Government and Property
a rule of property that does not recognize the relationship between the producer and his product, we are involved in contradictions; we are on transitory grounds and outside the field of principle.
When we recognize the employment of force in acquiring property—that is, when our sense of reality has not been dulled by adjustment to its employment—we are quick to put upon it the stamp of inequity; we call it exploitation, confiscation, appropriation, thievery. It is a malum in se, an inherently evil act. In that way we assert the conviction that depriving the producer of the fruits of his efforts is an infringement of his right to life. It is an immoral act. And it is an immoral act even if it is sanctioned by law or is committed by a number of people acting in concert, for there is no multiplier large enough to make a wrong a right. When we consider the consequences of the substitution of a forceful (or legal) for a moral right to property, as we will, we shall see that the violation of principle cannot be done with impunity. But, on principle alone, regardless of consequences, any method, legal or illegal, by which title to property is shifted from producer to nonproducer, is essentially akin to the burglarizing of a house. Under letters of marque issued by the monarch, piracy became privateering, but in either case it was stealing; and when I am compelled against my will to support a school or a bureaucracy, under any pretext, I am being deprived of my property.
Judgment on the soundness or desirability of an act or procedure must take into account its consequences; and a theory must prove itself in practice. When we put this theory—that the right of property rests on labor—to the test of experience, we find that it is supported by what might be called a natural law; that is, an invariable cause-and-effect relationship that
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