Property Rights and the Making of Christendom
by William Kingston
Journal of Law and Religion, Vol. 9, No. 2. (1992), pp. 373-397.
ABSTRACT
[size=+0]The contemporary turmoil in Eastern Europe and the former So- viet Union reflects acceptance by their populations that collectivism[size=+0] has failed them and that they have more to hope for from the prop- erty rights systems of the West. In economic terms, indeed, Western culture has depended fundamentally on these rights, and in recent years economic historians have been paying increasing attention to them. In doing so, however, they have encountered a problem whichthey are unable to solve within the terms of their own discipline: eco- nomics relies on the concept of agents who act only according to ra- tional self-interest, but property rights as they can actually be found in history have often reflected forces that can only be described as altruism. Economics is now therefore having to take account of cul- tural factors in the formation of property rights, and the deeper these are studied the clearer the religious influence on them appears to be.
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