As we saw in theprevious posting on this subject, the idea that labor, whether by itself or “enhanced”
by capital, is responsible for all production cause a few problems with
consistency or even common sense. A
large measure of this is due to the fact that common sense and natural law both
support the right of an owner to the fruits of ownership: income and
control. Capitalists and socialists both
agree on that. The only argument relates
to what can legitimately be owned and what is productive — and that is a
problem.
Socialist theory
holds that private property in labor is natural because labor cannot be
separated from human beings. Private
property in capital, however, is not natural because it can be separated from
human beings.
A contradiction
immediately appears, however. If
ownership of capital is not natural because capital can be separated from human
beings, then ownership of anything produced, whether by labor or by capital, is
by the same token also not natural.
Various theories
were developed to get around this contradiction, the most common being that
private property means something different depending on whether it relates to ownership
of labor, or ownership of capital.
Private property in labor is fundamentally different from private
property in capital because ownership of labor is a natural right, while
ownership of capital is not, properly speaking, a right at all.
This is what is
called in logic circulus in probando,
“circular reasoning,” as the premise and the conclusion are identical, i.e., “A is B because B is A” —
“Property in capital is different from property in labor because property in
labor is different from property in capital.”
In socialist
theory, then, people therefore have the right to own that which labor produces,
but not that which capital produces. The
former is a right by nature, the latter is a social convention allowed for the
sake of expedience until the Kingdom of God on Earth can be established. (Socialism
is not consistent on this point. A
principle of social credit is that technology may be privately owned, but what
technology produces belongs to everybody.)
This theory
violates the first principle of reason as expressed in both the law of
contradiction and the law of identity.
The law of contradiction — that nothing can both “be” and “not be” at
the same time under the same conditions — is violated by asserting that the
right to be an owner both is, and is not, a natural right.
The law of
identity — that which is true is as true and is true in the same way as
everything else that is true — is violated by asserting that “ownership” means
something fundamentally different depending on what is owned. A natural right is made conditional, which
means it is not a natural right.
 |
| Walter Bagehot |
Because in
Catholic belief God is the natural law, modernism is an essential adjunct to
socialism. To make socialism plausible,
the definition of God must be changed from the Supreme Being and Creator, to an
inferior created being, and the natural law shifted from something discerned by
reason, to something accepted on faith.
Compared to the
ingenious justifications for socialism, that for capitalism is almost
trite. Where socialism eliminates the
natural law, using modernism to redefine or abolish God, capitalism leaves God
alone, sometimes forgetting Him altogether.
Capitalism contents itself with distorting the natural law by limiting its
applicability to what the English economist and political theorist Walter
Bagehot (1826-1877) called “a chosen
people.” (Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution. Portland,
Oregon: Sussex Academic Press, 1997, 17.)
In common with
the popes and natural law advocates through the ages, Kelso realized that the
only way to make the economy work for everyone is to make it possible for
everyone who consumes to produce what he consumes, and for everyone who
produces to consume what he produces — Say’s Law of Markets, named for Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832), who
was not the first to state this “law,” but gave it its best expression in his
refutation of the theories of Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834),
author of An Essay on the Principle of Population
(1798). See “Letter Number 1,”
Jean-Baptiste Say, Letters to Mr. Malthus. London: Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1821. In this way consumption (demand) would be in
balance with production (supply), because production (supply) would equal
income (demand).
Also in common
with the popes, Kelso concluded — given that advancing technology is displacing
human labor from production — that the way to make everyone productive is to
make it possible for “as many as possible of the people to become owners” of
capital. (Rerum Novarum, § 46.) The only question was how.
As we shall see
in the next posting on this subject, he answer lay in the American experience.
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