There’s an old joke that goes “A teacher was trying to
impress on his students the idea that doing something right the first time pays
off. He declared, ‘A job well done need
never be done again!’ A ‘small, tired
voice from the back of the room’ responds, ‘What about mowing the lawn?’”
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| Small, tired voices. |
Trying to convey the correct understanding of the
institution of private property is a little like that. No matter how many times or ways we state it,
there is always someone who doesn’t really pay attention, and recites the same,
tired arguments all over again without showing any understanding of the issue,
or even what property is.
In response to our latest effort, someone sent us a link to
a 2012 article in U.S. Catholic, “How
Much Do You Really Own?” by Barry Hudock.
Assuming that we were sent the link in an effort to refute CESJ’s
contention that the right to be an owner (the right to property) is a natural
right, that it is the rights of property that are limited and socially
determined, and that this understanding is reflected in Catholic social
teaching, we have to point out that our correspondent made a fundamental mistake: he confused “access” (the right to property) and
“use” (the rights of property), evidently misinterpreting Hudock's article.
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| Louis Kelso 'splaining stuff. |
It is all a question of definition. As we at CESJ understand papal teachings on
private property, they are in full agreement with the legal, social, and
cultural definitions in place for millennia, and on which Louis Kelso relied in
formulating the principles of binary economics.
That is, as we have explained many times, “property” must be construed
in two ways:
One, “access.” Property is the natural right to be an owner
inherent in every single human being. This
is part of human nature, and cannot be taken away without at the same time
taking away someone’s humanity. It is
part of the definition of what it means to be a human being. With life and liberty, the right to be an
owner — the right to property — is at one and the same time the foundation on
which human dignity is established, and the means by which it is maintained. This is the
generic right of dominion, i.e.,
“dominion,” the right to be an owner, is generic
— present in every member of the genus — to the human condition.
Two, “use.” Property is the bundle of socially determined
and necessarily limited rights that define how, in a particular society or set
of circumstances, an owner may use that which he or she owns. In general, no one may use what is owned to
harm him- or herself, other individuals, groups, or the common good as a
whole. Further, while custom, tradition,
and human positive law must define how this bundle of rights is to be
exercised, at no time may such definition nullify the underlying right to be an
owner. This is the universal destination of goods, i.e., the use of all goods must be done in a way that takes other
people and the whole of the social order into account.
Access and use, the right to property and the rights of
property, the generic right of dominion and the universal destination of goods
— however you want to put it — are not mutually exclusive principles, but two
halves of an integrated whole. They
necessarily go together, and one cannot contradict or nullify the other. You would otherwise be claiming that the
Catholic Church contradicts itself and teaches nonsense by violating the first
principle of reason, the “law of (non) contradiction.”