A bit of a sticky wicket

“When the socialists show that the division of property among present-day mankind is the outcome of countless acts of injustice and violence, and in summa repudiate any obligation towards something having so unjust a foundation, they are seeing only one aspect of the matter.  The entire past of the old culture was erected upon force, slavery, deception, error; but we, the heirs and inheritors of all these past things, cannot decree our own abolition and may not wish away a single part of them.  The disposition to injustice inhabits the souls of the non-possessors too, they are no better than the possessors and have no moral prerogative over them, for their own ancestors were at some time or other possessors.  What is needed is not a forcible redistribution but a gradual transformation of mind: the sense of justice must grow greater in everyone, the instinct for violence weaker.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (trans. Hollingdale)