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— How to cite this paper: Martin Rhonheimer, The Universal Destina- tion of Goods and Private Property: Is the right to private property a "second-tier" natural right? Austrian Institute Paper No. 38-EN (2021) Austrian Institute Paper T he right to private property, says the encyclical Fratelli tutti, is a mere "sec- ondary" natural right, "derived from the principle of the universal destination of created goods." It should therefore not "dis- place primary and overriding rights” (no. 120). Pope Francis refers especially to John Paul II and some of the Fathers of the Church, who held that "if one person lacks what is nec- essary to live with dignity it is because another person is detaining it" (no. 119). What was the context of this ancient Christian conception? What did the tradition mean by "secondary natural rights”? Finally, has the Church's social doctrine since Rerum novarum understood the derivation of the right to private property from the principle of the universal destination of goods as implying a relativization of the right to private property in favor of a superior right of the community? The Ancient Roman Economy: A Zero-Sum Game Ai Martin Rhonheimer The Universal Destination of Goods and Private Property: Is the right to private property only a "second-tier" natural right? The principle of the universal destination of created goods is unchallenged as a fundamen- tal principle of Catholic social teaching. Its roots are found in the ancient Greek myth of AUSTRIAN INSTITUTE ECONOMICS & SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY No. 38-EN / 2021 an original Golden Age. This narrative entered Christian theology through the influence of the Stoa. Thus, in his famous 90th letter to Lucil- ius, Seneca reports of a time of the "carefree possession of the commonwealth," in which one was "concerned for one's neighbor as one- self." In this “most happily ordered world," however, greed seeped in. Possessive accumu- lation of property by a few was the cause of the poverty of all others; that is to say, it was a zero-sum game. This was the Stoic narrative of the economically decadent state of the con- temporary world, and it is still the basis of all criticism of private property today. The most important transmitter of this narra- tive was Cicero, who probably knew it from lectures by the Stoic philosopher Poseidonius of Rhodes, but in no way was it used as a nar- rative against private property. In De Officiis (1, 7) he speaks of the doctrine of the Stoics, "what came into existence on Earth" is "to- gether for the benefit of humankind.” Even if "by nature there is no private property," Cic- ero said, it has nevertheless come into being in the course of time through war and the result- ing power or through laws, treaties, agree- ment and lot; whoever does not respect it, "will violate the legal foundation of the human community." However, he said, in the use of Austrian Institute of Economics and Social Philosophy Möllwaldplatz 5/1 1040 Wien - Austria www.austrian-institute.org | [email protected] Ai private property, each "should follow nature as a guide, focusing on the common benefit." Necessary Contextualization of the Ancient Christian Criticism of Wealth | This was a nuanced position that was culti- vated by the ethos of the Roman nobility. After all, the Roman plebians—the large majority of citizens were dependent for their survival on regular, gigantic grain imports financed by the rich. Donating for the good of the people was understood as a civic duty of the rich, but it was also a matter of survival for a system based on power and patronage, which at the same time-less so in the East than in the Ro- man West—despised profit-making and trade while caught in a chronic economic downward spiral. In this system, one could only be- come and remain-truly rich at the expense of others. The rich were thus all the more ea- ger to satisfy the people with bread and cir- cuses. Clear traces of all this are present in the early Christian critique of the rich and the associ- ated property ethic. Late antique Christian thinking about wealth and property was, as Peter Brown points out in his monumental work Through the Eye of a Needle (2012), the idea of encouraging the rich to do what they had always done. However, now it was no longer out of patriotic civic duty, but to leave their wealth to the Church, who instead were now caring for the poor. In this way they would acquire treasure in heaven and at the same time be protected from the moral dan- gers of wealth. Austrian Institute Paper No. 38-EN (2021) The first church leader to preach and practice this was a wealthy descendant of a Roman sen- atorial family named Ambrose, first a prefect in the service of the emperor, then bishop of Milan in 374. It was also Ambrose-with ref- erence to his role model Cicero-in his work also titled De Officiis, who praised the "favorite view" of the Stoics" that all products on earth are created for the use of men and for their general benefit, and are therefore common to all. Unlike Cicero, however, he uses this doc- trine to deprive private property of any moral dignity by referring to it as an usurpatio- usurpation. And so, in his famous sermons against the rich, the shrewd rhetorician calls on them the rich Christians: "You do not, af- ter all, give of your possessions to the poor, but instead return what is already his" (De Nabuthe 12,53). This may very well have corresponded to the reality of a "zero-sum economy" at that time. Ambrose knew what he was talking about and where the wealth of the rich came from. He, who himself had put his wealth at the disposal of the Church of Milan-for example, by fund- ing construction of a basilica, now known as the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio-was con- cerned with exposing the greed of the rich, to make them benefactors of the new plebs of his faithful, and to join both sides together as united in the church. Similarly, two hundred years later, Gregory the Great acted as a talented "fundraiser" for church-organized charity and wrote in his Pas- toral Care (III, 21): "When we give to the poor, we are not giving something of ourselves, but we are giving back what already belongs to them." Like Ambrose, he insists "that the earth (...) belongs to all equally and therefore also produces food for all equally." Such statements must be read in their original context. This is equally true (though for differ- ent reasons) of statements made by John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, who came from Antioch. His ideal was not that of the Roman nobleman, but the first Chris- tians of Jerusalem, who shared their goods in common (cf. Acts 4:32-35). In his Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Chrysostom does not advocate organizing the Church's Page 2 Ai provision for the poor with the help of the rich; rather, he wants to put the entire society of By- zantium, whose poor he estimates at half of the total population, on a new footing: He calls for the wealth of the rich to be radically redis- tributed. All society, every household, should become a monastery, where everything is common to all. To the objection, which he for- mulates himself, about where new means for the supply of the people should come from once all the rich have distributed their goods, Chrysostom answers: Whoever does good, God will not abandon him, one must only trust in grace and providence. To Chrysostom's zero-sum economy is now joined the economy of grace and miracles. Clement of Alexandria saw it quite differ- ently a century earlier—in his writing Quis dives salvetur? (13-14): If there were no rich, he thought, who would be able to support the poor? It was not wealth, but greed and avarice that were the problem. Augustine too, was of a different mindset than Chrysostom: common property only worked in small monastic com- munities of volunteers, such as he himself had founded; for society as a whole, he adopted Cicero's point of view, but in a now Christian version: even if private property was not in- tended by nature, in the present state of man—i.e., after the Fall—it is the only way to live together peacefully in society. Therefore, as Augustine argues against the Donatists, everyone owns what he owns according to hu- man law, and the state authority has the task of protecting private property. According to divine law, on the other hand, (according to Psalm 24 [23], 1) “everything that fills [the earth] belongs to the Lord" (Homilies on the Gospel of John, 6, 25). "In the beginning,” thus, by nature or in para- dise, everything was common and there was no private property-after the Fall, however, the right to it becomes a moral and legal ne- cessity. Precisely in this tradition, which was Austrian Institute Paper No. 38-EN (2021) also present in medieval scholasticism, the right to private property has been considered since the 19th century as a "secondary" natu- ral right: not in order to relativize it as subor- dinate to "rights of the community," but in or- der to place it in the time after the Fall in terms of salvific history. But this understanding was to be supplemented later by a second way to understand this natural right as "secondary." However, it too did not lead to a relativization, but on the contrary to a deepening of the jus- tification of the right to private property. When the Franciscans Discovered Capital: Natural Law Property Ethics in the Middle Ages The High Middle Ages, when commercial capi- talism and banking began to flourish, saw a different mindset from Christian antiquity. There is hardly a trace in the theology of the era of the Stoic founding myth of an original commonality of all goods. The Roman zero- sum mentality also seems to have disap- peared; rather, people thought of money as a "fruit-bearing capital." The pioneers here were, of all people, members of the Franciscan Order, emerging from the medieval poverty movement, especially Petrus Iohannis Olivi (1248-1298). In his highly influential Treatise on Contracts, he was probably the first to re- flect systematically on the fact that there is wealth that is not based on injustice and rob- bery but on the creation of value, and that money invested at risk in profitable transac- tions is “capital” that not only yields commer- cial profit but also benefits the community and improves people's lives. It is precisely in this period that Thomas Aqui- nas offers a natural law justification for pri- vate property: Due to that nature, which, ac- cording to Thomas, humans share with non- rational living beings, nothing concrete be- longs to this or that person. However, as Page 3 | Ai regards the efficient and peaceful use of goods, private property is that which is natural to man as a rational being: it is a dictate of natu- ral reason, and a component of the ius gen- tium the law of all peoples (ST II-II, q. 57, a. 3). The Dutch Calvinist Hugo Grotius would ar- gue similarly in De iure belli ac pacis in 1625: Even though by nature no one owns this or that, the protection of property is "as it exists now" nevertheless a requirement of natural law. It is supported by the commandment "you shall not steal," and morally and legally sanc- tioned by the positive law. Here too, we find a two-tiered justification-different from the one provided by Augustine—which prompted later theologians to define private property as a "secondary natural right,” as I said, not at all to relativize it, or classify it as subordinate or as having secondary importance. Aquinas uses realistic anthropological argu- ments to justify why private property corre- sponds to a hardly altruistic human nature, and why it is in contrast to common prop- erty-precisely for this reason useful for soci- ety (S.T. II-II, q. 66, a. 2). For the same reason, he emphasizes that private property must al- ways be used for the common good. Therefore, in an extreme emergency—if it is a matter of basic survival-no one has a right to insist on his property claims: everything is then com- mon. This, as it is estimated today, was the sit- uation in late antiquity for a third of the popu- lation, which would have starved to death without alms from the wealthy. Except in times of famine, however, this was no longer the general situation in the Middle Ages. Austrian Institute Paper No. 38-EN (2021) What about the principle that God created the goods of this world for the benefit of all peo- ple? It is not mentioned anywhere, nor does it appear in the justification of the "social func- tion" of property taught by Aquinas. This is not surprising, since this principle was used in Christian antiquity precisely to morally dis- credit private property. It did not fit into the medieval world, except in the forms of the poverty movement rejected by the Church as heretical. Only the Augustinian tradition of an original community of goods that existed be- fore the Fall remained, but just this idea was not played off against private property as a “secondary” natural right obtaining in human- ity's present state. The Modern View: Property and Work At the end of the 19th century, however, the principle of the universal destination of goods then reappeared-out of nowhere, as it were in the social encyclical of Leo XIII, which appeared in 1891 under the name Re- rum novarum and marked the beginning of what we now call the "social doctrine of the Church." The first social encyclical appeared in the era of industrial capitalism, a world of un- precedented productivity of human labor, the accumulation and deployment of an enormous amount of capital, and constant innovation. However, it was also a world in which workers were largely unprotected, at the mercy of their employers, who in turn often risked every- thing to realize their entrepreneurial visions. However, this world of rapid economic dyna- mism and its eventual economic success, manifesting itself in a steady increase in the quality of life for most people, was based pre- cisely on the consistent state protection of pri- vate property. The authors of Rerum novarum were obvi- ously aware of the connection between pri- vate property and economic progress. For it is precisely in this perspective that the reference to God having created the goods of the earth for the benefit of all people now reappears in a prominent place. However, this was not for the sake of relativizing the right to private property as merely secondary, but-quite the opposite in order to justify it and defend it against collectivist socialism. Page 4 Лі How is it to be explained that the principle of the universal destination of goods now reap- pears in precisely this context? Rerum no- varum does not cite any Christian authors for it-even Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler fo- cused exclusively on Thomas Aquinas—nor does it refer to any other sources. As is well known, the authors of Rerum novarum drew on the property doctrine of the English philos- opher John Locke. Right at the beginning of the fifth chapter of his Second Treatise on Govern- ment ("On Property"), it says that God "has given the Earth to the Children of Men, given it to Mankind in common." [5, 25] Locke quotes Psalm 115:16 for this, which, however, does not give this reading. Locke added "to Man- kind in common" himself. The Locke editor Pe- ter Laslett assumes that the British philoso- pher was inspired-apart from his friend James Tyrrell-by the natural law theorist of the early German Enlightenment, Samuel Puf- endorf. In De iure naturae et gentium (IV, 4, 9), however, Pufendorf referred to Hugo Grotius (De iure belli ac pacis, II, 2, 2). God, it is said here, "gave man the right to all things of a lower kind as soon as the world was created," and therefore in the beginning everything be- longed to everyone undivided-Grotius quotes the church father Justin from the 2nd century for this. But even this was not more than the traditional reference to an original, paradisiacal community of goods (as it is also found in the Spanish late scholastics). Locke, on the other hand, says more, for he goes on to say that God has not only "given the World to Men in common," but has “also given them reason to make use of it to the best ad- vantage of life, and convenience" [5, 26]. Through work, what God has created for the good of all people—meaning primarily land and its natural fruits-becomes the property of individuals. This does not take anything away from anyone, because-and this is the decisive argument—through labor one “does Austrian Institute Paper No. 38-EN (2021) not lessen, but increase the common stock of mankind" (5, 37). The intention of the Creator that the goods of this earth have to serve all people is thus realized precisely through pri- vate property, and the latter receives its deep- est justification from this value-creating func- tion. Private property as such is therefore in it- self-precisely as a "secondary" natural right-according to its deepest nature, a social institution that serves the common good. This is precisely the teaching of Rerum no- varum and, with a brief interlude in the sixties, would remain the position of the papal magis- terium until John Paul II and Benedict XVI: Pri- vate property is the means by which the "earth" and its fruits-today we would say: the natural goods and resources of this world- benefit all people. That "God has given the earth for the use and enjoyment of the whole human race” is therefore, according to Rerum novarum, in no way opposed to "special own- ership," for it is precisely through this that the earth "ceases not thereby to minister to the needs of all" (no. 8). Thus, by this reference to the universal desti- nation of goods private property is not limited "for social reasons.” Rather, according to Leo XIII, private property is the very means by which the goods of this world fulfill their des- tiny "of serving the whole." The principle for- mulated by Thomas Aquinas that property should always be used with a view to the ben- efit of the community, as well as the anthropo- logical arguments he put forward in favor of private property, can be seamlessly integrated into this perspective—but now in a modern, "economically enlightened" way in which the focus is no longer on almsgiving and mercy in emergencies, but on entrepreneurial value creation for the sustainable increase of gen- eral prosperity. Page 5
