“The root cause of present injustices is not to be attributed to division of goods, nor the inequalities of the division, but rather to the fact that the mass of people are practically bereft of ownership. Some means must be devised to admit the proletariats within the proprietory system. Widely distributed property makes for social stability. Any alternative offered lacks the moral discipline of responsibility and ownership. Perhaps the best summary argument for private property is the impossibility of finding any better general system to take its place.”
McDonald, The Social Value of Property According to Saint Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1939) pp. 185 paragraph 8.
