Given that Fulton Sheen’s ‘beatification” is tomorrow, we thought we would take the opportunity to plug the “Just Third Way Edition” of Freedom Under God (1940), a “long lost” book by the new beatus. As a caveat, of course, we state for the record that CESJ is not a Catholic or religious organization, the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism is a universal, or “catholic-with-a-small-c” movement based on principles of natural law common to every human person, and Freedom Under God can be read by anyone of any faith or philosophy (or none) with profit.
So, we decided to modify the introduction we wrote to the Just Third Way Edition to explain why it would be a good idea to celebrate Fulton Sheen’s contribution to economic justice for all and post it for the next five weeks.
Foreword to Fulton Sheen’s
Freedom Under God
It now remains to prove that private property is the economic guarantee of human liberty. The basis of freedom on the inside of man, we know — it is his rational soul. But has freedom any support on the outside of man? We would not have to inquire into the external guarantee of our freedom, if we were purely spiritual. But inasmuch as we are composed of body and soul, matter and spirit, we need some visible and external sign of our invisible and spiritual freedom.
— Fulton J. Sheen, Freedom Under God
The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
— Karl Marx. The Communist Manifesto
Why does the world need the republication of a “long lost” book on the subject of “capitalism versus communism,” even by the renowned Catholic “televangelist,” Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen? Hasn’t communism been defeated with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and with China becoming more capitalist as its economy expands? Isn’t the world becoming freer and more democratic with every passing day?
Why? Because at no time in living memory has there been less true human freedom. Even the idea of freedom has decayed to the point where it is effectively meaningless for most people.
In former ages individuals and groups were enslaved. There was, however, generally a clear legal distinction between those who were free, and those who were unfree. This distinction has been lost. Today the proletarian (propertyless) condition is the norm for most people — and lack of capital ownership is tantamount to slavery.
William Cobbett
As Sheen noted in this book in support of his thesis on
the necessity of true freedom, “Power follows property, and they who own things to a
great extent own persons.” (Freedom Under
God, 38.) If you own capital, you are free. If you do not
own capital, even if you are legally free,
you are to all intents and purposes a slave. As Willaim Cobbett said two
centuries ago, “Freedom is not an empty sound; it is not an abstract idea; it
is not a thing that nobody can feel. It means, — and it means nothing else, —
the full and quiet enjoyment of your own property. If you have not this, if this
be not well secured to you, you may call yourself what you will, but you are a
slave.” (William Cobbett, A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland
(1827), § 456.) As Sheen explains,
Once you concentrate property in the hands of the few, you create slaves; when you decentralize it, you restore liberty. The objection of the Church to slavery is not that the slaves are poor. Slaves need not all be poor. . . . The Catholic approach is quite different. It starts with the fact that no material thing, not even the whole world, shall be allowed to interfere with the right of a person to attain his ultimate end by the exercise of his free will. (Freedom Under God, 39.)
Different religions and philosophies may disagree on why people should be free. They often differ on how this can be accomplished. They even argue about what “freedom” means, as Sheen makes clear in this book. The goal itself, however, is unquestioned.
The Importance of Private Property
To understand why private property is essential to freedom, we need to know what “property” is. “Property” is not the
thing owned. Property is, rather, the natural right to be an owner, and the
socially determined bundle of rights that limit and define how an owner may
exercise what is owned within a social context. Property means the right to
control what is owned, and enjoyment of the fruits of
ownership.
Karl Marx
The universal prohibition against theft (e.g., “Thou shalt not steal”) implies private property is a fundamental human right, however much understanding of it may be distorted. Even Marxist communism unconsciously acknowledges the validity of private property by asserting that “surplus value” is stolen from workers and consumers. (Marx did not invent the term “surplus value,” but he developed it in Chapter 8 of Das Kapital (1867).) If the workers and consumers did not have private property in “surplus value,” how could it be wrong for the capitalists to take it?
That is why we can say no one should be denied the right to own, and what is owned is, in human terms, owned individually or jointly “against” everyone else. What someone owns ordinarily cannot be taken without the free consent of the owner(s). As John Locke commented, “what property have I in that, which another may by right take, when he pleases, to himself?” (John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, § 140.)
No one, however, may have absolute or unlimited use (exercise) of what is owned. Nor is it expedient that everything be privately owned. For example, while in theory there is nothing that cannot be privately owned, in practice most people would agree that atomic weapons (if they should even exist at all) are not appropriate for private ownership.
Thus, in any discussion of private property, it is critical to realize that while the right to own is inalienable and inherent in each human person, no one can use what is owned to harm others or society (the common good) as a whole. Neither can anyone’s right to be an owner, or what is owned, be used in any way that inhibits or prevents others from becoming owners or using what they own. This is a matter of prudence, social necessity, and plain common sense.
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