Chapter V.
Community Of Goods And Private Property. Capital—Property.
Section LXXVII.
Capital.—Importance Of Private Property.
As human labor can attain its full development, only on the supposition that personal freedom is allowed to develop to its full economic importance and dimensions, so capital can develop its full productive power only on the supposition of the existence of the freedom of personal property. Who would save anything, that is, give up present enjoyment, if he were not certain of future enjoyment?[468] The legitimacy of private property has, since the time of Locke,[469] been based, by the greater number of political economists, on the right inherent in every workman, either to consume or to save the product of his labor. But it should not be forgotten here that, at least in the higher stages of the economy of a nation, scarcely any work or saving is possible without the coöperation of society. And society must be conceived not only as the sum-total of the now living individuals that compose it, but in its entire [pg 236] past, present and future, and also as being led and borne onward by eternal ideas and wants.[470]