Property

1. “Thou shalt not steal.” Presumably, stealing is something like intentionally taking someone else’s property without their permission. Whether and under what conditions stealing is wrong, and what exactly counts as stealing, depends on what property is, how it is acquired and how it is maintained. The government takes from me a certain percentage of my paycheck. In doing that, is the government stealing from me? If so, is it wrong for the government to do that—is it perhaps a case of theft that is not wrong? Or is it rather that the government is not stealing from me, because they have a right to declare something in my possession not my property? What about a person who needs food to survive and takes it from somebody who has more than enough.

2. So let us examine the notion of property. We tend to think about certain objects that they belong to certain people. This piece of paper is mine. This computer is the University’s. But if I give you this piece of paper, and it becomes yours it surely does not change in itself, even though it is no longer mine. At least it doesn’t change the way in which if I dip it in red ink it changes color. Or so it seems. Is there some invisible physical property, like electric charge but even less empirically testable, that the piece of paper has when it is mine? Surely not! So when I say that this is mine, what am I in fact saying? Am I stating an intrinsic fact about me, about the way I treat this piece of paper say, so that when the piece of paper ceases to be mine, it is I that change, not the piece of paper? But surely something can start and stop being mine without me changing. Suppose I turn around and you destroy the piece of paper. It is no longer mine since it no longer exists. But I am no different for this change. Suppose when I am turned around you take a piece of paper that is yours and put it on the table with a note beside it that says: “This is now yours.” That piece of paper which was yours has become mine, even though neither I nor the piece of paper has changed. So wherein does the mineness consist? Is it perhaps some spiritual quality, the way that Catholics think being baptized is a spiritual quality—it is invisible, but to be baptized is to be really changed? It does not seem that mineness is a spiritual quality, though, does it?

3. First Aquinas argues that the less perfect is there for the more perfect, and so humankind in general owns the material stuff around us.

4. Thomas Aquinas thinks that as far as natural law goes, everything is in common. Natural law does not prescribe what belongs to whom. But there are good reasons why some things should fall under the dominion of some specific people—recall how natural law is not quite enough.

Human beings are better at working for themselves. People “shirk the labor and leave to another that which concerns the community, as happens where there is a great number of servants.”
It is more orderly if people have their own stuff to look after.
Things are more peaceable if there are rules. If you have everything in common with others, then there will be fights as to who gets to use what when.

However, Aquinas makes a distinction. What belongs to each person is “to procure and dispense” goods. Each person has a dominion over the goods—they get to buy and sell them. Moreover, they get to decide how to take care of the goods. But nonetheless, he insists, the use of the goods is directed at the community—each person should use the goods she has for the benefit of others when they need it.

Suppose we have a maritime community where everyone has a responsible to go on a rescue mission when there is someone lost at sea. Now, each family has its own boat. It is up to them to buy their boat, sell their boat if need be, take care of it. But if the community needs to go and rescue someone lost at sea, then they must make use of the boat for the good of the community. And to deliberately let one’s boat rot would be wrong because it would endanger the use to be made of it. On the other hand, if all the boats were in common, then they wouldn’t be looked after very well. People wouldn’t be working very hard to improve the boats. And when one person wanted to go fishing in the boat, there would be fights as to which boat he could use. And the good of the community would suffer, because when it was time to go rescue someone lost at sea, the boats would be in poorer condition. So it makes sense for the use to be common but the procuring and dispensing to be individual.

Note that the first and last of Aquinas’ three reasons seem grounded in human moral frailty. But the middle one would seem to apply even if everyone was morally perfect.

So humans are such that they need to have a division into private property. But this division is not itself a part of nature. (Why not? Well, maybe because there are many ways that the goods could be divided up, and morality doesn’t specify one way as objectively the right one. For instance, you might have a law on which land can be owned but cannot be sold—it must be inherited by one’s children. Or you might have a different law. Which law there is affects what exactly it means to say that the land is yours. But it doesn’t seem that one law is innately the right one to have and another the wrong one—here it seems there are many ways that may be right.) Rather, it is a matter of “positive law”, i.e., law added on by human beings—the human law that legislatures, authorities of various sorts, and even human conventions promulgate. Recall, of course, that Aquinas thinks that we morally ought to obey positive law, unless it is unjust.

So on Aquinas’ view, mineness is a legal status. When I say that this sheet of paper is mine, I am not ascribing some spiritual quality to the paper or to myself, but saying that the laws of the land—“positive law”—are such as to give me dominion over the piece of paper.

This also explains why we ought to use the property to benefit the community. Positive law according to Aquinas is legislation by an authority for the common good. Thus, the institution of property is all directed to the common good. Moreover, Aquinas gives us an argument that just about every community should enact property laws.

5. Theft is secret--it violates the will through ignorance. Robbery violates the will through violence. These are two ways of failing to respect someone else's will: in the one case, to take something without the other's active opposition and in the other against the other's active opposition.

6. The law regulates property. It can take stuff from one person and give to another. It can say that one loses ownership in a treasure that's been lost for a long time. (What do we do if we find stuff whose owner can't be found? We check the law.)

7. The basic need to support human life with property remains. If you need something to live, and a rich person doesn't give it to you, well, the ownership of the item is there for the good of the community, and if the rich person holds it back from those who need it, she is the thief, since she holds back that whose use belongs to the community. And the community exists in large part to protect the lives of the members. When it is clear who is the one urgently in need, that is the one for whose benefit the thing should be used. And this person can just take the item. And it's not stealing.

So, murder is a sin primarily against an individual. Adultery against the family unit. And theft against society.

8. Locke thinks that we have a natural ownership over our bodies and our labor. Our labor is ours. When there is something like land which is ownerless—“commons” is the term used here, held in common by the “commoners”—if we have mixed in our labor, it becomes ours, as long as some conditions are satisfied: (a) we are able to make use of it all without spoilage, (b) we leave enough for others to have as good a chunk as we ourselves have so nobody loses by what we did (this is easy if the world is vast and people are few). And after it is ours, whatever improvements we make to it by mixing in our labor are also ours. The technical term for taking this bit of the commons is “enclosure”—I take some of it and enclose it as mine. After all, what is wrong or unfair about this? Moreover, cultivated land is more productive, so humankind is benefited by enclosure. (Why is it necessary that it be privately enclosed?)

It is ours not because of law, not because of any agreement with others—it is simply ours because our labor is ours.

Now, people’s property is going to remain relatively small if this is all that’s going on. What would be the use of having a thousand acres if you’re going to have to eat all the stuff you grow, or trade it for food that other people grow?

But likewise, it does no harm to anyone, and is in no way unfair, if you improve your land and swap the food you grow for gold. You can grow more and more stuff, and swap it all for gold. The more acres you have, the more gold you can get. But so what? As long as gold is just gold, you’re not going to bother. You might like how shiny it is, but the amount you’ll want for yourself and your family to wear will be relatively small.

However, if society comes up with a contract where gold has a value as a medium of exchange—if society agrees to use gold as currency—then it makes sense to accumulate more. But only then. Thus the accumulation of wealth beyond the relatively small chunk of land that it would make sense to have if you just wanted stuff for immediate consumption depends on a contract, explicit or implicit, with other people to use gold—or some other durable stuff—as currency. Consequently, the possibility of significant inequalities of wealth, and significant amounts of private property, are justified through coming from a social agreement. Without the agreement, money would be useless.

9. So, according to Locke, it does no harm to anyone, and is in no way unfair, if you improve your land and swap the food you grow for gold. You can grow more and more stuff, and swap it all for gold. The more acres you have, the more gold you can get. But so what? As long as gold is just gold, you’re not going to bother. You might like how shiny it is, but the amount you’ll want for yourself and your family to wear will be relatively small.