Elements of Morals. Paul Janet
and dispose at will of his property, his income, of the fruit of his labor and industry.” (Art. 8.)
These are the judicial and political definitions of property. Philosophically, it may be said, that it is the right each man has to make something his own, that is to say, to attribute to himself the exclusive right to enjoy something outside of himself.
We must distinguish between possession and property. Possession is nothing else than actual custody: I may have in my hands an object that is not mine, which has either been loaned to me, or which I may have found; this does not make me its proprietor. Property is the right I have to exclude all others from the use of a thing, even if I should not be in actual possession of it.
32. Origin and fundamental principle of property.—The first property is that of my own body, but thus far it is nothing else than what may be called corporeal liberty. How do we go beyond that? How do we extend this primitive right over things which are outside of ourselves?
Let us first remark that this right of appropriating external things rests on necessity and on the laws of organized beings. It is evident, in fact, that life cannot be preserved otherwise than by a perpetual exchange between the parts of the living body and the particles of the surrounding bodies. Nutrition is assimilation, and, consequently, appropriation. It is, then, necessary that certain things of the external world should become mine, otherwise life is impossible.
Property is then necessary; let us now see by what means it becomes legitimate.
Property has been given several origins: occupation, law, work. According to some, property has for its fundamental principle the right of the first occupant. It is said that man has the right of appropriating a thing not in possession of some one else; the same as at the theatre, the spectator who comes first has the right to take the best place. (Cicero.) So be it; but at the theatre I occupy only the place occupied by my own body; I have not the right to appropriate the whole theatre, or even the pit. It is the same with the right of the first occupant. I have certainly a right to the place my own body would occupy, but no further: for where would my right then stop?
“Will the setting one’s foot,” says J. J. Rousseau, “on a piece of common ground be sufficient to declare one’s self at once the master of it? When Nunez Balboa took on landing possession of the Southern Sea, and of the whole of Southern America in the name of the Crown of Castile, was that enough to exclude from it all the princes of the world? At that rate the Catholic king had but to take all at once possession in his study of the whole universe, relying upon subsequently striking off from his empire what before was in possession of the other princes.” (Contrat social, liv. 1er, Ch. ix.)
The law.—If occupation of itself alone is insufficient in founding the right of property, will it not become legitimate by adding to it convention—that is to say, the law? Property, we have seen, is necessary; but if every one is free to appropriate to himself what he needs, it becomes anarchy; it is, as Hobbes said, “the war of all against all.” It is necessary that the law should fix the property of each in the interest of all. Property, under this new hypothesis, would then mean the part which public authority has fixed or recognized, whether we admit a primitive division made by a magistrate, or a primitive occupation more or less due to chance, but consecrated by law.
Certainly, the reason of social utility plays a great part in the establishment and consecration of property; and it would be absurd not to take this consideration into account. Certainly, even if property were but a fact consecrated by time, by necessity, and by law, it would already by that alone have a very great authority; but we believe that that is not saying enough. Property is not only a consecrated fact, it is also a right. It finds in the law its guaranty, but not its foundation.
The true principle of property is work; and property becomes blended with liberty itself: “liberty and property,” say the English.
Work.—If all the things man has need of were in unlimited number, and if they could be acquired without effort, there would be no property. This, for example, takes place in the case of the atmosphere, of which we all have need, but which belongs to no one. But if the question is of things that cannot be acquired except by a certain effort (as in the case of animals running wild), or even that can be produced only by human effort (as a harvest in a barren ground), these things belong by right to him who conquers them or brings them about.
“I take wild wheat into my hand, I sow it in soil I have dug, and I wait for the earth, aided by rain and sunshine, to do its work. Is the growing crop my property? Where would it be without me? I created it. Who can deny it? … This earth was worth nothing and produced nothing: I dug the soil; I brought from a distance friable and fertilizing earth; I enriched it with manure; it is now fertile for many years to come. This fertility is my work. … The earth belonged to no one; in fertilizing it, I made it mine. According to Locke, nine tenths at least of the produce of the soil should be attributed to human labor.”[20]
It has been said that work is not a sufficient foundation to establish the right of property; that occupation must be added thereto, for otherwise work alone would make us the proprietors of what is already occupied by others; the farmer would become the proprietor of the fields he cultivates from the fact alone that he cultivates them. Occupation is therefore a necessary element of property.
Certainly; but occupation itself has no value except as it already represents labor, and inasmuch as it is labor. The fact of culling a fruit, of seizing an animal, and even of setting foot upon a desert land, is an exercise of my activity which is more or less easy or difficult to accomplish, but which in reality is not the less the result of an effort. It is, then, work itself which lays the foundation of occupation and consecrates it. But when the thing once occupied has become the property of a man by a first work, it can no longer without contradiction become the property of another by a subsequent work. This work applied to the property of others is not the less itself the foundation of property, namely: the price received in exchange of work, which is called salary, and which again by exchange can obtain for us the possession of things not ours.
33. Accumulation and transmission.—The right of appropriation, founded as we have just seen on work, carries with it as its consequence, the right of accumulation and that of transmission.
In fact, if I have acquired a thing, I can either enjoy it actually, or reserve it to enjoy it later; and if I have more than my actual wants require, I can lay aside what to-day is useless to me, but which will be useful to me later. This is what is called saving; and the successive additions to savings is called accumulation. This right cannot be denied to man; for that would be ignoring in him one of his noblest faculties, namely, the faculty of providing for the future. In suppressing this right, the very source of all production, namely, work, would dry up; for it is his thought of the future which, above all, induces man to work to insure his security.
The right of transmission is another consequence of property; for if I have enjoyment myself, I ought to be able to transmit it to others; finally, I can give up my property to obtain in its place the property of others which might be more agreeable or more useful to me; hence the right of exchange, which gives rise to what is called purchase and sale. Of all transmissions, the most natural is that which takes place between a father and his children: this is what is called inheritance. If we were to deprive the head of a family of the right of thinking of his children in the accumulation of the fruits of his labors, we should destroy thereby the most energetic instigation to work there is in the human heart.
34. Individual property and the community.—The adversaries of property have often said that they did not attack property in itself, but only individual property. The soil which, if not the principle, is at least the source of all riches, belongs, they say, not to the individual, but to society; to the State, that is to say, to all, as common and undivided property: each individual is but a consumer, and receives his share from the State, which alone is the true proprietor. This is what is called the community system, or communism, which