Morality of Stealing Bread

There is a moral argument that some people have made against strict property rights.  They question whether it would be moral for a man to steal bread in order to feed his starving family.  I believe that the proper response to this depends on examining actual conditions that would lead to the man not being able to feed his family.

More particularly we must acknowledge that no one is willing to give this man or his family food.  Why must we acknowledge this?  Because if someone were willing to voluntarily give them food, then no one would need to steal it in order to prevent any of them from starving.  So taking the willingness or unwillingness of anyone to give the man bread and whether or not people within the society would regard the theft of bread as being wrong independently, we have four possibilities.

First, it might be the case that no one would give the man bread and people would generally consider the theft wrong.  Suppose you lived in such a society.  Now, you have a choice.  This means that you are unwilling to give the man bread.  How do we know this?  If you were willing to give the man bread, then someone would be willing to give him bread thus violating the premise on which this case is based.  It would be hypocritical in this case to blame everyone else for not giving the man bread when you are unwilling to do this yourself.  Nor can I see how you would consider it to be moral to refuse to give a man bread, but turn a blind eye when he steals it.

Now, let's take the case that no one would give him bread, but he would be allowed to steal it.  Is this the kind of society that you would want to live in?  Again, I cannot see it as being virtuous to refuse giving bread to someone while regarding it as acceptable to steal it.  This is a society that has neither property rights nor generosity.  I don't think such a society would be very good at producing food and giving it to people who needed it.

Now we will take the case where there are people willing to give bread to the man, but they would also allow him to steal it.  Why would they do this?  He doesn't need to steal the bread in order to feed his family.  All he needs to do is find someone who is willing to give bread to him so he can feed his family.  Perhaps there is some reason why a particular owner of bread is unwilling to provide it for free.  Are we considering the needs of the people who own bread?

Finally we have the happy state of affairs where the man can get bread to feed his family, and society would regard it as immoral for him to steal it from those unwilling to provide.  Isn't this clearly the best of the four societies that we have considered?  So if anyone asks you if it is wrong for a man to steal bread in order to prevent his family from starving, ask why they aren't willing to give the poor man some bread, since if they were he wouldn't have to steal it.