Tradition, Family, Property

A friend of mine from my local church showed me a leaflet from an organisation called "Tradition, Family, Property". If you like to pigeonhole things, you would put it in the right-wing reactionary box. But what seems reactionary is not always so.

The pamphlet puts the orthodox line and is very much in the tradition of G K Chesterton, which is unsurprising since it presumably draws on the same sources in Catholic Social Teaching.

However, whoever wrote the pamphlet, which one must assume is a reflection of the organisation's view, has left themselves open with a logical inconsistency.

There is a paragraph on Property which is contractictory both with itself and with Catholic Social Teaching. The first three statements are obvious and straightforward; "Property is a human right”; "Man is a free individual entitled to the fruits of his labour”; and “It is indispensable for the well being of the family”.

Then it seems to go astray, and anyone familiar with Chesterton and his analysis of "Rerum Novarum" - as the author ought to be, will appreciate the point.

“Families accumulate patrimonies”, it says. Underpinning this statement is one of the Marxist errors, a failure to distinguish between the man-made world and that which is given by God. Property is a composite of both. Buildings and other forms of man-made property are the fruits of human labour, and nobody has the right to take them away, for example, through taxation or expropriation. It is also the case that such man-made property has a limited life, as it has to be renewed, usually several times in the course of a lifetime, through continuing inputs of human labour. So it cannot be passed down from generation to generation.

What is actually passed down as patrimony is land. Moreover, some families, a very few, and mostly through luck, accumulate large and valuable tracts of land, especially urban land or land with sought-after natural advantages. Most, however, accumulate nothing, nor can they, and it is not always through fecklessness. Indeed, with the tendency towards longer and longer mortgages and vast care-home charges for the elderly, what is being passed on down the generations is debt.


The situation is like a game of Monopoly. Those who play from the start are in the game on equal terms, since they can all acquire properties. But most people are in the situation of someone who joins the game when all the properties have already been purchased by one of the original players. They are not in the game on equal terms but have no option but to pay rent on every square on which they land, since they can never acquire any properties of their own. In the face of overwhelming odds against them, widespread fecklessness is unsurprising. Just consider how the British tax and benefits system works, when it leaves people worse off when working than staying at home idle. It breeds fecklessness, social division and over the past couple of centuries has provided fertile ground for socialism, Marxism and all sorts of other evil and extremist creeds.

I myself have seen the value of my own property grow many times over just in the past 25 years through a huge increase in its land value, which I have done nothing whatsoever to bring about. This has happened on account of other people’s labour, not mine, and the increase has been more than I have ever earned, or could have hoped to have earned, through honest work. It is not at nobody’s expense, because the end result now is that young couples can not afford a home in this part of the world, in which they can raise a family. So until this is addressed, Tradition, Family, Property's project cannot happen.

Chesterton recognised the problem. Reflecting on the teachings in "Rerum Novarum", he argued that since property was a prerequisite for the good life, everyone should be able to obtain some. This insight was the origin of the (mostly) Catholic political movement known as Distributism. Failure to establish this precondition is a major cause of the present state of affairs, which can be traced back to the collapse of the feudal system, under which land holding (there was no ownership) was accompanied by particular responsibilities. Until the balance of rights and responsibilities going with land holding/ownership is reinstated through appropriate legal and fiscal measures, there can be no revival of Christian civilisation but only continuing decline. And how might the principles of feudalism be adapted to present-day circumstances?

I have written and asked the question. It will be interesting to see what the reply is.