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Greek Orthodox Catechism
Constantine Callinicos, London, 1926
Part II. Ethical, 25. The Eighth Commandment
What does the eighth Commandment order us?
The eighth Commandment orders us to respect the property of our neighbour, and not to lay a grasping hand on it either by violence, or by fraud. We call Property everything which our neighbour, either through his individual work, or by gift or inheritance is possessed of, and has the right to hold or give away according to his own will. Property is a fundamental support of life and, without safety to property, all individual, urban, social, intellectual, artistic or economic progress is checked, and the nations degenerate into the position of brigand hordes or wild beasts, seizing the booty from each other’s mouths, The eighth Commandment, then, prohibits robbery as being a venial sin; and not only that committed by armed brigands in the mountains, or by burglars in the towns at night, or by pickpockets in the crowded streets, or by vandals in the Churches, or by the breakers of tombs in the cemeteries, but that which has many other names also, and not rarely characterises our dealings with our fellow-men. Because robbery is also committed by him who gives false weight; by him who sells at exorbitant prices; by him, who, for love of gain, adulterates provisions in the market; by him who deprives his servants of their wages; by him who pays his employees starvation wages; by him who misappropriates common funds, and by many others, too numerous to mention.
What is the system that denies the right of individual property, and overthrows the meaning of the command “Thou shalt not steal”?
Socialism and, what is worse than that, Communism. According to Socialism, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few plutocrats created pauperism, and brought about the economic poverty of the working-classes. Therefore, individual property must be taken out of the hands of those first-named, and the state recognised as being the only lawful owner, who will with mathematical precision satisfy every material need of its subjects. In this way, acute social differences will disappear; neither capitalists, nor poor will any longer exist; and the Golden Age will descend on earth. Communism also desires to remove social and economic differences; but, while Socialism, in order to carry out its programme, chooses comparatively gentle means, one of which is the strike, Communism madly seeks the overturning of both earthly and heavenly institutions by dynamite and assassination. As a protest against the ever-increasing egotism of the governing classes, and the ever-widening gulf between poverty and riches, Socialism is worthy of notice. And the State is obliged to bridge, as much as possible, this gulf, by imposing very considerable taxes on the rich, and by various material concessions to make the life of the poor worth living. But as a practical system, Socialism is an unrealisable Utopia. The State cannot be changed into a huge bureaucracy and become the caretaker of everybody and everything, choking individual initiative as illegal and superfluous. Capital cannot be taken from the hands of the individual, without the disappearance of the means of enterprise, which open from time to time fresh sources of work, and give employment to the unemployed. It is not in the general interest that individual gain should cease; for this excites ambition and wakens latent capabilities. No political steam-roller will ever level human talents, and make them all alike. Class and economic differences will always exist. And the Golden Age will come, not when we all become possessed more plentifully of material means, but when we all, rich as well as poor, put off our selfishness and serve each other.