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Templeton Essay

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For if private wealth promotes freedom in a lawful society, so in turn freedom promotes yet more wealth. The economic superpowers of the future will almost certainly possess private fortunes of every size, in abundance, and the legal protection that alone underwrites their value. They will also enjoy, as do the United States and Britain today, free institutions. That is the lesson history teaches.

AND THE LESSON needs to be learned. It is widely assumed today that a country has achieved freedom once its citizens have been granted the right to vote. But one-person-one-vote democracy co-exists happily with tyranny in many parts of our world. This is for two preeminent reasons: the absence of a rule of law, and the restriction of private property to a small and often self-perpetuating elite. Those reasons are connected, as history shows. Only when property is widespread, and outside the direct control of the state, is the sovereign power truly subject to law. And only when there is a rule of law can private property spread among the people, without the risk of confiscation by the state. Thus in Zimbabwe, where every adult theoretically has the right to vote, but where real power and property belong to the dictator and the leading members of his party, voting can change nothing. Elsewhere, where poverty is too deep, widespread, and endemic, as in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the political process is regarded with incomprehension by the impoverished majority, for whom survival is more important than government.

Even in the United States and Britain we witness a connection between poverty and a loss of trust in democracy. It is a grim fact that the poor are less inclined to vote than the affluent, and the very poor most unlikely to vote at all. The problem is greatly aggravated if extreme poverty is concentrated in an easily distinguishable minority. Poverty, or more correctly the consciousness of poverty, depends not just on income but on possessions. The very poor own virtually nothing, and to them the democratic apparatus of the state is meaningless, if not actually hostile. When the propertyless are a majority they either withdraw from the political process altogether, or invest their hopes in some kind of radical revolutionary change—hopes that call forth brutal repressive measures from those who stand to lose from any change to the status quo. Either way, freedom is the first casualty.

BY FAR THE BEST form of property, from a psychological and therefore a political viewpoint, is realty or real estate, above all the home in which the voter lives. Here, the organic connection between freehold and freedom applies just as forcibly to the 21st century urban masses as it did in Dark Age Europe. Since the Industrial Revolution of the 1780s, total wealth has increased many times, and is increasing faster than ever. The problem is its distribution, on a permanent, self-sustaining basis. The phrase "a property-owning democracy" goes back to the 1880s. In the century-and-a-quarter since then, some progress has been made in giving it reality. Priority was given, of course, first to the spread of universal suffrage, second to establishing minimum living standards. A third, perhaps the most important object, homeownership, was pushed into the background— and even impeded until recently by the belief among socialists that the working classes were best served by publicly subsidized housing-to-rent. This policy, whose social consequences have been on the whole disastrous, has now been largely abandoned. If we are to underpin democratic freedom economically, we should aim at a society in which more than three-quarters of the population live in homes they own, or are in the process of acquiring. In Britain the figure is over 60 percent, and in the United States over 50 percent, so the object is attainable. Moreover, when the great majority of people own their homes, they are likely to be much more resistant to an intrusive state, and more tenacious of their rights. I would like to see the great political parties bring the spread of ownership, and its defense, right to the center of their programs, and compete with each other in how to achieve these objectives. In doing so, they will accomplish more for freedom than any conceivable legislation to further "human rights." The magic characteristic of property, especially its core, homeownership, is that it is not abstract but concrete. It is real, as the term  "real estate" implies.

Politicians have fought shy of the issue because "property" is associated with the few. But that idea is out of date. Property is now owned by the many, and ought to be universal. The true slogan for the future is "Assets for all." And were all to enjoy assets, the chances are they will  enjoy freedom too.

Paul Johnson is the author of many books, including A History of the English People, Modern Times, and A History of the American People. This essay is the second in a new ten-part series being published in successive issues of The American Spectator under the general title, "The Future of Individual Liberty: Elevating the Human Condition and Overcoming the Challenges to Free Societies." The series is supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this series are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.