Private Property Is a Religion, Part II

Andro Linklater’s opinions on private property are not subtle. With descriptions like “contagion” and “monster”, he is clearly not a fan of the principle that helped form a new psychological outlook and sensibility that prioritized the individual. Linklater lists the results of the private property revolution: “The traditional rights of villeins and laborers were overturned. The claims of the feudal superior, whether lord or king, were frozen out. The needs of wives and children were subsumed. All those who might have challenged the solitary male owner’s right to exclusive possession of the land were sidelined” (Linklater 36). Unsurprisingly, each of these results was presented as deeply tangled with religious values and histories. A few points in Linklater’s work regarding the conversation between private property and religion are worth noting.

First, the process of putting church land on the market circa 1540  is crucial. Since the Protestant Reformation spread rumors of the “luxury and decadence of monastic life,” monasteries attracted a degree of scrutiny that would result in King Henry VIII’s seizure of religious property (Linklater 20). The seized land would be sold to pay for the King’s navy and foreign wars, leading to several turnovers of the land that was priorly incredibly lucrative for wool production. The seizures of lands formerly held by monasteries accelerated the psychological development of individualized sensibilities. The seizures also set in motion the horrible conditions of what Marx would call “primitive accumulation” in which “so many peasants were driven off the manors that once supported them, they were deemed a menace to England’s emerging property-owning society” (Linklater 21). It seemed that in effort to rebuke the corruption of the Catholic church, an even greater corruption would take its place. Yet whereas the corruption of the Catholic church was blamed on a community, eventual criticism of private-property owning societies would be placed on a system. Curiously, in both scenarios the individual is protected.

Next worth mentioning is this unmistakable linkage between private property and Protestantism, tied tighter by a democratic knot. Referring to the development of private property for commercial usage other than subsistence farming, Max Weber argued that, “profit driven enterprise sprang out of the individualized tenets of the protestant reformation” (Linklater 18). However, Linklater disagrees with Weber in that, “it would be more accurate to say that individual property owners were naturally drawn to a faith that gave priority to the individual conscience” (Linklater 18). Linklater’s critique based on Weber’s incorrect dating would support his later description of the “new American” inclination toward Reverend John Cotton’s sermon. Linklater describes Cotton’s sermon as giving private property a “biblical backing”, noting, “there was biblical evidence to reassure the new Americans that their right to individually owned, landed property depended on their own efforts in improving the ground, and not on English law” (Linklater 28). In the “new American” frame of reference, another ingredient is added to Linklater’s contagious recipe for disaster: democracy. He reminds us, “The first major democratic decision taken on American soil,” was, “in favor of individual ownership,” and, “carried a symbolism that echoes down the centuries,” referencing the Mayflower settlers’ decision to turn away from a more “communist”-like model of living toward conjoining allotments of private property to form a community (Linklater 25). However, this tripartite “monster”, Protestantism, private property, and democracy, formed during a time when private property was still widely regarded as validated by monarchies.

As such, lastly, I’d like to mention how the Divine Right of Kings plays a role according to Linklater. The author’s discussion on colonies highlighted the nature of the relationship between monarchy and property. As he outlines the legality of royal charters that granted territory to a company or powerful proprietor, Linklater claims, “The King’s royal power, backed by ‘divine grace’, as the charter also specified, was the ultimate authority that enabled colonists to claim that particular bit of the earth’s surface as their property… Real estate was literally and legally, royal estate” (Linklater 29). This unprovable notion chafes against the Judaic concept, stemming from Leviticus, that humans are “mortals”, “mere strangers and sojourners” by definition unable to own land (Linklater 26). Similarly, the Divine Right of Kings grates against the idea held dear to third century B.C. Chinese emperors that rulers are but, “intermediaries between the spiritual and material worlds” (Linklater 26). Both the Judaic and Chinese perceptions (and others that Linklater mentions) of a person’s orientation in the universe speak to the individual, but do not prioritize it making private property an unstable concept. I wonder how these rather humble and beautiful existential ideas could be incorporated or reimagined in a society indisputably defined by an “individualized ethos of the property-owner influenced government, the law, and everyday life” (Linklater 38). It very well may be impossible, as private property seems less an ethos, but more a religion; a religion with its own mystical all-powerful beings who really own the earth: corporations.