The topic of inequality has been at the forefront of political discussions since the beginning of civilization. We as people have tasked some of the greatest minds throughout history to help bring enlightenment to the issue, yet still today we don’t understand fully what caused it or how to stop it. One of the reasons that has been discussed as the root of the problem is the concept of private property.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau philosophized in The Discourse of Inequality that private property could be the root of inequality. His work would foreshadow many future philosophers’ views on inequality, one of them being Karl Marx. Karl Marx put the acquisition of property by an individual in the forefront of inequality discussions in his work The Communist Manifesto. These two men would argue the same point, that private property is directly linked to the inequality of man, but both had differing views on why. This difference, no matter how distant their conclusions are, still doesn’t stop people today from talking about both men’s ideas years later.
In The Discourse of Inequality, Jean-Jacques Rousseau aims to describe human inequalities and to determine if those inequalities are natural or unnatural, unnatural meaning it could be prevented. Rousseau says that man is alike any other animal, driven by self-preservation, but the difference between man and beast is mans concept of perfectibility. Rousseau believed that man was naturally happy and was only corrupted by his own thoughts of him being viewed as imperfect by others. This drive is what he says is the cause of unnatural inequality.
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This strive for perfection caused man to care about how others viewed him, this theory of man caring deeply of what those think of him Rousseau called Amour Propre. Amour Propre caused man to start comparing themselves to each other, one of the ways man compares itself to one another is the size of the land he has amassed. Yet, for one to amass any land they must have the right to own the land. “This origin is all the more natural as it is impossible to conceive of the idea of property arising from anything but manual labor, for it is not clear what man can add, beyond his own labor, in order to appropriate things he has not made.”(Rousseau 76)
Rousseau states that the origin of property rights are likely a product of man’s labor due to man not being able to bring anything but labor to the table. Rousseau believed that the rights of property ownership were not natural but founded on society. Compared to today land is not used in the same way as then, as most people who own land are not farming their land like then. When man civilized, Amour Propre became more prevalent than ever. This theory being in man is what caused him to change, when natural disaster struck and forced man out of their home and into a new one, man adapts to the new home.
Karl Marx was a philosopher who wrote the Manifesto of the Communist Party which is a famous work that outlined the class struggle and conflicts of capitalism. Marx believed that private property allowed wealthy people to have more income, and to keep those that are in the lower-class poor. He saw that the bourgeoise were holding the property to the hands of a few, forcing the proletarians not to own property in order to keep the power and materials in their hands. Marx introduces the concept of historical materialism which is that the progression of society is determined by the integration of its production, technology, and social relations of production.
He argued that the reason for change was due to material and economic gain, that people were so invested in material gains that things such as intellectual and political are viewed as secondary concerns. He believed that the source of property rights was that of whoever is the ruling class, in this case the bourgeoise. The idea of property rights to him dealt with the belief that property equates to power which is still viewed as true today. One of the key points outlined in this work is what exactly Marx means when he calls for the abolition of private property, which is widely misunderstood. When saying this, he is saying that the property of the bourgeois needs to be surrendered.
“The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property in the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.” (Marx II) Marx claims that when capital is turned into social property, personally property is not turned into social property because it is just the social character that is changed, losing its class-property. To him, private property is property that exploits the many for the benefit of the few, so his call for the abolition of private property mainly focuses on production means more than one’s personal home.
Both men bring solid arguments to the table for the cause of inequality being tied to property rights, but even with these highly regarded philosophers studying the subject extensively society has yet to find the answer to getting rid of inequality. Although Marx’s beliefs differ from that of his predecessor, their shared view of property owners exploiting the lower class for their benefit is a sound argument which is why we still use both of these works today. The focal point for Rousseau’s work is how the nature of man and his drive to be better than those around him is responsible for the divide in property ownership, Marx argues that the reason for the large discrepancy in property is due to the class that has power wanting to keep all of the power in their own hands and to use laborers as means for personal gain.
