Otherwise we have Communism.
Communism allows men to hold property collectively in a common stock,
and allows each member of the community to take for his peculiar own
out of that stock whatever for the moment he needs; but it will not
permit him to appropriate private means of subsistence against any
notable time to come. Communism is very good in a family, which is an
imperfect community, part of a higher community, the State. It is very
good in a monastery, which is like a family: again, very good in the
primitive Church at Jerusalem, which existed for the time on
quasi-monastic lines: very good even in a perfect community, if such
there be, of tropical savages, for whom nature supplies all things,
bananas to eat and palm-leaves to wear, without any human labour of
production; but very bad and quite unworkable everywhere else. St.
Thomas, following Aristotle, puts it pithily and sufficiently:
"Private property is necessary to human life for three reasons: first,
because every one is more careful to look after what belongs to
himself alone than after what is common to all or to many, since all
men shun labour and leave to others what is matter of joint concern,
as happens where there are too many servants: on another ground,
because human affairs are more orderly handled, if on each individual
there rests his own care of managing something, whereas there would be
nothing but confusion, if every one without distinction were to have
the disposal of any thing he chose to take in hand: thirdly, because
by this means society is the rather kept at peace, every member being
content with his own possession, whence we see that among those who
hold any thing in common and undivided ownership strifes not
unfrequently arise.
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