fiction useful for exploitation and makes impossible the sanctification of work. The property which we defend as an anchorage keeps its identity with the individual.
"Not only is this true, but the aggregation of vast properties under anonymous ownership is a constant invitation to further state direction of our lives and fortunes. For, when properties are vast and integrated, on a scale now frequently seen, it requires but a slight step to transfer them to state control...we should discover that business develops a bureaucracy which can be quite easily merged with that of government...Ownership through stock makes the property an autonomous unit, devoted to abstract ends, and the stockholder's area of responsibility is narrowed in the same way as is that of the specialized worker. Respecters of private property are really obligated to oppose much that is done today in the name of private enterprise, for corporate organization and monopoly are the very means whereby property is casting aside its privacy."
Posted by NM | October 28, 2015 10:06 AM
Bedarz, you are being sloppy and equivocal all over the place. Let me take this bit by bit:
It is true that law is "an ordinance of reason". It is not true that law means reason "since natural law is just reason applied to humanity." The truth that law is an ordinance of reason is broader than humanity, it encompasses all law, including the divine law. You've got the cart and the horse backwards.
The natural law is an ordinance of reason about man stemming from his nature. Since all humans have human nature in equal measure, natural law is the same everywhere. Therefore, a law that arises from human nature as such, without leaning on custom or culture, is TRUE LAW for all men everywhere. The natural law that says murder is wrong is valid for all men.
A thing is owned if there is a validly reasoned basis for ownership stemming from TRUE premises, whether the two parties agree upon the premises or not, whether the parties agree on the validity of the reasoning or not. If the premises are true, and the reasoning process if logically valid, the conclusion is true REGARDLESS of whether the other party accepts the premises or follows the chain of reason.
Furthermore, if both parties agree on the premises as being true from human nature - natural law - alone, and both agree that the reasoning is valid, the ownership will be valid as a matter of natural law. That they AGREE on the premises doesn't make the ownership a socially conditioned ownership.
Reason can be valid whether the other party to the discussion recognizes the validity or not. If we explicitly acknowledge a set of shared premises, but you can't follow the valid argument I give, (which is obviously possible) then you won't agree with the conclusion I get. I.E. the RIGHT, REASONABLE conclusion, if I am using valid reasoning. The fact that you don't agree with me does not mean that reason doesn't support my thesis.
Similarly, a conclusion can be drawn (from true premises) invalidly, but persuasively. The fact that I get you to agree with my argument does not mean the conclusion is validly determined. Agreement is not co-extensive with well-reasoned.
Natural law does provide true premises for ownership. Since these are from the natural law, they are true for all men, whether they recognize the truth or not. Hence there are common premises between all men, even if there are (in another sense) no agreed upon premises between them. One party's failure to grasp the truth in the natural law does not defeat the validity of a claim of ownership arising from the natural law itself.
Much ownership does indeed rely on social reality as well as natural law. For those sorts of ownership, the claims of ownership only fully "make sense" to those who *recognize* (and I don't accept "share" here for I can recognize the socially driven premises of another society applying validly to them and not to my society) the socially driven premises of such ownership. Not all ownership is such, the FIRST kinds of ownership do not rely on social reality. Thus your statement is over-broad.
The force of this claim relies on an equivocation in "share". In order for my argument to persuade another, to come to a _mutually_agreed_ conclusion, both parties must acknowledge the truth of its premises. In order for my argument to HAVE a true conclusion, it is not necessary that you acknowledge the truth of the premises.
All men SHARE human nature, and thus all men SHARE the natural law and all of the premises that arise simply through natural law. Whether they acknowledge them or not. Thus, a true argument establishing ownership, resting solely on premises of natural law, will be valid for both me and you, even if one of us repudiates the true premises.
And this is where your errors and equivocations are made perfectly clear. By saying "do not share even premises of rudimentary natural law", you prove that you simply don't grasp natural law. You reject that all men have human nature in common, that they have "human nature" (for "in common" is just implied in the term "nature" as applied to natural living substances beings like humans or animals or plants). You reject that having human nature, they have a natural law that applies to all equally. Hence, for you, all references to "law" mean events that happen after men arrive at and express agreed sentiments. You need to JUST STOP claiming the expression "natural law" for your sense of law. It is a completely wrong usage. That's not what the rest of the world means when using "natural law" (even those who use the expression to repudiate it).
Posted by Tony | October 28, 2015 9:13 PM
Even if you were trying to use "natural law" correctly here, which you are not, this still wouldn't establish what you are trying to accomplish.
First, your "proof" is not a proof, it is supporting evidence". That you cannot tell the difference is emblematic of your commentary.
Second, this discussion is about property, of which land is only one form, and a particularly sticky form at that. If you have trouble seeing the clean principles using muddled and sticky examples, drop the muddled examples and go with simple ones: The first time the first man who used a rock (none others having used it) as a specialized tool by modifying it had a moral claim on it, had the RIGHT to use and control it, whether others grasped that claim or not.
Third, even if land were the kind of property that could not be owned except by the admixture of natural law (understood properly, not your hodge-podge) together with positive law, it could still be the case that ownership ought to be recognized "between different peoples". For, natural law could speak to relations between peoples without expressing specific land rules. Natural law could (indeed, does) express rules about behavior of respect to other peoples' standards of behavior - when not arising solely from natural law - that means THEIR claims of ownership have a moral claim on me to some extent, even if not definitively.
Posted by Tony | October 28, 2015 9:19 PM
I feared that was the tack being taken, Nice. I simply don't see it this way.
As far as I am concerned, "finance capitalism" is of relatively recent vintage. It is newer than "the corporation", of which there were types and instances back before the Reformation. It is (or ought to be) a special subset of "capitalism". It ought to refer to that brand of capitalism that focuses on BANKING and various practices special to modern banking, especially (in my opinion) the unhappy marriage of widespread usury, fractional reserve banking, a central bank, and the amalgamation of the power to print the only legal currency with state power and the central banking powers.
I will admit that the "kind of property" brought into being by incorporation of for-profit businesses, i.e. "stocks," does have the effect of helping to smooth the road for some of the practices SPECIFIC to finance capitalism, but I really must object to saying the corporation is, as such, an animal of the finance capitalism world. The abstraction implied merely by incorporation DOES NOT imply finance capitalism, as if once you get the first you must get the second. That our finance capitalism came after corporate capitalism does not imply because of.
The essential notion of corporations is that of pooling the resources of many (more than the few men who can know each other personally and thus be co-equal "partners"), and assigning someone to oversee its management. This does, as stated, imply a level of abstraction. It does not imply the entire panoply of things, from usury to mortgage-backed securities, that infest our system. It is, at root, no more an abstraction than taking donations from many to "build a cathedral" the plans for which haven't even been drawn up yet. The many who donate money are not donating stone, or mortar, or glass, or their time, or their expertise. Their money is an abstraction for what will, as the building progresses, become EITHER carved stone, or lumbered wood, or leaded glass, or a thousand other things, not ONE of which the donor specifically had in mind in giving.
So, Weaver would reject too "the specialized worker"? Neuro-surgeons, engineers, cellists, and so on? Then he would, I think, run explicitly counter to what Pope Leo XIII, Pius XI, and John Paul II said about the positive human role of the businessman who humanely employs many, paying fair and honest wages (suitable for the dignified living of a family, and setting aside some for savings). He rejects the notion that one of the excellences of humans is the excellence of directing others well, of managing well, of organizing and motivating a large group necessary for a large project.
It is simply not fair to project onto incorporation the phrase "devoted to abstract ends". Most corporations are started to make a product or service in a specific niche of the economy. Most STAY that way. The restaurant remains devoted to serving food. The shoe factory remains devoted to footwear, even if it expands to boots, slippers, and sandals. The corporate form is PLIABLE enough to allow escaping the original direction to swallow larger and larger chunks of the economy - but so is the sole proprietorship and the partnership. The driving force is the mind of the person making the decisions, not the FORM of the business.
Maybe we need social and legal structures that foster the smallness of businesses (whether incorporated or not), that discourage a business mentality of growth for growth's sake. That would make sense. This ill is not of corporate - or modern - manufacture, as Croesus can attest.
Posted by Tony | October 28, 2015 10:07 PM
Mike T,
If you maintain that conquests are morally illegitimate then be prepared to say with Proudhon that Property is Theft. Since all current landed estates , save in Antarctica, are held by dispossessing original possessors. And the position that moral wrongs are converted to moral rights by mere passage of time. No Natural law says so nor does Catholic Teaching.
And indeed, your national law says that theft is converted to property (e.g doctrine of adverse possession), then it is only your national law. Not of the whole humanity.
Calling the moral status of conquests then renders questionable all moral sanctity of property as well as national borders.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 28, 2015 11:33 PM
Tony,
A simple example-supposing land ownership to exist in a state of nature, a dispute arises between you and your neighbor. He holds for adverse possession in five years while you do not accept adverse possession at all.
How do you resolve a matter of adverse possession that comes up between you? Being in a state of nature, there is no overriding social consensus or sovereign that could define the question of adverse possession.
What natural law are you going to appeal to?
Can this statement resolve this and scores of similar matter that arise in land ownership? Plenty of nations have reason from untrue premises e.g usurious property. So, we must suppose that these nations are deluded--they call property which is not, and do not call property which is. That makes ownership rather like Catholic marriage--nobody can say whether a particular marriage it is valid or not.The natural law itself says that man is a so cial animal. All its declarations need to be taken in this context. Your examples are invariably unsocial. Man going to a virgin forest, killing a animal, fashioning a stick or a rock tool. These examples lack the problems that arise in the fullness of man's social life and thus are inadequate to the discussion .
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 28, 2015 11:57 PM
Tony,
You are stuck on incorporation which is not precisely the objection made by Weaver. The point is anonymity and resulting irresponsibility.
An owner is responsible. An employee lacks the owner's responsibility by the very nature of employee-hood.
But in financial capitalism where ownership is diffused and fluctuating and many-fold indirect-your corporation may be owned by another holding company public at large is unaware of, then this holding company is owned by numerous funds in a fluctuating way-and then the public at large owns units in these funds.
The ultimate owner--typically a salaryman (like myself)- what does he own?. I could not name you the corporations I am invested in today and neither I am particularly bothered to know.
All I care for are my returns from the investment. When I am not even bothered to know even the names of the companies I am invested in, what degree of responsibility may be expected from me?
And, importantly, all others in the chain, the fund managers, the corporation employees including CEO are just employees, that by the very nature of employee-hood lack the responsibility of an owner.
Thus, the financial capitalism erodes a basic for which ownership exists in the first place., That man be responsible and be a steward for things.
Instead of addressing this, you are forever repeating about incorporation. The incorporation is unproblematic if it is (1) either direct--the condition is stable and public relation between a person and a thing (2) or is exceptional.
It is the dominance of anonymous property that causes erosion of real property. It would not be a problem if it was rare.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 29, 2015 12:42 AM
Ownership exists when disputes are resolved with laws. This situation is universal.
When disputes are resolved with guns, then we are not in a state of law. It is not meaningful to speak of ownership.
Perfection of ownership is when even a disabled nonagenarian widow is secure in her estate. That could only happen in a state of law.
Man lives naturally in a state of law. To live in a state of nature is abnormal. Even the earliest people lived in a state of law. So initial property acquisition is normally in a state of law as well.
The idea of ownership and homesteading in a state of nature is Lockean. The logical conclusion is libertarian erosion of national borders on one hand and property as theft on another. Not to mention a total lack of understanding of how national sovereignty and territory comports with private properties that are embedded in the national territory.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 29, 2015 1:43 AM
Tony,
Which statement is better:
1) Private property did not exist in soviet Russia.
2) Private property, though it existed in reality, was neither recognized by the soviet state nor by the citizens. It offered nothing to its real owners, neither a title nor possession. Most of the owners were in addition driven off their properties. But still, the private property existed, each particular one.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 29, 2015 4:38 AM
Bedarz, you continue to misunderstand and misuse law, and natural law.
All HUMAN law is law built on a foundation of pre-existing natural law. And man is - by nature - designed to live in society under human law. The authority of human law derives from natural law. So, to re-state this correctly:
Man lives naturally in a society with human laws which rest on, recognize, and respect the natural laws by which man is bound. To live without human law on top of natural law is abnormal.
No, only some of my examples, typically the ones designed to tell you what happens with respect to a resource LIKE TO resources which have had claims of ownership on them, but which has never had any claim of ownership in this particular. But not all my examples are so: When a man invents a use for something which never had a use before, making of it a "resource" where it had never been a resource before, his actions regarding it are LIKE to being "in a state of nature" because there are no laws, customs, attitudes, or anything else under human law that SPEAK TO its ownership. For example, when a man figures out that lightening carries electricity, and invents a machine that will use that electricity, and invents another machine that generates electricity (say, using his water mill's wheel), the electricity he controls and uses is HIS to control and use. IT MATTERS NOT whether his is off on his own, or in the middle of society. When human law has not spoken, natural law allows a man to own a good - even in the middle of a developed society.
In five years you have a society with him. There is no such thing as an ongoing "living in a state of nature" with neighbors. Remember what was said above: Man lives naturally in a society with human laws?
By which you mean "human laws". To correct: by definition, ownership exists when a man has a valid moral claim to designate the use / disposition of a good. That's what ownership is. That's what it means.
Because man is designed to live in society, man is designed to MAKE LAWS to flesh out the skeleton given by the natural law, to specify particulars to the general standards natural law provides. Natural law says that infractions of the law ought to be punished, but it doesn't say HOW MUCH or BY WHAT MEANS. It takes human law to put concrete, particular delimiters on that natural law: petty theft gets a fine of X, grand theft gets Y years in prison. These particularizing human laws are human laws ON TOP of a foundation of natural laws. To think of these laws setting forth punishments as "human law" separated from "the natural law" is to misunderstand human law and human nature. The fact that without human law you could not settle the arguments between 2 neighbors on how to punish a petty thief doesn't tell us that law settling the matter as a fine of $X was done under human law rather than under natural law. It was done under BOTH. Settling the questions is a matter for human and natural law. Similarly for ownership. Since human law is made pursuant to natural law, ALL human law of ownership constitutes "settling the matter" under human and natural law together.
When human laws are used, and men take their dispute to court, the court looks to the written laws. Sometimes the written laws are ambiguous, and sometimes the clear meaning of the written law results in an outcome that is monstrous. The courts (at least some of them) then resort to principles of equity - not written - to "settle the matter". Resorting to equity JUST IS the application of natural law where written law does not provide a clear or just result. And, indeed, the presumption is that such equity also undergirds the positive, written, human laws - or they would be LAWLESS in trying to follow the written law and impose, by force, what is itself contrary to justice. Human law isn't law unless it rests on a foundation written by nature into man, so "enforcing" human law avoids being just "force" rather than "rule of law" only because of what is behind human law: natural law.
When a man has a valid moral claim to control and dispose of a good, and another dispossesses him by threat at gunpoint, this injustice is a violation of law, but does not eradicate his ownership, his valid claim. Though the "dispute" is resolved with a gun, the gun does not mean no injustice is done. If we can call it an injustice, this is because there is a reality other than "how it was settled". It makes no sense to suggest that "settling disputes with guns" voids injustice, so it makes no sense to say settling disputes with guns means there is no ownership. It means that real ownership is not recognized by all.
I reject the premise. Of course private property existed and was recognized: coats, food, etc.
And of course there WAS TRUE property rights that were not recognized by the government, this constituted the inherent irrationality that the state was trying to live and impose, and is why they eventually failed as a government: they were pretending against reality. And of course the citizens recognized the pretense for what it was, which is why they eventually brought that government down.
Posted by Tony | October 29, 2015 6:46 AM
You are focused mainly on the fact that human law settles disputes. You forget why and how it SUCCEEDS in settling disputes. Human law is rooted in natural law. Human law that enshrines manifest injustice does not settle disputes on a permanent and stable basis: that's why revolutions happen. People accede to the resolution of human laws in disputes - even when the solution goes against their wishes - because they believe generally the law is just, that it enshrines the natural law sufficiently. When most people become convinced that the human laws largely enshrine injustice, they eventually rebel against such laws. Why is this? It is because merely being "the written law" is not enough to settle disputes. It must ALSO settle disputes in a manner consistent with justice. (Which is nothing but "consistent with natural law".) So, human written law that repeatedly and importantly defies unwritten natural law does NOT settle disputes, simply speaking. It only does so temporarily, until people can effect a change, and this temporary aspect proves that it didn't settle the dispute as a matter of law (an ordinance of reason), but as a matter of force and threat of force.
Hence, it is inescapable that there is a kind of justice by which human laws can be judged. Which is a kind of law - an ordinance of reason - also. Natural law. Therefore, where there is no common society, and no writ of human law - say, in 1650 two ships from different continents meeting on an open ocean, there REMAINS natural law to offer solutions to how to deal with each other. Killing the others and taking their ship is unjust, it is against the natural law. Taking the others' property at gun point is unjust, it is against the natural law. There are ways compatible with the natural law in dealing with the others, and ways incompatible. That there is no society to erect the usual array of ownership rules means they have to work without such customary rules, but doesn't mean they CAN'T be just to each other.
Most ownership of most property has fuzzy edges: how much modifying X is required to make it mine is fuzzy. Human law is indeed needed to settle these. (Just like how much punishment for offenses is fuzzy.) As a result, there is no fully satisfactory way to answer how one is to settle most such disputes without human law. This is why "to make human law" is part of the natural law which rests on man.
But now think of it the other way around. There arises a dispute about a good that never before was an object of ownership: river water, for example. When the community gets around to creating a new law about it, on what basis do they make this law rather than that law? More often than not, it is by reason, finding one REASONABLE answer to who shall own water. When they SETTLE on that rule, they have formulated an "ordinance of reason" to settle the dispute. Now, if the disputants had (before the rule was made) each set forth on a piece of paper how he proposed to settle the dispute, and each had written THAT PRECISE solution, and then exchanged the papers holding their proposed solutions, the dispute would have been settled without making a rule about it. It is not because it was made a rule, alone, that made that outcome one that settles disputes, it is also because it is OF REASON. And so, the operation of men using reason to find one specific fair solution to a dispute and erecting that as a rule, is an application of the natural law as well as making of human law. That it is a fair solution and not just any old "here's how we are going to do it" imposed without regard to reasonableness is what makes it a JUST law, and what makes it in accordance with natural law. I.E., what makes it true law rather than a culturally imposed injustice.
Posted by Tony | October 29, 2015 8:01 AM
BI,
I have no idea how you came to this conclusion of "what I maintain" on this subject. Again, you said this:
There is no subtlety or nuance in what you said. You left it open to the idea that a more powerful tribe can simply annex and dispossess another tribe without any moral issues. That is manifestly not true, as all armed conflicts are morally subject to Just War Theory and natural law. That means that yes, as a matter of fact, most conquests are morally illegitimate because most wars were never waged under morally licit conditions.
Moral wrongs are not converted to moral rights over time, but an illegitimate authority can become a legitimate authority over generations once it has become accepted as the authority by the governed society. In the 19th century, the US Government was not the legitimate authority over most midwestern and western Indian tribes. Today, it is, because as a matter of fact it has established itself as the authority over the land.
The immorality of the past conquests of those groups does not create a lasting crime that the federal government must answer for today.
Posted by Mike T | October 29, 2015 8:40 AM
~~"finance capitalism" is of relatively recent vintage. It is newer than "the corporation"~~
Right, and I don't think Weaver would argue there. He's speaking of those corporations arising from, and functioning under the auspices of, finance/industrial capitalism.
"I really must object to saying the corporation is, as such, an animal of the finance capitalism world. The abstraction implied merely by incorporation DOES NOT imply finance capitalism, as if once you get the first you must get the second. That our finance capitalism came after corporate capitalism does not imply because of."
I'd say that the modern large corporation is inarguably an "animal of the finance capitalism world." When critics object to "corporatism" they're not speaking of Dr. Wilson's LLC, with a nurse and two office people. They're talking about the major large movers and shakers, those that are large enough to subvert local control and affect large regional, national, and international markets. It seems to me that in the U.S. at least, you have finance capitalism and corporate capitalism growing up together, as it were, in the Civil War era, and in the north, even prior to that.
~~~Weaver would reject too "the specialized worker"? Neuro-surgeons, engineers, cellists, and so on?~~~
That is not the sort of specialization he's referring to. He's talking about Fordist specialization -- in his day primarily industrial, in ours, bureaucratic or "office" related.
~~~It is simply not fair to project onto incorporation the phrase "devoted to abstract ends".~~~
As B.I. wrote above, this isn't aimed at incorporation per se, but at the "anonymous" nature of the property created by industrial/finance capitalism, and the resulting "narrowing" of responsibility.
~~~Maybe we need social and legal structures that foster the smallness of businesses (whether incorporated or not), that discourage a business mentality of growth for growth's sake. That would make sense. This ill is not of corporate - or modern - manufacture, as Croesus can attest.~~~
True enough. But it certainly seems that the modern capitalist temperament has played the major role in its cultural acceptance and expansion, to the point where one can reasonably wonder if it doesn't reflect an inherent flaw in the system.
Posted by NM | October 29, 2015 10:07 AM
NM, thanks for the clarifications. By bringing the context more narrowly drawn, say "large corporation", and "industrial/finance capitalism", what you are saying makes more sense.
Well, "modern" in front of capitalism seems to imply an already vicious system, since everyone here accepts that the current system is vicious. I think what you mean to suggest is that the prior-to-current capitalism, say, the capitalism of the 1830s, (or maybe 1760's? or are these what you meant by "modern"?) had that inherent flaw that leads to what we have now. I don't know for sure what the answer is. I suspect the answer lies in this: that EVERY good system and concept for organizing man's work can be abused, can be taken beyond the point of humane purpose, and the fact that Y is an abuse that you can get from X simply can't be held to imply a defect in X of itself. Free will is a condition from which you can get sin, but it isn't a defect. That plays out with all good things.
Posted by Tony | October 29, 2015 11:07 AM
True, Mike. In fact, if there is no basis on which to adjudicate between different polities or tribes, no basis to say "A is just and B is not", there is no reason for one tribe to not simply take what it wants from any tribe it can do that to. Might makes right, for there is no other "right" involved. Bi simply rejects that there is natural law that would be such a basis. He says as much.
He seems to fail to realize that without natural law, human law within a given society is, also, merely "might makes right" just as much. Any natural law that would be a basis on which to adjudicate between different peoples would, also, be a basis on which to determine that a law is unjust and must be altered. Without that, unjust laws are just "the law" which are just like any other. And so, any person who chooses to reject the "premises" of the society in which he finds himself is free to ignore the laws - for there is no deeper law that BINDS HIM TO society's stated laws. And, thus, a person obeys laws out of fear of being punished, not out of any duty. Thus there is no "rule by reason" there is only rule by force. That's all law is, from his starting point. His theory is beastly and monstrous, it makes us into beasts and makes society merely a pseudo-polite jungle, where the real law is eat or be eaten.
Posted by Tony | October 29, 2015 11:19 AM
In short,
1) the property claims pertaining to land are generated via positive laws. It is the positive law that defines the quantum and the mode of labor mixing and land improvement etc etc that is necessary to generate the ownership claim.
2) Positive law of a tribe is honored only inside the tribe and generates no moral obligation outside the tribe. The "inside" is not meant in a geographical sense since it is the very geography of the tribe that is moot and needs to be settled.
3) Thus, a change in the positive laws could unsettle, to any degree, existing landed property.
I note that my (1) has never been replied to and which is really the crux of my argument.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 30, 2015 2:13 AM
The discussion can only proceed fruitfully if you address these points that I have repeatedly made.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 30, 2015 2:25 AM
Mike T,
To be consistent you would need to say that while Hitler was wrong to invade Poland and kill a lot of Poles, once the thing was accomplished, why, he or his successor would legitimately rule Poland.
I do not understand this kind of logic. To me, a legitimate govt that benevolent-it seeks common good.
An illegitimate govt. is malevolent-it repudiates common good.
The Govt may be benevolent towards a sub-group and malevolent towards another sub-group. In that case, the subjects of the Govt malice are justified in treating the Govt as illegitimate.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | October 30, 2015 2:41 AM
~~~I think what you mean to suggest is that the prior-to-current capitalism, say, the capitalism of the 1830s, (or maybe 1760's? or are these what you meant by "modern"?) had that inherent flaw that leads to what we have now. I don't know for sure what the answer is. I suspect the answer lies in this: that EVERY good system and concept for organizing man's work can be abused, can be taken beyond the point of humane purpose, and the fact that Y is an abuse that you can get from X simply can't be held to imply a defect in X of itself~~~
At some point in the history of the West there was an ideological shift that resulted in a change of attitude towards the acquisition of wealth. Avidity in this regard was no longer viewed as suspect -- as someone has put it, the good life became the 'goods' life. In my view this is the inherent flaw: greed, recast as self-interest, was given a green light, and a system evolved which was both based on this shift, and promoted its adoption. It's not that Y is an abuse that comes from X, but that X, being rooted in Y, cannot help but result in the spreading of it.
Posted by NM | October 30, 2015 6:56 AM
You don't argue. You just posit. Give us an argument FOR that #1 thesis and we can debate it.
What hogwash. Nobody here argued that Europeans taking American land away from Indians by conquest was moral. Except you.
Yes you have, by denying what it means.
You don't mean by "natural law" what the rest of humanity means by it, if you could say such a thing. As I explained above, and to which you did not respond at all.
Bedarz, it is clear by now that (a) you do not accept our root premises, (b) you hold contrary root premises, and (c) you do not distinguish between positing a proposition, supporting it with evidence, and proving it. You repeat your premises as if repetition constitutes supporting argument. You have repeatedly mis-attributed to us positions we do not claim or defend. You do not attempt to respond to our arguments either by showing the logic fails or by showing that the premises are wrong - at most you simply repudiate the premises without arguing them. I see no way of making the discussion fruitful until you apply the methods of logic and argument. But I do have to admit you have been polite. Thanks for that.
Posted by Tony | October 30, 2015 9:24 AM
Tony, here's a much better and more direct version of the question I have in mind. It comes from page 21 of Liah Greenfeld's book The Spirit of Capitalism, which I've just begun reading:
"I am asking why the historically exceptional inclination for ever-increasing gain, characteristic of certain individuals in societies which regarded it at best with suspicion, became defined, on the level of the individual, as rational self-interest, constitutive of man's very nature and, on the level of society, as common good and paramount collective interest."
Posted by NM | October 31, 2015 2:07 PM
As I believe Tony has pointed out to you above, a nomadic tribe's relationship with "their territory" is fundamentally different from that of a sovereign nation that has settled the land, put it to work and occupies it as users and owners. Second, Hitler could never have had a lawful claim on Poland because he started with an illicit invasion and then planned to exterminate the entire Polish nation over time. Due to the fact that Hitler never intended to rule the Poles with any eye for the common good, he would never be able to legitimate his rule nor would successors who intended to follow his policies.
Hitler could have exterminated the Poles, colonized the land, and held out for generations until Poland was just a part of Germany as a fact of life. At that point, the German claim to the land would be legitimate.
Posted by Mike T | November 1, 2015 11:37 AM
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | November 1, 2015 10:33 PM
The whole point of settling land is to settle who owns it. If two tribes that don't settle land claim a piece of land, there is nothing about their situation that could be used to determine who "owns it."
Posted by Mike T | November 2, 2015 6:06 AM