"Wealth-hoarding" is a trendy phrase among modern socialists.  As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently tweeted, "[t]he hoarding of wealth by the few is coming at the cost of peoples' lives" (1).  Bernie Sanders, another proud socialist and political ally of Ocasio-Cortez, said the following: "What we are trying to do is demand and implement a policy which significantly reduces income and wealth inequality in America by telling the wealthiest families in this country they cannot have so much wealth" (2).  Recent presidential drop-out and U.S. senator Elizabeth Warren has a similar ideological position on wealth-hoarding: a "wealth tax" on those with over $50 million (3).

Essentially, what's at the heart of these three politicians' ethos is a belief that having a surplus of wealth exceeding a certain threshold  is immoral.  This wealth can be confiscated by the government and distributed more equitably to those in need.

To understand exactly where and how this mentality permeated socialism, we must explore socialism's ideological origins.  To accomplish this, the philosophy of the original liberal, Jean Rousseau, necessitates examination.

Rousseau is the godfather and patron saint of liberalism.  Rousseau believed that human beings are born naturally good but are corrupted by society.  By tinkering with society, we can eradicate evil and the problems of the world.

The way Rousseau arrived at this conclusion is of the utmost importance.  Rousseau realized this epiphany by invalidating the Christian doctrine of Original Sin.  He pontificated "that there is no original perversity in the human heart" (4).  The phrase "original perversity" is his biblical allusion to Original Sin.

Original Sin is the Christian concept from the Bible where God punished Adam and Eve, and all of mankind vicariously, for their first and original sin with labor.  Adam must labor by the sweat of his brow, and Eve must labor via childbearing.  By invalidating Original Sin, Rousseau, and those adhering to his ideology, are invalidating labor as a mandatory and permanent aspect of the human condition.

Rousseau not only invalidated Original Sin in his private thoughts; he also invalidated the original creation story from the Book of Genesis.  Rousseau supplanted the original biblical creation story with his own in an essay he wrote called "The discourse on the origins of inequality" (5).  In this work of speculative anthropology, Rousseau theorized that man lived in a pre-civil society, a "state of nature."

In the state of nature, man did not live in cities, communities, or tribes, or even with our families.  We lived as atomized and isolated individuals.  He believed that in the state of nature, men had neither "a fixed dwelling, nor any need for one another, they would hardly encounter one another twice in their lives" (6).  We lived solitary lives, without the need of others, and we would barely ever encounter other human beings.

Rousseau then made a serious leap in his logic where he theorized that because we lived as solitary creatures, men desired and consumed only what was in their immediate grasp at the immediate moment: "His desires do not go beyond his physical needs.  The only goods he knows in the universe are nourishment, a woman, and rest" (7).  What this means is that in the state of nature, if a person saw two apples on the ground next to a tree, he would take only one, if and only if he was hungry.  No one in Rousseau's world ever said to himself, "Well, I'm not hungry now, but I might be hungry later.  I'll take both apples and hang on to them."

Life existed this way in the state of nature until someone had the audacity to say "mine" and acquired private property for himself.  Read Rousseau's account of this progression: "The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society" (8).

For Rousseau, private property was the genesis of society and therefore the origin of our corruption.  Once the first person acquired private property, society ensued, and then the ills that accompanied society, like labor, followed.  He theorized that "from the moment it appeared advantageous to any one man to have enough provisions for two, equality disappeared, property was introduced, work became indispensable, and vast forests became smiling fields, which man had to water with the sweat of his brow (9)."

Note Rousseau's phrasing that "property was introduced [and] work became indispensable."  Prior to the existence of private property in the state of nature, labor was not a mandatory aspect of the human condition.

The introduction of labor had a profoundly negative effect on the world.  Rousseau proclaimed: "Iron and wheat civilized man, but ruined mankind" (10).  What did Rousseau mean by this?  Gene Starobinsky, a scholar of Rousseau, understood it in the following way:

Why this unfortunate consequence?  Because men, able now to produce more than they really need, fight over possession of the surplus.  They want not just to enjoy the fruits of their labor but to own them.  And they want not only actual goods but the abstract signs of possible or future goods. (11)

The moment one person began to use labor to overcome the condition of things in the state of nature, ownership and surplus ensued.  Once surplus and ownership entered the picture, scarcity followed.  Without labor and private property, scarcity is not a de facto aspect of life.  Scarcity and surplus are unknown in a world without Original Sin and Man's need to labor.  In the state of nature, human beings lacked the capacity to desire anything that was not immediately present; they made no demands on nature that nature could not fulfill.  For them, the miserliness of nature passed unnoticed.  Scarcity was neither a spur to development nor a source of social instability (12).

Rousseau interpreted this chain of causality in terms of its social impact.  Labor, private property, surplus, scarcity, and ownership detrimentally impacted human relations:

In a word, I could prove that, if we have a few rich and powerful men on the pinnacle of fortune and grandeur, while the crowd grovels in want and obscurity, it is because the former prize what they enjoy only insofar as others are destitute of it. (13)

Some people own and possess things merely to lord it over others.  Some people are cruel to others, taking a masochistic pleasure in having while others are lacking.

"Iron and wheat civilized man, but ruined mankind," indeed.  The importance of this phrase and the implicit concept it contains was not lost on Rousseau's followers, especially Karl Marx.  Marx paraphrased Rousseau with his famous aphorism: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" (14).  Why take two when you need only one?  Why have many when others are lacking?

This brings us to our modern socialists.  They do not believe that scarcity, private property, labor, and the concept of "mine" are mandatory aspects of the human condition.  With appropriate societal planning, we can eradicate those aspects of society.  This is what socialists mean by "hoarding wealth."  In the state of nature, possession for the sake of possession did not exist.  Neither did the ability or the mentality exist to torment others who lacked what you possessed.  These societal ills therefore do not need to exist today.  This is what wealth-hoarding is to the socialists, and this is why they believe it is immoral.  

Endnotes

1. Cortez, 2019.
2. Sanders, as quoted by Kaplan, T., (2019, September 15).
3. Ibid.
4. Rousseau, 1762.
5. Rousseau, 1753.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Starobinsky, 1971.
12. Levine, 1993
13. Rousseau, 1753.
14. Marx, 1875.

References

 Cortez, Alexandria. (2019, December 12). [Twitter moment]. Retrieved from: https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1205129075041415168?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

Kaplan, T. (2019, September 24). Bernie Sanders Proposes a Wealth Tax: 'I Don't Think That Billionaires Should Exist.' The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/us/politics/bernie-sanders-wealth-tax.html

Levine, A. (1993). The general will: Rousseau, Marx, communism. Cambridge, ENG:

Cambridge University.

Marx, K. (1875). Critique of the gotha programme. Marxist.org. Retrieved from:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_Critque_of_the_Gotha_Programme.pdf

Rousseau, J. (1753).  Discourse on the origins of inequality. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.

Rousseau, J. (1762). Letter to beaumont.

Starobinski, J. (1971). Jean-Jacques Rousseau: transparency and obstruction. Chicago,

IL: University of Chicago.

Image: Dimitri Rodriguez via Flickr.