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The central tenet of the distributist thesis is a wide-spread diffusion of private ownership, and perhaps our first task should be to show that property privately owned accords with the precepts of natural law. Possession of material things is a right of man, because, being created with reason and will, he is to that extent master of the material world, and the natural destiny of the latter is to serve his needs. But possession does not necessarily imply private ownership. There are, for example, communal forms of ownership. The right of individuals to possess private property is not therefore an absolute precept of natural law. But both reason and experience prove that communal ownership, as a general mode of human possession, is unsatisfactory. Aristotle calls it an occasion of strife, and it is almost inconceivable that, with human beings as they are, such a system generally applied could fail to cause constant quarrelling, interfere grievously with primary production, and weaken the bonds that unite the family.
Private ownership, provided it be equitably distributed and does not claim excessive powers, has none of these defects. Moreover the whole trend of the Church’s teaching, especially in the famous encyclicals of Leo XIII and Pius XI, as well as in several allocutions of the present Pope, has been in its favour.
But from the starting point of wide-spread private property Distributism enters a field that comprises politics, economy, and human relationships. In this era of finance-industrialism it is revolutionary in its aims. It is in open and unique opposition to the prevalent trends of modern life.
