Rousseau; Origin Of Inequality

[Amphictyonis]

Who was the first to critique the effects of private property? Was it Rousseau?



"The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1754

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

Eh, Plato, if not earlier. What Rousseau's doing here is critiquing Locke's idea that "property" is a natural right (in his Treatise on Good Government). The much older argument - in fact, the standard argument in European culture - is, that communism is the original state of nature, the "jus naturale," "law of nature." Property, then, is merely a "jus gentium," a law set up by various social groups. Edward Surtz, The Praise of Pleasure. Philosophy, Education and Communism in More's Utopia gives a good history of this argument.

Bottom line: it's communism that's the standard. Capitalism is just a sick, unnatural perversion.