As
Popes Leo XIII and John Paul I well knew (and as Karl Marx summed up),
socialist theory can be stated most succinctly as “the abolition of private
property.” As we saw in the previous posting in this series, that is why Leo XIII declared that widespread capital
ownership is the sure specific for socialism, modernism, and the New Age.
Simply
saying that the pure theory of socialism can be summed up in a short phrase is,
obviously, insufficient. As with all
such declarations, a great deal is left out, and people must extrapolate to get
the broad picture.
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| Karl Marx was not a socialist? |
This
gives socialists, modernists, and New Agers the opening or escape hatch they
need. They will argue endlessly about
those five words. Adherents of the “new
things” will claim that the communism Marx specified is not true socialism,
that socialism doesn’t really abolish private property, etc., so on, so forth. In
other words, they will say whatever comes to hand that allows them to remain
socialists, especially if they don’t want to call themselves socialists.
This
does not, however, change the fact that private property is important for two
reasons. One, private property gives the
owner the right to receive the “fruits of ownership” (control and income),
whether what one owns is labor or capital.
Two, private property is the chief protection of life and liberty and is
thus the principal vehicle for ensuring justice.
One
of the most serious problems with socialism, as well as its offshoots modernism
and the New Age, then, is the fact that no one seems to mention justice and
charity more loudly and more often than socialists, modernists, and New Agers. At the same time, no one seems less in touch than
they with the fundamental understanding of truth, justice, and charity.
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| G.K. Chesterton, a sense of justice. |
Admittedly
the socialists, et al., at least acknowledge
that the sense of justice is inherent in every human being. As John Paul I said in his letter to G.K.
Chesterton (a strong advocate for widespread ownership of capital and fellow
opponent of the “new things”), “The sense of justice that is in every
man, of whatever faith, demands that the good done, the evil suffered, be
rewarded, that the hunger for life innate in all be satisfied.” (Albino Luciani, Illustrissimi: Letters from Pope John Paul I. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1978, 17.)
Socialism
and its offshoots, however, always neglect, ignore, or out-and-out reject a fatal
weakness in their programs, even when they seem to have achieved their greatest
triumphs. That is, changing the
definition of natural rights is not substantially different from abolishing
them outright, thereby trying to change human nature, whatever rhetoric is
employed to convince themselves and others to the contrary.
This
is delusional. Truth that is not true is
not, well, true, any more than
justice that is unjust, or charity that is not charitable are either true
justice or charity. Nothing can both
“be” and “not be” at the same time under the same conditions — that is the
“negative” expression of the first principle of reason, the “law of (non)
contradiction.”
Thus,
as John Paul I said in his letter to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, “An
apparent success, even sensational, is in reality a failure if it is won by
trampling underfoot truth, justice, charity.” (Ibid., 35.) A lie is thereby
embedded at the most fundamental level of one’s thought and actions despite the
fact that, as John Paul I stressed a number of times, the end does not justify
the means.
Obviously, then, whether you call it socialism, communism,
or anything else, if something remains inherently socialist and changes or
abolishes what it means for something to be a natural right, it is not
compatible with either natural or supernatural law — which assumes the validity
of natural law as a necessary precondition.
This is because it is based on a “concept of
society . . . utterly foreign to Christian truth.” (Quadragesimo Anno, § 117.)
The abolition of private property is simply the most
obvious manifestation of socialism’s war on truth. That is the case whether that abolition
consists of outright confiscation, or merely allowing private ownership as long
as the community finds it useful or expedient, or someone with a bigger club
comes along and takes it.
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| Leo XIII: private property is important. |
But
why is private property so important, and why did Leo XIII stress so much that
capital must be widely owned as the essential counter to the “new things” of
the modern world? To understand that, we
have to understand what property is.
First
of all, property is not the thing owned.
It is a right or, more accurately, a bundle of rights that define an
owner’s relationship to other persons with respect to the thing owned.
To
oversimplify somewhat, there are two “parts” to private property or to any
other natural right, for that matter.
First and foremost, there is the right to be an owner inherent in human
nature itself. This “part” of property
is absolute and inalienable.
It
is important to note that, contrary to assertions of the socialists, the right
to be an owner — the right to
property — is not vested in humanity,
but in humans, not in mankind, but in men (meaning “member of the human species,” which includes but is
not limited to adult human males). To maintain
otherwise is to make a tremendous error.
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| Durkheim: religion is social, not spiritual. |
To
say that humanity in general, the abstraction of the collective created by
human beings, has rights that actual flesh and blood human beings created by
God do not have is (not to mince words) ludicrous. That is just a way of saying that collective
man is greater than God . . . which not surprisingly is precisely what the New
Age guru David Émile Durkheim claimed when he said that religion is a social,
not a spiritual phenomenon, and that “God” is a “divinized society.”
That
is the first “part” of property and is necessarily a little vague other than to
say that every human being has the right to be an owner. As Dr. Heinrich Rommen said of the natural
law, himself using the example of private property, it gives general norms
only, not specifics. The universal
prohibition against theft, e.g.,
“Thou shalt not steal,” as Rommen said, necessarily implies that private property
pertains to natural law. It says nothing
about any specific social or economic application of that principle, whether
capitalism or the Distributist State.
Reason
does tell us, however, that whatever the particular arrangement of society or
the economy, the exercise of a natural right must never be defined in any way
that nullifies the right itself. As Pope
Pius XII explained,
The dignity of the human person then, speaking generally,
requires as a natural foundation of life the right to the use of the goods of
the earth. To this right corresponds the fundamental obligation to grant
private ownership of property, if possible, to all. Positive legislation,
regulating private ownership may change and more or less restrict its use. But
if legislation is to play its part in the pacification of the community, it
must see to it that the worker, who is or will be the father of a family, is
not condemned to an economic dependence and servitude which is irreconcilable
with his rights as a person. (Evangelii Praecones, § 52.)
This,
then, is the second “part” of property and all other rights: defining how a
right may be exercised within the limits of the natural law and the bounds of
the common good. What often baffles
socialists and capitalists alike (albeit in different ways) is the fact that
“absoluteness” and “limitedness” are inextricably joined in the same thing at
the same time, and that both socialists and capitalists rely on the combination
to arrive at their respective positions:
·
The
socialist believes that only the collective (whether in the person of the State
or any other form) has the absolute right to own. The right to be an owner, what can be owned,
and how it can be used, are all limited.
·
The
extreme capitalist (we did not specify “extreme socialist” because the
socialist position is itself inherently extreme) believes that the right to be
an owner is absolute, but so is the right to own whatever you want — up to and
including other human beings — as well as what you can do with what you own . .
. but the number of people that may exercise these absolute rights to and of
property is very limited.
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| John Paul I: socialism contrary to nature. |
Here,
by the way, is another reason why the Catholic Church condemns socialism
outright, but “only” condemns the abuses inherent in capitalism. That is a fine point, true, but theology and
philosophy are filled with such hairsplitting and fine distinctions that end up
being very large differences.
This
is because socialism abolishes private property as a natural right altogether. Forms of socialism might recognize private
property as a statutory or civil right of some kind, but it is not considered
inalienable. If the need is deemed great
enough, whether individual or social, the right to and the rights of private
property can be rescinded. Socialism may
on occasion bring more material benefits to some groups than capitalism for a
time, but it only does so by denying human nature itself, and often only works
for a short time before its inherent weaknesses begin appearing.
Capitalism
does not abolish private property altogether, only for most people. Capitalists often pay lip service to the
universal and inalienable right to be an owner, but their acknowledgement of
the universal right to be an owner is voided in practice.
Thus,
where socialism abolishes natural law (or claims to), capitalism distorts natural
law all out of recognition, to the point where Marx’s claim that the
capitalists have already abolished private property has the ring of truth — but
only the ring, sound without substance.
Capitalism can and often does impose horrifying conditions on others,
not by denying human nature across the board, but by limiting full humanity and
participation in the common good to a few.
#30#
