Property – Right, Privilege or Theft? - April 01

This is a tricky one. People will feel that it is their right to choose how they live their lives and what they choose to spend their money on, and provided this does not infringe upon others they should be left in peace to get on with it. If one goes into depth though this is a difficult ethos to depend as how can one be sure that it does not infringe upon somebody else? I may feel buying a pair of brand name trainers is my prerogative with my money and I should be allowed to wear them. However if the company uses exploitative labour practises or child labour of any sort then the trainers are tainted with this morally indefensible action. Simply by buying the trainers I am offering tacit acceptance of the work practises and furthermore I am bolstering the company’s profits that they may continue to trade under such conditions. It is easy to say what I am doing is not harming anybody that I can see but those I cannot see may be a different matter. A man who lives alone in a large house with multiple bedrooms may see nothing wrong with what he is doing if the surrounding countryside contains sleepy little villages and pockets of affluence and comfort. If, however this mansion was right on the Strand in London, where large numbers of the homeless take shelter it would be considerably harder to reconcile with one’s conscience the size and wastage of the house. Now the man may say that he has worked hard to gain what he has achieved and therefore should be allowed to reap the rewards but who is to say what constitutes real work, does this man work harder than a single mother with children to feed? Does the affluent man deserve to be better remunerated because his job is a particular profession and he has more time to devote to his work than people with families. Why should those who sacrifice themselves to their work be treated better than those who may have other interests and a life outside of their job?

The simple answer is that in the corporate world those with families or other interests cannot always be relied upon to give absolute loyalty to the company. If a worker’s child is ill and at the same time his/her company is in trouble it should be to the child that s/he runs to the assistance of. One must remember that most large and profitable companies under a capitalist system will make the most of exploiting their workers in pay, working hours and conditions if it is profitable for them to do so. The greater the greed of the shareholders the more the company must squeeze out of its resources. This materialism spills over to one’s private life, capitalism makes one strive for material wealth as it is by this that you are judged by your peers. Of course this is not a level playing field as we all start out at different points and with different advantages and disadvantages. For the poor it is a major effort and achievement surviving from week to week, any further amelioration of circumstance would be a bonus, for the rich life is very different, speculate to accumulate, money breeds money etc. etc.

So by the end of one’s life, one’s material possessions show neither how hard one may have worked nor how deserving one may be of them. A man born into poverty may die with a small house, modest savings and some domestic possessions to his name. This will have probably taken his whole life to amass and he will have to have worked hard for them. Another man born into a gentrified family may die with an extremely large house, some land, 2 cars and some ostentatious assets to his name, he may also have worked hard, but he may have had a privileged upbringing, private education, been funded through University, got a job through a friend of the family, come into money through inheritance, been bailed out by his parents when his first business venture went bust etc. etc. Who therefore is the more valuable? Well, neither really can claim to have been better or worse. The point is the rich man will have had many opportunities to succeed whilst the poor man will have had few, what is more the rich man will have many chances should things not go according to plan initially whilst the poor man must stake everything and take the risk as he may not get another chance.