If a society doesn't have widespread ownership of property, it will be impoverished. You'll have actual famines caused not by bad weather, but by bad political institutions. Sudan is one of the most sparsely populated countries on earth, and it has a basic problem feeding its people. Holland is one of the most dense, but because it has a system of secure ownership it can feed them. If you can't sustain life, there will be no art, literature, or liberty.
Private property is the institution that led to the rise of capitalism.
It didn't happen until the 17th and 18th centuries in England. There were property rights before then, but they weren't widespread. Hernando de Soto made the same point about the Third World in his book The Other Path . He's from Peru but went to school in Europe. He saw individual riches there and knew that it wasn't because Europeans were more intelligent than Peruvians.