George Walford: Local Boy Makes Good

A main theme of systematic ideology is that the major ideologies form a determinate series, in the sense that the people who move along the range develop the successive ideologies in a predictable order. But in doing this they do not abandon the earlier ones; these are, so to speak, carried along with them so that a person who reaches the relatively sophisticated ideology expressed in communism retains (usually without recognising it) the less sophisticated ideologies which value private property. Consider this example:

We all know what Robert Owen tried to do with his textile mills at New Lankark, but have you ever wondered how he came to be in control of them to start with? He married the owner’s daughter, Ann Dale. Owen held that environment is more important than heredity, but he evidently retained his regard for inheritance.

from Ideological Commentary 12, August 1984.