[205] Deuteronomy, xxvii. 17. Cf. Genesis, xxxi. 44 sqq.
[206] Plato, Leges, viii. 843: “… ἢ σμικρὸν λίθον ὁρίζοντα φιλαίν καὶ ἔχθραν ἔνορκον παρὰ θεῶν.”
[207] Xenophon, Anabasis, v. 3. 13. Hermann, Disputatio de terminis apud Græcos, p. 11.
[208] Rei agrariæ auctores legesque variæ, edited by Gœsius, p. 258 sq.
[209] Siculus Flaccus, ‘De conditionibus agrorum,’ in Rei agrariæ auctores, p. 5.
[210] Dibbs, ‘Beating the Bounds,’ in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, N.S. xx. (1853) 49 sqq. Trumbull, The Threshold Covenant, p. 174 sq.
The practice of cursing a thief may possibly even be at the bottom of the belief of some savages that such a person will be punished after death. In a following chapter we shall notice instances where the efficacy of a curse is supposed to extend beyond the grave. But we shall also find other reasons for savage doctrines of retribution in the world to come. In the cases referred to above it is not expressly said that the post mortem punishment of the thief is inflicted by a god.
I have here only dealt with rules relating to property which have been recognised by custom or law. But the established principles of ownership have not always been admitted to be just: in the civilised countries of the West they have called forth an opposition which is rapidly gaining in strength. The limited scope of the present work does not allow me to attempt a detailed account of this movement, with its variety of arguments and its multitudinous schemes of reform. The main reasons for complaint are:—first, that our actual law of property does not ensure to every labourer the whole produce of his labour; secondly, that it does not provide for every want a satisfaction proportionate to the available means. However much the opinions of the different schools of socialists may vary, every socialist organisation of property aims either at guaranteeing to the working-classes the entire product of their industry, or at reducing to just proportions individual needs and existing means of satisfaction by recognising the claim of every member of society to the commodities and services necessary to support existence, in preference to the satisfaction of the less pressing wants of others.[211] These aims are greatly hampered by the present system, in which land and capital are the property of private individuals freely struggling for increase of wealth, and especially by the legally recognised existence of unearned income[212]—the “rent” of the Saint-Simonians, the “surplus value” (Mehrwert) of Thompson and Marx,—for which the favoured recipient returns no personal equivalent to society, and which he is able to pocket because the wage labourer receives in money-wages less than the full value of the produce of his work. We have here a conflict between different principles of acquisition. Both the rule that the owner of a thing also owns what results from it, and the law of inheritance, leading as they do to unearned income, are intruding upon the principle of labour as a source of property. They, moreover, interfere with the right to subsistence, which in some measure, though often insufficiently, is recognised in all human societies;[213] for, as Marx observed, the accumulation of wealth at one pole means the accumulation of misery at the opposite pole.[214] This conflict between different principles or rights, all of which have deep foundations in human nature and the conditions of social life, has been brought about by certain facts inherent in progressive civilisation. In simple societies the unearned income is small, because no fortunes exist, and the wants of those who are incapable of earning their own livelihood are provided for by the system of mutual aid. Progress in culture, on the other hand, has been accompanied by a more unequal distribution of wealth, and also by a decrease of social solidarity as a result of the increase and greater differentiation of the social unit. The unearned income has grown larger, the disproportion between the returns on capital and the reward for labour has in many cases become enormous, and hand in hand with the opulence of some goes the destitution of others. At the same time the injustice of prerogatives based on birth or fortune is keenly felt, the dignity of labour is recognised, and the working-classes are every day becoming more conscious both of their power and their rights. All this has resulted in a strong and wide-spread conviction that the actual law of property greatly differs from the ideal law. But much struggle will no doubt be required to bring them in harmony with one another. The present rights of property are supported not only by personal interests, but also by a deep-rooted feeling, trained in the school of tradition, that it would be iniquitous of the State to interfere with individuals’ long-established claims to use at their pleasure the objects of wealth. The new scheme, on the other hand, derives strength from the fact that it aims at rectifying legal rights in accordance with existing needs, and that it lays stress on a method of acquisition which more than any other seems to appeal to the natural sense of justice in man. We are utterly unable to foresee in detail the issue of this struggle. But that the law of property will sooner or later undergo a radical change must be obvious to every one who realises that, though ideas of right and wrong may for some time outlive the conditions from which they sprang, they cannot do so for ever.
[211] See Menger, Right to the whole Produce of Labour, p. 5 sqq., Goos, op. cit. ii. 61.
[212] The term “unearned income” (arbeitsloses Einkommen) has been proposed by Menger (op. cit. p. 3).