Why Private Property Is A Social Good

One key component of Western society is very widely questioned in theory (though scarcely ever abandoned in fact by its doubters): private property. What are the defences of it? There are really two main forms, stemming from ultimately incompatible philosophies.

The first is that, essentially, everyone must go their own way, and has the innate natural right to make what wealth they can. Everyone is entirely responsible for ill conditions in their life. States exist and protect private property out of a compact between those who have earned their way – who give up some rights of aggression against each other and the weak to protect their property. This is fundamentally a Hobbesian view of the *purpose* of the state, though in other respects this view may prefer a very limited state.

I do not intend to defend this view, based as it is upon force, greed, and a self-serving view of human agency.

The conservative defence of disseminated private property – “several property”, as Burke put it – has different versions too, depending upon how property is expected to be spread. Chesterton, for instance, wanted “not fewer, but more capitalists” – with property much more widely distributed. The Agrarians aimed more at concentrations of private property in the hands of gentry, in which the wider community participated by right. I will not distinguish between these forms, or others, below. They are different means to the same ends.

The essence of the conservative defence is (at least) fourfold:

1.      Several property bonds landowner and dependents to the land – they have a necessary investment in it, and an incentive to care for it. “Land” here means not simply woods or field – though there is a strong strand of eco-conservatism which elevates care for the land – but also the aesthetics of property, good neighbourliness, and so forth. This bond to land, property, and community is the greatest of temporal adhesives for social order. A property-owning people are a settled people.

2.      Several property offers a dignified field where people may pursue proper human ends. I do not mean “pursue wealth and pleasure” – I mean ownership allows greater creative, taming efforts than renting. The renter calls the landlord to fix the cooker and paint the living room – the owner takes responsibility themselves, and in so doing tames disorder both within and without themselves.

3.      Several property locates ownership with the (potentially extended) family/household, rather than inorganic institutions such as the state. This is proper – the primary duties of care for creation and for neighbour fall first upon the individual and then their family, prior to the state’s involvement.

4.      Several property provides a degree of independence to its owners, and therefore provides a stable brake against the arbitrary power of the state. The most effective brake on state tyranny has never been the raw power of the people – indeed, the worst state abuses have been accomplished by that very power. The most effective brake on tyranny is disseminated private property, allowing many individuals and households to make decisions and hold opinions without reference to the state’s beneficence. A family which owns a business and a house is much more independent of the state, and so more prone to oppose its excesses, than a family which owns neither and is dependent on state support.

Several property lays responsibility on owners, provides a sphere for the pursuit of our proper ends, emphasizes the primacy of the family over other social units, and it serves as a brake on the tyranny of the state. It is an undeniable social good, and the basis of every functioning state in history that valued private liberty. The destruction of private property works the opposite effect – it engenders irresponsibility, stymies the pursuit of human flourishing, undermines the family, and strengthens the state. Any who trivialise the destruction of private property out of supposed concern for the oppressed demonstrate a misanthropy that undermines all claims they make to humanitarianism.

As a postscript, it is worth noting that where private property seems to break down social cohesion and peace – when rentier classes are created, when large numbers of workers are alienated from both property and labour, and so forth – conservative political philosophy does not see these as trivial costs of a wider ideological project. Rather, the philosophical conservative opposes these innovations of liberalism and seeks to ameliorate them in favour of those so alienated.