The Sanctifying of Plunder; L.E. Read

Many tribal societies have prac ticed plunder, raiding their neigh bors, taking home all the loot they 224 could garner. But we can hardly be critical of them without criticizing ourselves. Perhaps no other book has more wisdom between its covers than the Holy Bible. Yet, we find written there about twenty-three centuries ago: "Men do not despise a thief, if he steals to satisfy his soul when he ishungry."l This W&S written cen turies later than "Thou shalt not steal." How can any practice be more sanctified than by biblical en dorsement !However, we must un derstand the times lest we render too harsh a judgment. Move on another fifteen cen· turies to St. Thomas Aquinas: The superfluities of the rich belong by right to the poor .... To use the property of another, taking it secret ly in case of extreme need, cannot, properly. speaking, be characterized as theft. 2 1 Proverbs 6:30 (King James version).

It might be noted that modern transla tionsrender this passage differently. 2 See Thomas Aquinas, 2a, 2ae, quaes tiao 66, art. 7.

1974 THE SANCTIFYING OF PLUNDER 225 The Rich, Back Then Seven centuries ago, at the time of Aquinas, who were· the rich? They were plunderers, the feudal lords who lived off the serfs - the poor. In all justice, what the lords possessed belonged less to thenl than to the serfs fromwhonl they had taken it. Considering the politico - economic darkness in nledieval times, it is understand able how a religious leader might sanctify plunder by those who had been plundered. The axiom, "Thou shalt not steal," was but an ancient flash of light with no sustaining source of energy. There is no need for further il lustrations of plunder sanctified. Every age and all civilizations abound with examples of this primitive trait of gilding evil that it may appear virtuous, a weak ness which prevails to this day. There were some excuses in time8 past, prior to a knowledge of free market phenomena. But what of the present? How do we now sane·· tifyplunder?

Today, whichever way thema~· jority votes is generally conceded to be the criterion for what's right and wrong. 3 Once this nonsensical foundation of morality is accepted - approval by the majority - plun·· 3 For an excellent analysisof this fal-· lacy, see "The American System and Ma·· jority Rule," by The Reverend. Edmund! A. Opitz, The Freeman, November 1962. der is legalized and thus sanctified. Legislation, being a collective ac tion, leaves hardly anyone with a sense of guilt. Why?· The evil is depersonalized. Comparable is the mob that hangs Joe Doakes. The mob did it! The truth? Each of the lynchers committed the mur der precisely as each person who is a party to legal·· plunder is guilty. Yet, the collective action affords each participant a false sense of absolution. Legal plunder in the U.S.A. to day, in dollar amount, is many thousands of times greater than, say, at the time of Aquinas or even during the lives of our found ing fathers. In those days some one stole a pig or chicken or some other· small item, not because thieves were more scrupulous then than·· now but simply because no one owned· very much. However, my guess is that the proportion of all private property which is stol en or plundered is substantially the same today as in the past.

What has changed, aside from the method····of sanctification? The to tal quantity of property owned is thousands of times greater now than before. There is incompar ably more to plunder, that's all. The propensity to plunder - to live off the fruits of the labor of others - appears to be as persis tent a trait as it is evil. In the light of free market, pri226 THE FREEMAN April vate ownership, limited govern ment practices with their moral and spiritual antecedents-of which the American people have had a remarkable sampling - how is this possible? I am now be ginning to understand. This way of life has been but a flash of en lightenment, as dimly perceived as "Thou shalt not steal." The freedom philosophy, with but few exceptions, is no better under stood than was the commandment against theft of more than thirty centuries ago. No intellectual muscle in either case, no sustain ing force.

Cause and Effect With few exceptions, the masses of people in this and other "ad vanced" countries have not corre lated the fantastic outburst of creative energy with the practice of freedom. Ortega pinpoints this failure: The world which surrounds the new man from his birth does not compel him to limit himself in any fashion, it sets up no veto in opposition to him, on the contrary, it incites his appe tite, which in principle can increase indefinitely. Now it turns out - and this is most important - that this world of the XIXth and early XXth centuries not only has the perfections and the completeness which it actually possesses, but furthermore suggests to those who dwell in it the radical assurance that tomorrow it will be still richer, ampler, more perfect, as if it enjoyed a spontaneous, inex haustible power· of increase .... They believe in this as they believe the sun will rise in the morning. The meta phor is an exact one. For, in fact, the common man, finding himself in a world so excellent, technically and socially, believes it has been produced by nature, and never thinks of the personal efforts of highly endowed individuals which the creation of this new world presupposed. St,ill less wil'l he admit the notion that all these fa cilities still require the support of certain difficult human virtues, the least failure of which would cause the rapid disappearance of the whole magnificent edifice. 4 (Italics added) Is there a remedy? Yes, but the price gives the appearance of be ing too high. First, there is re quired of you and me a far better understanding of the freedom philosophy than we now possess and, to top it off, brilliant explana tions of its efficacy. In a word, show the correlation between the abundant life and freedom so at tractively that others are bound to take heed. Actually, this is not a high price - it is the very least we should. do for ourselves, if not for others.

Second, let us begin to call this practice of "robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul" by· its 4 From Revolt of the MlMses by Jose Ortegay Gasset (New York: W.W.Nor ton& Co., 1932).

1974 THE SANCTIFYING OF PLUNDER 227 right name: legalized plunder. Frederic Bastiat gave us the meas uring rod more than a century ago in The Law: See if the law takes from some per sons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. (Italics added) This question of legal plunder must be settled once and for all, and there are only three ways to settle it: 1-The few plunder the many. 2 - Everybody plunders everybody. 3 - Nobody plunders anybody. We must make our choice among lim ited plunder, universal plunder, and no plunder. The law can follow only one of these three. Finally, there must be a recog nition that might-majority rule does not make right. Counting noses is no way to decide moral, ethical, or economic matters. This accompiished, plunder will lose its legal backing and, thus, its sanc tification.

Let the law defend the rightful owner of property rather than the thief. Let freedom prevail! , IDEAS ON LIBERTY Legal Plunder THE WAR against illegal plunder has been fought since the begin ning of the world. The law itself conducts this war, and itis my wish and opinion that thE~ law should always maintain this atti tude toward plunder. But it does not always do this. Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates :in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame, danger, and :scruple which their acts would other wise involve. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons, and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim - when he defends himself as a criminal. In short, there is a legal plunder. FREDERIC BASTIAT, The Law IT IS NOT within the province of any branch of human knowledge to give the ultimate reason for things. Man suffers; society suffers. We ask why. This is equivalent to ask ing why God has given man feeling and free will. We know on this sub ject only what is revealed to us by the faith in which we believe.