Private Property, Primitive Accumulation, and Idolatry

William T. Cavanaugh

doi:10.46553/teo.58.134.2021.p75-90

Authors

William T. Cavanaugh DePaul University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.46553/teo.58.134.2021.p75-90

Keywords:

Property, Rights, Dispossession, Theodicy, Idolatry

Abstract

This article suggest that belief in absolute private property rights is a type of dispossession
of what rightfully belongs to God and, by extension, the people of God. The first section of this essay address a question so often ignored in discussions of private property rights: how did some people come to be owners of property in the first place, while others own nothing but their own bodies and its labor? Then the article look into the history of dispossession. The second section address how that history is explained away through various types of theodicy. There is an exam about some such theodicies and the author suggest that our prevailing regime of privatization and absolute property rights is a kind of idolatry, the worship of a false god of dispossession.

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Author Biography

William T. Cavanaugh, DePaul University

Profesor de Teología en DePaul University, donde dirige el Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology

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