Rapport aux choses, rapport aux autres. Propriété privée et lien social (review)

Book Reviews 439 Yves Soudan, Rapport aux choses, rapport aux autres. Propriété privée et lien social (Moderne Kulturen. Relationen, Band 8). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2007. Pages: lxvi + 421. In his carefully constructed book, Yves Soudan presents and explains historically a series of texts from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. First, political theorists see to the right of individuals to own property. That covers the title’s relation to things (rapport aux choses). Then, as time passes, other theorists recall and rehearse political theory to encompass everyone within an order that does them all justice. This does not set the first contention aside, but it does relate the individual with his possessions to other individuals in dire need of possessions. All of them have a right to the means of life. That is the relation to others (rapport aux autres). The book bears the subtitle Private Property and Social Bonds. As far as private property goes, Y. Soudan points out the actuality of what might seem a question of old. He cites a 1999 text by a prominent notary in Paris to the effect that the taxation of wealth assails one’s freedom to invest and one’s right to property. He goes on from there to recall the highly complex and certainly trying question of ownership in the former East Germany, once the German Democractic Republic ceased. Nor does he forget the problems of land reform needed to assure, not only the means of life, but more importantly the dignity of the individual. We easily push our way through these examples to examine the social bonds whence production and property arise, freeing some and enslaving others, and conclude that we have a problem. Franciscans of today often address the problem. From January 30 to February 8 in 2006, fifty-eight Franciscans gathered in Uberlandia, Brasil, for the II International Conference for Justice, Peace and the Inegrity of Creation (JPIC). They took as theme “Embracing the Excluded of Today.” Jose Carballo, Minister General of the Franciscan Order, issued a convocation to all animators of JPIC in the order’s various entities. He also urged the participants to “remember our history,” as did the “Foundational Document” of the conference. Unfortunately, the proceedings of the conference , published by the General Curia in Rome, betrayed little understanding of Franciscan history. Franciscans generally think they understand their history, but they do not, and this document can stand as proof. As history , the proceedings offer little more than the easy reference to Francis and lepers. Re exclusion: At the core of the vita, in Chapter Seventeen (Early Rule XVII 17), we find the expression “bona Deo reddere,” which commits the movement to what today is called distributive justice. Several times in the early writings, we find the judgment that those who do not see to just distribution end up with nothing in this world and nothing in the world to come. A crucial dimension of early Franciscan history has to do with the 20.BookReviews.indd 439 12/5/07 20:48:12 Book Reviews 440 justice of inclusion. In his book on property and sociality, Soudan explains that so much injustice today results from a distorted interpretation of the right to property. The interpretation excludes people from their right to the means of life. And he concludes (LXI): “The question of exclusion, in poor countries as in rich, raises questions about social organisation and consequently about property.” If people want to understand Franciscan history and if they gather to discuss the problem of the exclusion of people from their rights to the means of life, they have to draw on such scholarship as Soudan lays out before us. They need the categories and the data that belong to political theory. The readings proposed on page 15 of the proceedings are not going to supply the participants with that education on the historical roots of social exclusion today. I understand why, in the evaluation of the conference (95), a minority said that we have to move beyond justifying JPIC with Franciscan spirituality. Implicitly they were calling for theory and its application. (I refrain from explaining why the use of Francis and...