The Common and Particular Ownership of Property [pp. 433-443]

THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XLV. JULY, I887. No. 268.
THE COMMON AND PARTICULAR OWNERSHIP OF
PROPERTY.
ARISTOTLE long since decided that for populous and enlightened nations common ownership and possession of property was
a visionary scheme. His decision, made for posterity, is recorded in his refutation of communism. It is sufficiently obvious that the subject inquired into and determined by Aristotle is similar in nature to the topics that are somewhat warmly discussed in our own day. Some elementary propositions underlying these topics it is here intended to examine and to disengage from uncertainty and obscurity.
A few precise definitions will serve to present clearly the
real principles at issue in the controversy which has arisen and
waxed well-nigh universal respecting Mr. George's theory of
coinmunism-a theory which is false, eccentric, and utterly impracticable.
The true import of private and exclusive ownership of property is, in this paper, following the best authorities, understood
to be "the right to have and to dispose completely and at will
of a corporeal thing, unless prohibited by law." *
To show the total impracticability of communism, and even
its real injustice in view of the constituted order of things, it is
necessary to draw, with Cajetan and others, the true and essen * "Dominium est jus perfecte disponendi de re corporali nisi lege prohibeatur" (Becanus
[De 7ure et 7ustit., cap. 2, qu..], who follows Bartolus and others). "Sic enim dominium
apud jurisconsultos definitur, jus vel facultas re propria utendi ad quemlibet usum lege permissum idque in commodum proprium" (note by the editors Billuart, Silvius, and others
to the Summa Theol. of St. Thomas, p. 2, 2, q. 66, a. 2).
Copyright. RVay. I. T. HECKER. 1887.