Sunday, August 31, 2008

The Right to Property

The ChesterBelloc Mandate: Belloc Speaks - The Catholic Church and the Principle of Private Property/1

1. The right to property in material things is a moral right, attaching not only to the community, but also to private corporations, .i.e., corporations other than the community, to families, and to individuals.

2. This right extends not only over objects consumed in use, but also over objects consumed in production, and over land. It does not attach to particular categories of things. Its boundaries may vary with varying customs and traditions. But its presence as a normal institution of human society is essential to the health of that society.

3. Like every other right, this right stands in a certain scale of proportion to the rest. It may be suspended for the service of a greater right; it must not be suspended for the service of a lesser.

4. Finally, this function of property, like all other human attributes, is distorted when it is defined in isolation. It must be taken in with the mass of all other human functions, and is subject, as is every one of them, to the general modifications imposed by the generalities of human existence.
It is not clear from the post what the source of this excerpt (?) is.

What Belloc has to say about the 'right to property' is something to think about, when it comes time to talk about subjective rights--considerations like this show that 'right' is not always something proper to justice. Right may be associated instead with charity or legal justice, and this may be problematic, if one is inconsistent (e.g. not accepting a full understanding of the common good but using this sort of rights talk nonetheless).

Is there more to the right to property than dominium?

Can we say that law is mean to promote virtuous human agency, and laws that frustrate the development of virtue or present obstacles to it are unjust? (And with respect to individual human action, the principle of subsidiarity does not properly apply, even if some may appeal to it in order to attack some legislation as being paternalistic or statist?)

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