We now reach the seventh principle of Kirk's ten principles of conservatism (detailed here).
For the institution of several property—that is, private property—has been a powerful instrument for teaching men and women responsibility, for providing motives to integrity, for supporting general culture, for raising mankind above the level of mere drudgery, for affording leisure to think and freedom to act. To be able to retain the fruits of one’s labor; to be able to see one’s work made permanent; to be able to bequeath one’s property to one’s posterity; to be able to rise from the natural condition of grinding poverty to the security of enduring accomplishment; to have something that is really one’s own—these are advantages difficult to deny. The conservative acknowledges that the possession of property fixes certain duties upon the possessor; he accepts those moral and legal obligations cheerfully.
Reading:
Russell Kirk: 'The ideologies of capitalism and socialism' here
Critical discussion:
Kirk's position on private property is that it is necessary for the fulfilment of human nature, particularly in allowing the pursuit of long term goods which go beyond an individual's lifetime. (Family life in particular would be undermined if people are unable to pass on property to the next generation.) On the other hand, unrestrained capitalism is just as evil as communism:
Of course one encounters here and there, still, well-meaning individuals who think of themselves, somewhat vaguely, as socialists. But one has only to observe at close range the exiting Labour Party of Britain—which, after all, is more humane than most socialist groups—to apprehend how dismal a socialist order would be. The aspirations of the 19th-century Christian Socialists of France and Germany, or of the British guild socialists, have gone glimmering altogether. How can one make an alliance with ghosts?
The “capitalist” ideologues who proclaim that the Holy Market is the be-all and end-all are working their own destruction. As truly private property gives way to colossal mergers and combinations, the prediction of Marx is increasingly fulfilled: monopolies and oligopolies find few defenders in rough times, and are converted readily into agencies of the state. As the liberals’ moral nihilism dissolves the inner order and the outer, truly things fall apart. For the sake of the permanent things, we ought to transcend mere faction and unite to redeem the time.
But to exchange “capitalist” claptrap for “socialist” claptrap will not suffice. So long as the socialist genuinely remains attached to socialist dogma, he will be the conservative’s adversary.
What defenders of the permanent things should seek is not a league with some set of old-fangled or new-fangled ideologues, but the politics of prudence, enlivened by imagination. Politics remains the art of the possible.
[From 'The ideologies of capitalism and socialism' -link above.]
Attarian's essay above, I think, rather understates Kirk's suspicion of capitalism, particularly as it existed in America at the end of his life. Kirk's own essays above seem to me fully within the spirit of the social teaching of the Church, for example:
The Church's social doctrine, while recognizing the market as an irreplaceable instrument for regulating the inner workings of the economic system, points out the need for it to be firmly rooted in its ethical objectives, which ensure and at the same time suitably circumscribe the space within which it can operate autonomously. The idea that the market alone can be entrusted with the task of supplying every category of goods cannot be shared, because such an idea is based on a reductionist vision of the person and society.
[From the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, para. 349 here]
Scottish snippet:
Kirk was friendly with the sculptor, Hew Lorimer and his wife, Mary, both Catholic converts. (Lorimer trained under Eric Gill.) Kirk says of the Lorimers in his biography, The Sword of the Imagination (p114):
Kirk's friendship with the Lorimers has endured warmly for three generations. Kellie [Castle] is National Trust property now; kindly Hew died in a Fife nursing home; but the two Lorimer sons and the daughter remain intimate with the Kirks, in whose library building at Mecosta are fixed the originals of three of Lorimer's allegorical figures for the National Library of Scotland -that is, the models in Hopetounwood limestone from which the colossal reliefs in Edinburgh were carved in situ, Kirk on the scaffolding with the sculptor one fair day. Kirk's three stone reliefs are Theology, with the sword of faith; on Theology's right, Law, bewigged and clasping a book; on Theology's left, History, with a long scroll and a quill pen. These carvings, with their Celtic dignity, may outlast the Common Reader.
People are meant to live forever, Kirk came to reflect with the passing of the years. Why do they perish? Plato and St Paul tell us that they do not perish -and St Augustine of Hippo, too; they merely depart from us. Mary Lorimer is in her grave now, but is fixed in Kirk's memory by her blithe spirit, her humor, and her coffee -the best ever brewed for guests; and Hew Lorimer, solitary, later entered eternity. What timeless moments Kirk spent with them!
[Next post: 26 September 2016]
[Details of image: Kellie Castle Fife, home of Hew and Mary Lorimer. Full details here.]
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