• Science & Society, Vol. 83, No. 2, April 2019, 184–214 184 The Statistical Physics of a Private Ownership Society JULIO HUATO* ABSTRACT: The distribution of wealth in a society of individual private owners can be studied under a very general set of premises, material and social, using the approach of statistical physics. While technically advanced works invoke large-number canonical approxi- mations to support claims about the distribution of wealth or income in modern capitalist societies, a less formal but more general yet still rigorous argument can establish a major result, accessible to readers with no advanced training in mathematics, physics, or statistics. Two contradictory forces shape up wealth distribution: an increasing stock of wealth, which leads to a fall in the relative inequality of wealth distribution, and an expanding population, which increases it. Development of the forces of production, as embodied in a ris- ing ratio of wealth to population, thus works against the capitalist production relations that promote wealth inequality. KEYWORDS: Historical materialism, wealth distribution, econophysics 1. Introduction A CORE THESIS OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM is that the increasing socialization of material production on which mod- ern productivity growth stands collides with the social relations of capitalist production, based on private ownership, and that as a result capital’s rule over humanity exhausts its historical rationale. It * The Science & Society Manuscript Collective provided helpful feedback. The Editor, David Laibman, and invited reviewer, Paul Cockshott, noticed faws in an earlier draft. Their cri- tiques and suggestions helped to make a better fnal product. The remaining defects are my sole responsibility.