Parshat Hayyai Sarah, Genesis 23: 1 – 25:17, contains a detailed
description of the world’s first recorded real estate transaction thus providing
the moral foundation for capitalism. The purchase by Abraham of the Cave of
Machpela in Hebron, which he purchased as a family plot to bury his wife Sarah,
from Ephron the Hittite established private property ownership and the laws of
social transaction.
Capitalism, the principle of private ownership of property and
the social means of trading private ownership for mutual benefit, is not only
natural to man but capitalism exists in the animal and even in the plant
kingdom. Birds, for example, establish property when they build nests and
beavers when they build dams. Plants establish property when two trees compete
for sunshine and when one prevails while the other withers.
Trade and competition are natural elements of property ownership.
Property is either physical, as in the
Cave of Machpela, or abstract, as in the 400 shekels of silver that Abraham
paid Ephron for the deed. Abstract property includes money, ideas, education, the
creative arts, invention, labor, contracts, time, or anything else that is created
and voluntarily traded. The Torah spends considerable time dwelling upon the
transaction between Abraham and Ephron, a transaction that was conducted in the presence of the Hittites and Abraham’s family. The
real estate that Abraham purchased from Ephron, located in Hebron, remains part
of the eternal property of his descendants, the Jewish people, to this day.
Capitalism is based upon defined entities, or properties, both real and
abstract, and the proper means by which such entities interact with each other. Indeed,
The Torah, which is filled with such definitions of properties and laws regarding
their proper interaction, beginning with the separation of the heavens from the
earth which established the first two properties. This definition is quickly
followed by the separation of the land from the seas, plants, animals, and
finally man which is then separated between men and women. In the natural world properties are amoral, they exist. Human beings possessed the ability to reason which led to the perception of the moral and spiritual nature of property and their proper relationship s to each other.
The Torah proceeds to the physical separations of tribes
and nations and the abstract and at times intricate rules of moral engagement
between individuals and nations. The establishment of property at Machpela
brought separation of entities to a human level as the transaction between Abraham
and Ephron was negotiated between two men, without the intervention of either
the divine or nature, for the mutual benefit of each party operating consciously
and voluntarily.
The transaction at the cave of Machpela occurred at a time
when mankind was just beginning to emerge from what Frederic Engles accurately referred
to as primitive socialism. In the times of Abraham, mankind toiled in a semi-conscious
state of collectivism, not yet conscious of morality or individual identity. In this sense, it could be said that the transaction
at the cave was the first fully conscious act in human history. The struggle
for individual identity has continued, with fits and starts, ever since.
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