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UPSC Civil Services 2015 Prelims General Studies Paper II

PASSAGE - 2
No Right is absolute, exclusive or inviolable. The Right of personal property, similarly, has to be perceived in the larger context of its assumed legitimacy. The Right of personal property should unite the principle of liberty with that of equality, and both with the principle of cooperation.

Question : 42

Total: 80

In the light of the argument in the above passage, which one of the following statements is the most convincing explanation?

The Right of personal property is a Natural Right duly supported by statutes and scriptures.
Personal property is a theft and an instrument of exploitation. The Right of personal property is therefore violative of economic justice.
The Right of personal property is violative of distributive justice and negates the principle of cooperation.
The comprehensive idea of economic justice demands that the Right of each person to acquisition of property has to be reconciled with that of others.

Validate

Solution:

(a) is wrong as it negates the basic premise of the passage.
According to the passage 'No Right is absolute, exclusive or inviolable whereas (a) says that The Right of personal property is a Natural Right.
(b) is wrong as it presents another extreme stand on Personal property by equating it to theft and an instrument of exploitation. It misses out the assumed legitimacy of the right and does not see it in the context.
(c) is wrong as it talks about The Right of personal property being violative of distributive justice and negating the principle of cooperation. It does not explain the argument.
(d) is correct as it clearly explains the argument by mentioning that the Right of each person to acquisition of property has to be reconciled with that of others.Refer the principle of cooperation mentioned in the last sentence.
Note : Economic justice, which touches the individual person as well as the social order, encompasses the moral principles which guide us in designing our economic institutions. These institutions determine how each person earns a living, enters into contracts, exchanges goods and services with others and otherwise produces an independent material foundation for his or her economic sustenance. The ultimate purpose of economic justice is to free each person to engage creatively in the unlimited workbeyond economics, that of the mind and the spirit.
The Three Principles of Economic Justice: Like every system, economic justice involves input, output, and feedback for restoring harmony or balance between input and output. Within the system of economic justice as defined by Louis Kelso and Mortimer Adler, there are three essential and interdependent principles: Participative Justice (the input principle), Distributive Justice (the out-take principle), and Social Justice (the feedback principle). Like the legs of a three-legged stool, if any of these principles is weakened or missing, the system of economic justice will collapse.

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