In a
recent article posted on the Public Discourse website, Christopher Wolfe,
emeritus professor of political science at Marquette University, draws an interesting analogy between marriage as a social
institution and private property as a social institution.

In his article,
entitled The Abolition of Marriage, he suggests that, despite the fact that
people are naturally inclined towards marriage, “the availability of marriage as
an institution they can choose to enter cannot be taken for
granted”.

He suggests
marriage, in this sense, is similar to private
property which can also suddenly one day be
no longer available.

He says: “Property is both natural and pre-political,
on one hand, and also a social institution essentially dependent on various
legal arrangements, on the other. So, too, with marriage.”

As
with
marriage, he writes, there are “powerful
forces inclining human beings to accumulate property, and there is a strong
natural basis for properly qualified property rights”.

However,
he argues, in any given society, “such
property rights may not be available”. Historically, a number of societies have
abolished property rights, for example the
USSR.

We
can also damage or destroy marriage as a social institution by repeatedly
redefining it legally and
removing certain core elements from
it

He
claims that to some extent no-fault divorce
laws began this process in the US.

He
writes:
“Whatever the impact of the allowance of divorce in a certain limited number of
cases had been, the shift to no-fault divorce has profoundly changed the very
notion of marriage among Americans, and has deeply damaged it.”

As he
says: “One of the ways in which marriage can become unavailable to people is to
make ‘marriage’ a contract that is temporary and terminable at the will of
either party”.

Of
course, when the right to own private property is abolished or significant
weakened, what has happened is unmistakable to all.

Unfortunately,
when the institution of marriage is hollowed out it may not to apparent to
people at all. After all, they can still marry. What they don’t notice is that
what they are entering has been largely denuded and emptied of its original
legal and institutional standing.

In
any event, Professor Wolfe’s article is well worth a read.