Morality Versus Legality

It was after considerable thinking that he began to detect a conflict in his own beliefs. He thought he had always believed that any man should be allowed to enjoy the fruits of his own labor; that he should be permitted to keep or use his product, or give it away, or exchange it for someone else’s product—in short, to dispose of it as he pleased. He had always held that for someone else to steal this product was evil. For instance, would it be right for the people in Tennessee who wanted more power and light, to steal property from a farmer in North Dakota to accomplish their end? Obviously not! But suppose the robbery were legalized—that is, suppose a majority of the voters directed the police force to take the property in order to carry out their object. Would the mere legality change the morality of it? Well, hardly.

Here were two areas where our self-confessed but recanting communist found opportunity to do some hard thinking. The first had to do with the rehabilitation of his own faith in what men could do acting voluntarily, cooperatively, and competitively. The second had to do with ethics and morality,[2] in short, with justice.