Those very men of the non-possessing classes who through property are dependent on the possessing classes must do police duty, serve in the army, pay the taxes out of which police and army are kept up, and in these and other ways either themselves exercise or at least support the physical force by which property is upheld.[1101] "If there did not exist these men who are ready to discipline or kill any one whatever at the word of command, no one would dare assert what the non-laboring landlords now do all of them so confidently assert,—that the soil which surrounds the peasants who die off for lack of land is the property of a man who does not work on it";[1102] it would "not come into the head of the lord of the manor to take from the peasants a forest that has grown up under their eyes";[1103] nor would any one say "that the stores of grain accumulated by fraud in the midst of a starving population must remain unscathed that the merchant may have his profit."[1104]
II. Love requires that a distribution based solely on its commandments take the place of property. "The impossibility of continuing the life that has hitherto been led, and the necessity of determining new forms of life,"[1105] relate to the distribution of goods as well as to other things. "The abolition of property,"[1106] and its replacement by a new kind of distribution of goods, is one of the "questions now in order."[1107]
According to the law of love, every man who works as he has strength should have so much—but only so much—as he needs.
1. That every man who works as he has strength should have so much as he needs and no more is a corollary from two precepts which follow from the law of love.
The first of these precepts says, Man shall "ask no work from others, but himself devote his whole life to work for others. 'Man lives not to be served but to serve.'"[1108] Therefore, in particular, he is not to keep accounts with others about his work, or think that he "has the more of a living to claim, the greater or more useful his quantum of work done is."[1109] Following this precept provides every man with what he needs. This is true primarily of the healthy adult. "If a man works, his work feeds him. If another makes use of this man's work for himself, he will feed him for the very reason that he is making use of his work."[1110] Man assures himself of a living "not by taking it away from others, but by making himself useful and necessary to others. The more necessary he is to others, the more assured is his existence."[1111] But the following of the precept to serve others also provides the sick, the aged, and children with their living. Men "do not stop feeding an animal when it falls sick; they do not even kill an old horse, but give it work appropriate to its strength; they bring up whole families of little lambs, pigs, and puppies, because they expect benefit from them. How, then, should they not support the sick man who is necessary to them? How should they not find appropriate work for old and young, and bring up human beings who will in turn work for them?"[1112]
The second precept that follows from the law of love, and of which a corollary is that every man who works as he has strength should have as much as he needs and no more, bids us "Share what you have with the poor; gather no riches."[1113] "To the question of his hearers, what they were to do, John the Baptist gave the short, clear, simple answer, 'He who hath two coats, let him share with him who hath none; and he who hath food let him do likewise' (Luke 3.10-11). And Christ too made the same declaration several times, only still more unambiguously and clearly. He said, 'Blessed are the poor, woe to the rich.' He said that one could not serve God and Mammon at once. He not only forbade his disciples to take money, but also to have two garments. He told the rich young man that because he was rich he could not enter into the Kingdom of God, and that a camel should sooner go through a needle's eye than a rich man come into heaven. He said that he who did not forsake everything—house, children, lands—to follow him could not be his disciple. He told his hearers the parable of the rich man who did nothing bad except that he—like our rich men—clothed himself in costly apparel and fed himself on savory food and drink, and who plunged his soul into perdition by this alone, and of the poor Lazarus who did nothing good and who entered into the Kingdom of Heaven only because he was a beggar."[1114]
2. But what form can such a distribution of goods take in detail?
This is best shown us by "the Russian colonists. These colonists arrive on the soil, settle, and begin to work, and no one of them takes it into his head that any one who does not begin to make use of the land can have any right to it; on the contrary, the colonists regard the ground a priori as common property, and consider it altogether justifiable that everybody plows and reaps where he chooses. For working the fields, for starting gardens, and for building houses, they procure implements; and here too it does not suggest itself to them that these could of themselves produce any income—on the contrary, the colonists look upon any profit from the means of labor, any interest for grain lent, etc., as an injustice. They work on masterless land with their own means or with means borrowed free of interest, either each for himself or all together on joint account."[1115]
"In talking of such fellowship I am not setting forth fancies, but only describing what has gone on at all times, what is even at present taking place not only among the Russian colonists but everywhere where man's natural condition is not yet deranged by some circumstances or other. I am describing what seems to everybody natural and rational. The men settle on the soil and go each one to work, make their implements, and do their labor. If they think it advantageous to work jointly, they form a labor company."[1116] But, in individual business as well as in collective industry, "neither the water nor the ground nor the garments nor the plow can belong to anybody save him who drinks the water, wears the garments, and uses the plow; for all these things are necessary only to him who puts them to use."[1117] One can call "only his labor his own";[1118] by it one has as much as one needs.[1119]
