Private Property and Security

Northland Age, Volume 8, Issue 2, 12 October 1938, Page 4

Private Property and Security

Mr. R. H. Tawney, of Oxford University, in his celebrated book, “The Acquisitive Society,” dealing with the nature of property and its rights, says:— The justification of private property traditional in England, which saw in it the security that each man should enjoy the fruit of his own labour, though largely applicable to the age in which it was formulated, has undergone the fate of most political theories. It has been refuted, not by the doctrines of rival philosophers, but by the prosaic course of economic development. As far as the mass of mankind . are concerned, the need which private property other than personal possessions does still often satisfy, though imperfectly and precariously, is the need for security. To the small investors, who are the majority of property-owners, though owning only an insignificant fraction of the property in existence, its meaning is simple. It is not wealth or power, or even leisure from work. It is safety. They work hard. They save a little money for old age, or for sickness, or for their children. They invest it, and the interest stands between them and all they dread most. Their savings ai’e of convenience to industry, the income from them is convenient to themselves. “Why,” they ask, “should we not reap in old age the advantage of energy and thrift in youth?” And this hunger for security is so imperious that they who suffer most from the abuses of propei’ty, as well as those who if they would profit by them, would be at least inclined to do so, will tolei’ate and even defend them, for fear lest the knife which trims dead matter would cut into the quick. They have seen too many men drown to be critical of dry land, though it be an inhospitable rock. They are haunted by the nightmare of the future, and if a burglar broke in, would welcome the burglar. The need for security is fundamental, and almost the gravest indictment of our civilisation is that the mass of mankind are without it. Property is one way of organising it. It is quite comprehensible, therefore, that the instrument should be confused with the end, and that any proposal to modify it should create dismay. In the past, human beings, roads, bridges and ferries, civil, judicial and clerical offices, and commissions in the army have all been private property. Whenever it was proposed to abolish the rights exercised over them, it was protested that their removal would involve the destruction of an institution in which thrifty men had invested their savings, and on which they depended for protection amid the chance of life and for comfort in old age.

In fact, however, property is not the only method of assuring the future, nor, when it is the way selected, is security dependent upon the maintenance of all the rights that ai’e at pi’esent normally involved in ownership. In so far as its psychological foundation is the necessity for securing an income which is stable and certain, which is forthcoming when its recipient cannot work, and which can be used to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves, what is really demanded is not the command over the fluctuating proceeds of some particular undertaking, which accompanies the ownership of capital, but the security which is offei’ed by an annuity. Property is the instrument, security the object, and when some alternate way is forthcoming of providing the latter, it does not appear in pi'actice that any loss of confidence, of freedom or of independence, is caused by the absence of the former.

. . . . They will not desire to establish any visionary Communism, for they will realise that the fi’ee disposal of a sufficiency of personal possessions is the condition of a healthy and self-respecting life, and will seek to distribute more widely the property rights which make, them today the privilege of a minority.