- Private Property and Ethics
In seeking to demonstrate the social function and necessity of private ownership
of the means of production and of the concomitant inequality in the distribution of
income and wealth, we are at the same time providing proof of the moral
justification for private property and for the capitalist social order based upon it.
Morality consists in the regard for the necessary requirements of social existence
that must be demanded of each individual member of society. A man living in
isolation has no moral rules to follow. He need have no qualms about doing
anything he finds it to his advantage to do, for he does not have to consider whether
he is not thereby injuring others. But as a member of society, a man must take into
consideration, in everything he does, not only his own immediate advantage, but
also the necessity, in every action, of affirming society as such. For the life of the
individual in society is possible only by virtue of social cooperation, and every
individual would be most seriously harmed if the social organization of life and of
production were to break down. In requiring of the individual that he should take
society into consideration in all his actions, that he should forgo an action that,
while advantageous to him, would be detrimental to social life, society does not
demand that he sacrifice himself to the interests of others. For the sacrifice that it
imposes is only a provisional one: the renunciation of an immediate and relatively
minor advantage in exchange for a much greater ultimate benefit. The continued
existence of society as the association of persons working in cooperation and sharing a
common way of life is in the interest of every individual. Whoever gives up a
momentary advantage in order to avoid imperiling the continued existence of
society is sacrificing a lesser gain for a greater one.
The meaning of this regard for the general social interest has frequently been
misunderstood. Its moral value was believed to consist in the fact of the sacrifice
itself, in the renunciation of an immediate gratification. One refused to see that
what is morally valuable is not the sacrifice, but the end served by the sacrifice, and
one insisted on ascribing moral value to sacrifice, to renunciation, in and for itself
alone. But sacrificing is moral only when it serves a moral end. There is a world of
difference between a man who risks his life and property for a good cause and the
man who sacrifices them without benefiting society in any way.
Everything that serves to preserve the social order is moral; everything that is
detrimental to it is immoral. Accordingly, when we reach the conclusion that an
institution is beneficial to society, one can no longer object that it is immoral. There
may possibly be a difference of opinion about whether a particular institution is
socially beneficial or harmful. But once it has been judged beneficial, one can no
longer contend that, for some inexplicable reason, it must be condemned as
immoral.