by Michael Greaney

Created on: December 22, 2009

In his 1848 "The Communist Manifesto," Karl Marx gave what is still the best definition of socialism:  "The abolition of private property."  This is clear, straightforward ... and completely incomprehensible to most people today.

The problem is that few people today understand two concepts essential to develop a sound approach to how people come together and interact in society: 1) the nature of humanity itself, and 2) the nature of private property.  Both concepts are deceptively simple, and have consequently been oversimplified.

Most important, of course, is to understand our own nature before we can understand such things as political or economic systems, especially socialism.  These institutions (all institutions, in fact, especially the State itself) exist only to assist the human person in becoming more fully human.  Man is not made for the State, the State was made for, and by man.

Humanity is an extremely unusual creature in nature.  We are both individuals, with individual rights, duties, responsibilities, and so on, and social, with rights, duties, and obligations to society as a whole.  Aristotle coined a new term to describe this evidently unique combination of individual and social natures in the human person.  He said we are "political."  That is, each human being has a full set of natural rights.  Due to the nature of rights, however, our natural rights can only be exercised in society, the "polis"; a "right" is the power to do or not do something in relation to others, so "others" (society) are necessary if "rights" are to have any meaning.  Every human being has these rights absolutely; as America's Founding Fathers declared, they are "inalienable."

What confuses people, however, is that having a right absolutely does not mean that you have absolute exercise of a right.  One of the tasks laid on society is to define the exercise of our rights so that we do not harm ourselves, other individuals or groups, or the common good as a whole.  This task is all the more difficult in that society may not define the exercise of a right in any way that negates the right itself.

For example, all human beings have the natural right to be owners of the means of production.  The universal prohibition against theft found in the natural moral law common to all religions reinforces this right and confirms it.  The State may not, therefore, make any law that either abolishes private property

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>