THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST PRIVATE LANDOWNERSHIP
If land were not privately owned there would be no receiving of rent
by individuals. Therefore, the morality of the landlord's share of the
national product is intimately related to, and is usually treated in
connection with, the morality of private ownership.
Substantially all the opponents of private property in land to-day are
either Socialists or disciples of Henry George. In the view of the
former, land as well as the other means of production should be owned
and managed by the State. Although they are more numerous than the
Georgeites, their attack upon private landownership is less
conspicuous and less formidable than the propaganda carried on by the
Henry George men. The Socialists give most of their attention to the
artificial instruments of production, dealing with land only
incidentally, implicitly, or occasionally. The followers of Henry
George, commonly known as Single Taxers or Single Tax men, defend the
private ownership of artificial capital, or capital in the strict
economic sense, but desire that the control of the community over the
natural means of production should be so far extended as to
appropriate for public uses all economic rent. Their criticism of
private ownership is not only more prominent than that made by the
Socialists, but is based to a much greater extent upon ethical
considerations.
_Arguments by Socialists_
Indeed, the orthodox or Marxian Socialists are logically debarred by
their social philosophy from passing a strictly moral judgment upon
property in land. For their theory of economic determinism, or
historical materialism, involves the belief that private
landownership, like all other social institutions, is a _necessary
product_ of economic forces and processes. Hence it is neither morally
good nor morally bad. Since neither its existence nor its continuance
depends upon the human will, it is entirely devoid of moral quality.
It is as unmoral as the succession of the seasons, or the movement of
the tides. And it will disappear through the inevitable processes of
economic evolution. As expressed by Engels: "The growing perception
that existing social institutions are unreasonable and unjust, that
reason has become unreason, and right wrong, is only proof that in the
modes of production and exchange changes have taken place, with which
the social order, adapted to earlier economic conditions, is no longer
in keeping."[8]
Frequently, however, the individual Socialist forgets this
materialistic theory, and falls back upon his common sense, and
his innate conceptions of right and wrong, of free will and
responsibility. Instead of regarding the existing land system as a
mere product of blind economic forces, he often denounces it as
morally wrong and unjust. His contentions may be reduced to two
propositions: The proprietor who takes rent from a cultivator robs the
producer of a part of his product; and no one has a right to take for
his exclusive use that which is the natural heritage and means of
support for all the people. Referring to the receipt of 35,000,000
pounds a year in rent by 8,000 British landlords, Hyndman and Morris
exclaim: "Yet in the face of all this a certain school still contend
that there is no class robbery."[9] Since the claim that the labourer
has a right to the full product of his labour applies to capital as
well as to land, it can be more conveniently considered when we come
to treat of the income of the capitalist. With regard to the second
contention, the following statement by Robert Blatchford may be taken
as fairly representative of Socialist thought: "The earth belongs to
the people.... So that he who possesses land possesses that to which
he has no right, and he who invests his savings in land becomes the
purchaser of stolen property."[10] Inasmuch as this argument is
substantially the same as one of the fundamental contentions in the
system of Henry George, it will be discussed in connection with the
latter, in the pages immediately following.
_Henry George's Attack on the Title of First Occupancy_
Every concrete right, whether to land or to artificial goods, is based
upon some contingent fact or ground, called a title. By reason of some
title a man is justified in appropriating a particular farm, house, or
hat. When he becomes the proprietor of a thing that has hitherto been
ownerless, his title is said to be original; when he acquires an
article from some previous owner, his title is said to be derived. As
an endless series of proprietors is impossible, every derived title
must be traceable ultimately to some original title. Among the derived
titles the most important are contract, inheritance, and prescription.
The original title is either first occupancy or labour. The prevailing
view among the defenders of private landownership has always been that
the original title is not labour but first occupancy. If this title be
not valid every derived title is worthless, and no man has a true
right to the land that he calls his own. Henry George's attack upon
the title of first occupancy is an important link in his argument
against private property in land.
"Priority of occupation give exclusive and perpetual title to the
surface of a globe in which, in the order of nature, countless
generations succeed each other!... Has the first comer at a banquet
the right to turn back all the chairs, and claim that none of the
other guests shall partake of the food provided, except as they make
terms with him? Does the first man who presents a ticket at the door
of a theatre, and passes in, acquire by his priority the right to shut
the doors and have the performance go on for him alone?... And to this
manifest absurdity does the recognition of the individual right to
land come when carried to its ultimate that any human being, could he
concentrate in himself the individual rights to the land of any
country, could expel therefrom all the rest of the inhabitants; and
could he concentrate the individual rights to the whole surface of the
globe, he alone of all the teeming population of the earth would have
the right to live."[11]
In passing, it may be observed that Henry George was not the first
distinguished writer to use the illustration drawn from the theatre.
Cicero, St. Basil, and St. Thomas Aquinas all employed it to refute
extravagant conceptions of private ownership. In reply to the
foregoing argument of Henry George, we point out: first, that the
right of ownership created by first occupancy is not unlimited, either
extensively or intensively; and, second, that the historical
injustices connected with private ownership have been in only a
comparatively slight degree due to the first occupation of very large
tracts of land. The right of first occupancy does not involve the
right to take a whole region or continent, compelling all subsequent
arrivals to become tenants of the first. There seems to be no good
reason to think that the first occupant is justified in claiming as
his own more land than he can cultivate by his own labour, or with the
assistance of those who prefer to be his employés or his tenants
rather than independent proprietors. "He has not the right to reserve
for himself alone the whole territory, but only that part of it which
is really useful to him, which he can make fruitful."[12] Nor is the
right of private landownership, on whatever title it may rest,
unlimited intensively, that is, in its powers or comprehension. Though
a man should have become the rightful owner of all the land in a
neighbourhood, he would have no moral right to exclude therefrom those
persons who could not without extreme inconvenience find a living
elsewhere. He would be morally bound to let them cultivate it at a
fair rental. The Christian conception of the intensive limitations of
private ownership is well exemplified in the action of Pope Clement
IV, who permitted strangers to occupy the third part of any estate
which the proprietor refused to cultivate himself.[13] Ownership
understood as the right to do what one pleases with one's possessions,
is due partly to the Roman law, partly to the Code Napoléon, but
chiefly to modern theories of individualism.
In the second place, the abuses which have accompanied private
property in land are very rarely traceable to abuses of the right of
first occupancy. The men who have possessed too much land, and the men
who have used their land as an instrument of social oppression, have
scarcely ever been first occupants or the successors thereof through
derived titles. This is especially true of modern abuses, and modern
legal titles. In the words of Herbert Spencer: "Violence, fraud, the
prerogative of force, the claims of superior cunning,--these are the
sources to which these titles may be traced. The original deeds were
written with the sword, rather than with the pen: not lawyers but
soldiers were the conveyancers: blows were the current coin given in
payment; and for seals blood was used in preference to wax."[14] Not
the appropriation of land which nobody owned, but the forcible and
fraudulent seizure of land which had already been occupied, has been
one of the main causes of the evils attending upon private
landownership. Moreover, in England and all other countries that have
adopted her legal system, the title of first occupancy could never be
utilised by individuals: all unoccupied land was claimed by the Crown
or by the State, and transferred thence to private persons or
corporations. If some individuals have got possession of too much land
through this process, the State, not the title of first occupancy,
must bear the blame. This is quite clear in the history of land tenure
in the United States and Australasia.
Henry George's attack upon private landownership through the title of
first occupancy is therefore ineffective; for he attributes to this
qualities that it does not possess, and consequences for which it is
not responsible.
_His Defence of the Title of Labour_
Thinking that he has shattered the title of first occupancy, Henry
George undertakes to set up in its place the title of labour. "There
can be to the ownership of anything no rightful title which is not
derived from the title of the producer, and does not rest on the
natural right of the man to himself."[15] The only original title is
man's right to the exercise of his own faculties; from this right
follows his right to what he produces; now man does not produce land;
therefore he cannot have rightful property in land. Of these four
propositions the first is a pure assumption, the second is untrue, the
third is a truism, and the fourth is as unfounded as the first.
Dependently upon God, man has, indeed, a right to himself and to the
exercise of his own faculties; but this is a right of action, not of
property. By the exercise of this right alone man can never produce
anything, never become the owner of anything. He can produce only by
exerting his powers upon something outside of himself; that is, upon
the goods of external nature. To become the producer and the owner of
a product, he must first become the owner of materials. By what title
is he to acquire these? In one passage[16] Henry George seems to think
that no title is necessary, and refers to the raw material as an
"accident," while the finished product is the "essence," declaring
that "the right of private ownership attaches the accident to the
essence, and gives the right of ownership to the natural material in
which the labour of production is embodied." Now this solution of the
difficulty is too simple and arbitrary. Its author would have shrunk
from applying it universally; for example, to the case of the
shoemaker who produces a pair of shoes out of stolen materials, or the
burglar who makes an overcoat more useful (and therefore performs a
task of production) by transferring it from a warehouse to his
shivering back! Evidently Henry George has in mind only raw material
in the strict sense, that which has not yet been separated from the
storehouse of nature; for he declares in another place that "the right
to the produce of labour cannot be enjoyed without the free use of the
opportunities offered by nature."[17] In other words, man's title to
the materials upon which he is to exercise his faculties, and of which
he is to become the owner by right of production, is the title of gift
conferred by nature, or nature's God.
Nevertheless this title is applicable only to those goods that exist
in unlimited abundance, not to those parts of the natural bounty that
are scarce and possess economic value. A general assumption by
producers that they were entitled to take possession of the gifts of
nature indiscriminately would mean industrial anarchy and civil war.
Hence Henry George tells us that the individual should pay rent to
"the community to satisfy the equal rights of all other members of
the community."[18] Inasmuch as the individual must pay this price
before he begins to produce, his right to the use of natural
opportunities is not "free," nor does his labour alone constitute a
title to that part of them that he utilises in production.
Consequently labour does not create a right to the concrete product.
It merely gives the producer a right to the value that he adds to the
raw material. His right to the raw material itself, to the elements
that he withdraws from the common store, and fashions into a product,
say, wheat, lumber, or steel, does not originate in the title of
labour but in the title of contract. This is the contract by which in
exchange for rent paid to the community he is authorised to utilise
these materials. Until he has made this contract he has manifestly no
full right to the product into which natural forces as well as his own
labour have entered. According to Henry George's own statements,
therefore, the right to the product does not spring from labour alone,
but from labour plus compensation to the community. Since the contract
by which the prospective user agrees to pay this compensation or rent
must precede his application of labour, it instead of labour is the
original title. Since the contract is made with a particular community
for the use of a particular piece of land, the title that it conveys
must derive ultimately from the occupation of that land by that
community,--or some previous community of which the present one is the
legal heir. So far as economically valuable materials are concerned,
therefore, the logic of Henry George's principles leads inevitably to
the conclusion that the original title of ownership is first
occupancy.
Even in the case of economically free goods, the original title of
ownership is occupancy. Henry George declares that the traveller who
has filled his vessels at a free-for-all spring owns the water when he
has carried it into a desert, by the title of labour.[19]
Nevertheless, in its original place this water belonged either to the
community or to nobody. In the former supposition it can become the
property of the traveller only through an explicit or implicit gift
from the community; and it is this contract, not labour, that
constitutes his title to the water. If we assume that the spring was
ownerless, we see that the labour of carrying a portion of it into the
desert still lacks the qualifications of a title; for the abstracted
water must have belonged to him before he began the journey. It must
have been his from the moment that he separated it from the spring.
Otherwise he had no right to take it away. His labour of transporting
it gave him a right to the utility thus added to the water, but not a
right to the water when it first found a local habitation in his
vessels. Nor was the labour of transferring it from the spring into
his vessels the true title; for labour alone cannot create a right to
the material upon which it is exerted, as we see in the case of stolen
objects. If it be contended that labour together with the natural
right to use the ownerless goods of nature have all the elements of a
valid title, the assertion must be rejected as unprecise and
inadequate. The right to use ownerless goods is a general and abstract
right that requires to become specific and concrete through some
title. In the case of water it is a right to water in general, to some
water, but not a right to a definite portion of the water in this
particular spring. The required and sufficient title here is that of
apprehension, occupation, the act of separating a portion from the
natural reservoir. Therefore, it is first occupancy as exemplified in
mere seizure of an ownerless good, not labour in the sense of
productive activity, nor labour in the sense of painful exertion, that
constitutes the precise title whereby the man acquires a right to the
water that he has put into his cup or barrel. Mere seizure is a
sufficient title in all such cases as that which we are now
considering, simply because it is a reasonable method of determining
and specifying ownership. There is no need whatever of having recourse
to the concept of labour to justify this kind of property right. In
the present case, indeed, the acts of apprehension and of productive
labour (the labour of dipping the water into a vessel _is_ productive
inasmuch as the water is more useful there than in the spring) are the
same physically, but they are distinct logically and ethically. One is
mere occupation, while the other is production; and ownership of a
thing must precede, in morals if not in time, the expenditure upon it
of productive labour.
"The theory which bases the right of property on labour really depends
in the ultimate resort on the right of possession and the fact that it
is socially expedient, and is therefore upheld by the laws of society.
Grotius, discussing this in the old Roman days, pointed out that since
nothing can be made except out of pre-existing matter, acquisition by
means of labour depends, ultimately, on possession by means of
occupation."[20]
Since man's right to his faculties does not of itself give him a right
to exercise them upon material objects, productive labour cannot of
itself give him a right to the product therefrom created, nor
constitute the original title of ownership. Since labour is not the
original title to property, it is not the only possible title to
property in land. Hence the fact that labour does not produce land,
has no bearing on the question of private landownership.
In passing it may be observed that Henry George implicitly admitted
that the argument from the labour title was not of itself sufficient
to disprove the right of private property in land. Considering the
objection, "if private property in land be not just, then private
property in the products of land is not just, as the material of these
products is taken from the land," he replied that the latter form of
ownership "is in reality a mere right of temporary possession," since
the raw material in the products sooner or later returns to the
"reservoirs provided for all ... and thus the ownership of them by one
works no injury to others."[21] But private ownership of land, he
continued, shuts out others from the very reservoirs. Here we have a
complete abandonment of the principle which underlies the labour
argument. Instead of trying to show from the nature of the situation
that there is a logical difference between the two kinds of ownership,
he shifts his ground to a consideration of consequences. He makes the
title of social utility instead of the title of labour the
distinguishing and decisive consideration. As we shall see later, he
is wrong even on this ground; for the fundamental justification of
private landownership is precisely the fact that it is the system of
land tenure most conducive to human welfare. At present we merely call
attention to the breakdown in his own hands of the labour argument.
To sum up the entire discussion on the original title of ownership:
Henry George's attack upon first occupancy is futile because based
upon an exaggerated conception of the scope of private landownership,
and upon a false assumption concerning the responsibility of that
title for the historical evils of the system. His attempt to
substitute labour as the original title is likewise unsuccessful,
since labour can give a right only to the utility added to natural
materials, not to the materials themselves. Ownership of the latter
reaches back finally to occupation. Whence it follows that the title
to an artificial thing, such as a hat or coat, water taken from a
spring, a fish drawn from the sea, is a joint or two-fold title;
namely, occupation and labour. Where the product embodies scarce and
economically valuable raw material, occupation is usually prior to
labour in time; in _all_ cases it is prior to labour logically and
ethically. Since labour is not the original title, its absence in the
case of land does not leave that form of property unjustified. The
title of first occupancy remains. In a word, the one original title of
all property, natural and artificial, is first occupancy.
The other arguments of Henry George against private landownership are
based upon the assumed right of all mankind to land and land values,
and on the contention that this right is violated by the present
system of tenure.
_The Right of All Men to the Bounty of the Earth_
"The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their
equal right to breathe the air--it is a right proclaimed by the fact
of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men have a right
to be in the world, and others no right.
"If we are here by the equal permission of the Creator, we are all
here with an equal title to the enjoyment of his bounty--with an equal
right to the use of all that nature so impartially offers.... There is
in nature no such thing as a fee simple in land. There is on earth no
power which can rightfully make a grant of exclusive ownership of
land. If all existing men were to grant away their equal rights, they
could not grant away the rights of those who follow them. For what are
we but tenants for a day? Have we made the earth that we should
determine the rights of those who after us shall tenant it in their
turn?"[22]
The right to use the goods of nature for the support of life is
certainly a fundamental natural right; and it is substantially equal
in all persons. It arises, on the one hand, from man's intrinsic
worth, his essential needs, and his final destiny; and, on the other
hand, from the fact that nature's bounty has been placed by God at the
disposal of all His children indiscriminately. But this is a general
and abstract right. What does it imply specifically and in the
concrete? In the first place, it includes the actual and continuous
use of some land; for a man cannot support life unless he is permitted
to occupy some portion of the earth for the purposes of working, and
eating, and sleeping. Secondly, it means that in time of extreme need,
and when more orderly methods are not available, a man has the right
to seize sufficient goods, natural or produced, public or private, to
support life. So much is admitted and taught by all Catholic
authorities, and probably by all other authorities. Furthermore, the
abstract right in question seems very clearly to include the concrete
right to obtain on reasonable conditions at least the requisites of a
decent livelihood; for example, by direct access to a piece of land,
or in return for a reasonable amount of useful labour. All of these
particular rights are equally valid in all persons.
Does the equal right to use the bounty of nature include the right to
equal _shares_ of land, or land values, or land advantages? Since the
resources of nature have been given to all men in general, and since
human nature is specifically and juridically equal in all, have not
all persons the right to share equally in these resources? Suppose
that some philanthropist hands over to one hundred persons an
uninhabited island, on condition that they shall divide it among
themselves with absolute justice. Are they not obliged to divide it
equally? On what ground can any person claim or be awarded a larger
share than his fellows? None is of greater intrinsic worth than
another, nor has any one made efforts, or sacrifices, or products
which will entitle him to exceptional treatment. The correct principle
of distribution would seem to be absolute equality, except in so far
as it may be modified on account of varying needs, and varying
capacities for social service. In any just distribution account must
be taken of differences in needs and capacities; for it is not just to
treat men as equal in those respects in which they are unequal, nor is
it fair to deprive the community of those social benefits which can be
obtained only by giving exceptional rewards for exceptional services.
The same amount of food allotted to two persons might leave one hungry
and the other sated; the same amount of land assigned to two persons
might tempt the one to wastefulness and discourage the other. To be
sure, the factor of exceptional capacity should not figure in the
distribution until all persons had received that measure of natural
goods which was in each case sufficient for a decent livelihood. For
the fundamental justification of any distribution is to be sought in
human needs; and among human needs the most deserving and the most
urgent are those which must be satisfied as a prerequisite to right
and reasonable life.
Now it is true that private ownership of land has nowhere realised
this principle of proportional equality and proportional justice. No
such result is possible in a system that, in addition to other
difficulties, would be required to make a new distribution at every
birth and at every death. Private ownership of land can never bring
about ideal justice in distribution. Nevertheless it is not
necessarily out of harmony with the demands of _practical_ justice. A
community that lacks either the knowledge or the power to establish
the ideal system is not guilty of actual injustice because of this
failure. In such a situation the proportionally equal rights of all
men to the bounty of nature are not actual rights. They are
conditional, or hypothetical, or suspended. At best they have no more
moral validity than the right of a creditor to a loan that, owing to
the untimely death of the debtor, he can never recover. In both cases
it is misleading to talk of injustice; for this term always implies
that some person or community is guilty of some action which could
have been avoided. The system of private landownership is not, indeed,
perfect; but this is not exceptional in a world where the ideal is
never attained, and all things are imperfect. Henry George declares
that "there is on earth no power which can rightfully make a grant of
exclusive ownership in land"; but what would he have a community do
which has never heard of his system? Introduce some crude form of
communism, or refrain from using the land at all, and permit the
people to starve to death in the interests of ideal justice? Evidently
such a community must make grants of exclusive ownership, and these
will be as valid in reason and in morals as any other act that is
subject to human limitations which are at the time irremovable.
Perhaps the Single Taxer would admit the force of the foregoing
argument. He might insist that the titles given by the State in such
conditions were not exclusive grants in the strict sense, but were
valid only until a better system could be set up, and the people put
in possession of their natural heritage. Let us suppose, then, that a
nation were shown "a more excellent way." Suppose that the people of
the United States set about to establish Henry George's system in the
way that he himself advocated. They would forthwith impose upon all
land an annual tax equivalent to the annual rent. What would be the
effect upon private land-incomes, and private land-wealth? Since the
first would be handed over to the State in the form of a tax, the
second would utterly disappear. For the value of land, like the value
of any other economic good, depends upon the utilities that it
embodies or produces. Whoever controls these will control the market
value of the land itself. No man will pay anything for a
revenue-producing property if some one else, for example, the State,
is forever to take the revenue. The owner of a piece of land which
brings him an annual revenue or rent of one hundred dollars, will not
find a purchaser for it if the State appropriates the one hundred
dollars in the form of a tax that is to be levied year after year for
all time. On the assumption that the revenue represents a selling
value of two thousand dollars, the private owner will be worth that
much less after the introduction of the new system.
Henry George defends this proceeding as emphatically just, and denies
the justice of compensating the private owners. In the chapter of
"Progress and Poverty" headed, "Claim of Land Owners to Compensation,"
he declares that "private property in land is a bold, bare, enormous
wrong, like that of chattel slavery"; and against Mill's statement
that land owners have a right to rent and to the selling value of
their holdings, he exclaims: "If the land of any country belong to the
people of that country, what right, in morality and justice, have the
individuals called land owners to the rent? If the land belong to the
people, why in the name of morality and justice should the people pay
its salable value for their own?"[23]
Here, then, we have the full implication of the Georgean principle
that private property in land is essentially unjust. It is not merely
imperfect,--tolerable while unavoidable. When it can be supplanted by
the right system, its inequalities must not continue under another
form. If inequalities are continued through the compensation of
private owners, individuals are still hindered from enjoying their
equal rights to land, and the State becomes guilty of formal and
culpable injustice. The titles which the State formerly guaranteed to
the private owners did not have in morals the perpetual validity which
they professed to have. Since the State is not the owner of the land,
it was morally powerless to create or sanction titles of this
character. Even if all the citizens at any given time had deliberately
transferred the necessary authorisation to the State, "they could
not," in the words of Henry George, "grant away the right of those who
follow them." The individual's right to land is innate and natural,
not civil or social. The author of "Progress and Poverty" attributes
to the individual's _common_ right to land precisely the same absolute
character that Father Liberatore predicates of the right to become a
_private_ land owner.[24] In the view of Henry George, the State is
merely the trustee of the land, having the duty of distributing its
benefits and values so as to make effective the equal rights of all
individuals. Consequently, the legal titles of private ownership which
it creates or sanctions are valid only so long as nothing better is
available. At best such titles have no greater moral force than the
title by which an innocent purchaser holds a stolen watch; and the
persons who are thereby deprived of their proper shares of land
benefits, have the same right to recover them from the existing
private owners that the watch-owner has to recover his property from
the innocent purchaser. Hence the demand for compensation has no more
merit in the one case than in the other.
To the objection that the civil laws of many civilised countries would
permit the innocent purchaser of the watch to retain it, provided that
sufficient time had elapsed to create a title of prescription, the
Single Taxer would reply that the two kinds of goods are not on the
same moral basis in all respects. He would contend that the natural
heritage of the race is too valuable, and too important for human
welfare to fall under the title of prescription.
To put the matter briefly, then, Henry George contends that the
individual's equal right to land is so much superior to the claim of
the private owner that the latter must give way, even when it
represents an expenditure of money or other valuable goods. The
average opponent does not seem to realise the full force of the
impression which this theory makes upon the man who overemphasises the
innate rights of men to a share in the gifts of nature. Let us see
whether this right has the absolute and overpowering value which is
attributed to it by Henry George.
In considering this question, the supremely important fact to be kept
in mind is that the natural right to land is not an end in itself. It
is not a prerogative that inheres in men, regardless of its purposes
or effects. It has validity only in so far as it promotes individual
and social welfare. As regards individual welfare, we must bear in
mind that this phrase includes the well being of all persons, of those
who do as well as of those who do not at present enjoy the benefits of
private landownership. Consequently the proposal to restore to the
"disinherited" the use of their land rights must be judged by its
effects upon the welfare of all persons. If existing landowners are
not compensated they are deprived, in varying amounts, of the
conditions of material well being to which they have become
accustomed, and are thereby subjected to varying degrees of positive
inconvenience and hardship. The assertion that this loss would be
offset by the moral gain in altruistic feelings and consciousness, may
be passed over as applying to a different race of beings from those
who would be despoiled. The hardship is aggravated considerably by the
fact that very many of the dispossessed private owners have paid the
full value of their land out of the earnings of labour or capital, and
that all of them have been encouraged by society and the State to
regard landed property in precisely the same way as any other kind of
property. In the latter respect they are not in the same position as
the innocent purchaser of the stolen watch; for they have never been
warned by society that the land might have been virtually stolen, or
that the supposedly rightful claimants might some day be empowered by
the law to recover possession. On the other hand, the persons who own
no land under the present system, the persons who are deprived of
their "birthright," suffer no such degree of hardship when they are
continued in that condition. They are kept out of something which they
have never possessed, which they have never hoped to get by any such
easy method, and from which they have not been accustomed to derive
any benefit. To prolong this condition is not to inflict upon them any
new or positive inconvenience. Evidently their welfare and claims in
the circumstances are not of the same moral importance as the welfare
and claims of persons who would be called upon to suffer the loss of
goods already possessed and enjoyed, and acquired with the full
sanction of society.
Henry George is fond of comparing the private owner of land with the
slave owner, and the landless man with the man enslaved; but there is
a world of difference between their respective positions and moral
claims. Liberty is immeasurably more important than land, and the
hardship suffered by the master when he is compelled to free the slave
is immeasurably less than that endured by the slave who is forcibly
detained in bondage. Moreover, the moral sense of mankind recognises
that it is in accordance with equity to compensate slave owners when
the slaves are legally emancipated. Infinitely stronger is the claim
of the landowner to compensation.
If the Georgeite replies that the landless man is at present kept out
of something to which he has a right, while confiscation would take
from the private owner something which does not really belong to him,
the rejoinder must be that this assertion begs the question. The
question is likewise begged when the unreasonable defender of private
property declares that the right of the landless is vague and
undetermined, and therefore morally inferior to the determinate and
specific right of the individual landowner. This is precisely the
question to be solved. Does the abstract right of the landless man
become a concrete right which is so strong as to justify confiscation?
Is his natural right valid against the acquired right of the private
proprietor? These questions can be answered intelligently only by
applying the test of human welfare, individual and social. To say that
land of its very nature is not morally susceptible of private
ownership, is to make an easy assertion that may be as easily denied.
To interpret man's natural right to land by any other standard than
human welfare, is to make of it a fetish, not a thing of reason. Henry
George himself seemed to recognise this when he wrote that
wonderfully eloquent but overdrawn and one-sided description of the
effects of private ownership which occurs in the chapter entitled,
"Claim of Landowners to Compensation."[25]
When we say that human welfare is the final determinant of the right
to land, we understand this phrase in the widest possible sense. To
divide the goods of the idle rich among the deserving poor, might be
temporarily beneficial to both these classes, but the more remote and
enduring consequences would be individually and socially disastrous.
To restore a legacy to persons who had been defrauded of it when very
young, would probably cause more hardship to the swindler than the
heirs would have suffered had there been no restitution; nevertheless
the larger view of human welfare requires that the legacy should be
restored. When, however, two or three generations have been kept out
of their inheritance, the civil law permits the children of the
swindler to retain the property by the title of prescription; and for
precisely the same reason, human welfare.
The social consequences of the confiscation of rent and land values,
would be even more injurious than those falling upon the individuals
despoiled. Social peace and order would be gravely disturbed by the
protests and opposition of the landowners, while the popular
conception of property rights, and of the inviolability of property,
would be greatly weakened, if not entirely destroyed. The average man
would not grasp or seriously consider the Georgean distinction between
land and other kinds of property in this connection. He would infer
that purchase, or inheritance, or bequest, or any other title having
the immemorial sanction of the State, does not create a moral right to
movable goods any more than to land. This would be especially likely
in the matter of capital. Why should the capitalist, who is no more a
worker than the landowner, be permitted to extract revenue from his
possessions? In both cases the most significant and practical feature
is that one class of men contributes to another class an annual
payment for the use of socially necessary productive goods. If
rent-confiscation would benefit a large number of people, why not
increase the number by confiscating interest? Indeed, the proposal to
confiscate rent is so abhorrent to the moral sense of the average man
that it could never take place except in conditions of revolution and
anarchy. If that day should ever arrive the policy of confiscation
would not stop with land.
_The Alleged Right of the Community to Land Values_
In the foregoing pages we have confined our attention to the Georgean
principle which bases men's common right to land and rent upon their
common nature, and their common claims to the material gifts of the
Creator. Another argument against private ownership takes this form:
"Consider what rent is. It does not arise spontaneously from the soil;
it is due to nothing that the landowners have done. It represents a
value created by the whole community.... But rent, the creation of the
whole community, necessarily belongs to the whole community."[26]
Before taking up the main contention in this passage, let us notice
two incidental points. If all rent be due to the community by the
title of social production, why does Henry George defend at such
length the title of birthright? If the latter title does not extend to
rent it is restricted to land which is so plentiful as to yield no
rent. Since the owners or holders of such land rarely take the trouble
to exclude any one from it, the right in question, the inborn right,
has not much practical value. Probably, however, the words quoted
above ought not to be interpreted as excluding the title of
birthright. In that case, the meaning would be that rent belongs to
the community by the title of production, as well as by the congenital
title.
The second preliminary consideration is that the community does not
create _all_ land values nor _all_ rent. These things are as certainly
due to nature as to social action. In no case can they be attributed
exclusively to one factor. Land that has no natural qualities or
capacities suitable for the satisfaction of human wants will never
have value or yield rent, no matter what society does in connection
with it: the richest land in the world will likewise remain valueless,
until it is brought into relation with society, with at least two
human beings. If Henry George merely means to say that, without the
presence of the community, land will not produce rent, he is stating
something that is perfectly obvious, but it is not peculiar to land.
Manufactured products would have no value outside of society, yet no
one maintains that their value is all created by social action.
Although the value of land is always due to both nature and society,
for practical purposes we may correctly attribute the value of a
particular piece of land predominantly to nature, or predominantly to
society. When three tracts, equally distant from a city, and equally
affected by society and its activities, have different values because
one is fit only for grazing, while the second produces large crops of
wheat, and the third contains a rich coal mine, their relative values
are evidently due to nature rather than to society. On the other hand,
the varying values of two equally fertile pieces of land unequally
distant from a city, must be ascribed primarily to social action. In
general, it is probably safe to say that almost all the value of land
in cities, and the greater part of the value of land in thickly
settled districts, is specifically due to social action rather than to
differences in fertility. Nevertheless, it remains true that the value
of every piece of land arises partly from nature, and partly from
society; but it is impossible to say in what proportion.
Our present concern is with those values and rents which are to be
attributed to social action. These cannot be claimed by any person,
nor by any community, in virtue of the individual's natural right to
the bounty of nature. Since they are not included among the ready made
gifts of God, they are no part of man's birthright. If they belong to
all the people the title to them must be sought in some historical
fact, some fact of experience, some social fact. According to Henry
George, the required title is found in the fact of production.
Socially created land values and rents belong to the community because
the community, not the private proprietor, has produced them. Let us
see in what sense the community produces the social value of land.
In the first place, this value is produced by the community in two
different senses of the word community, namely, as a civil, corporate
entity, and as a group of individuals who do not form a moral unit.
Under the first head must be placed a great deal of the value of land
in cities; for example, that which arises from municipal institutions
and improvements, such as, fire and police protection, water works,
sewers, paved streets, and parks. On the other hand, a considerable
part of land values both within and without cities is due, not to the
community as a civil body, but to the community as a collection of
individuals and groups of individuals. Thus, the erection and
maintenance of buildings, the various economic exchanges of goods and
labour, the superior opportunities for social intercourse and
amusement which characterise a city, make the land of the city and its
environs more valuable than land at a distance. While the activities
involved in these economic and "social" facts and relations are,
indeed, a social not an individual product, they are the product of
small, temporary, and shifting groups within the community. They are
not the activities of the community as a moral whole. For example, the
maintenance of a grocery business implies a series of social
relations and agreements between the grocer and his customers; but
none of these transactions is participated in by the community acting
as a community. Consequently such actions and relations, and the land
values to which they give rise are not due to, are not the products of
the community as a unit, as a moral body, as an organic entity. What
is true of the land values created by the grocery business applies to
the values which are due to other economic institutions and relations,
as well as to those values which arise out of the purely "social"
activities and advantages. If these values are to go to their
producers they must be taken, in various proportions, by the different
small groups and the various individuals whose actions and
transactions have been directly responsible.
To distribute these values among the producers thereof in proportion
to the productive contribution of each person is obviously impossible.
How can it be known, for example, what portion of the increase in the
value of a city's real estate during a given year is due to the
merchants, the manufacturers, the railroads, the labourers, the
professional classes, or the city as a corporation? The only practical
method is for the city or other political unit to act as the
representative of all its members, appropriate the increase in value,
and distribute it among the citizens in the form of public services,
institutions, and improvements. Assuming that the socially produced
value of land ought to go to its social producer rather than to the
individual proprietor, this method of public appropriation and
disbursement would seem to be the nearest approximation to practical
justice that is available.
Is the assumption correct? Do the socially produced land values
necessarily belong to the producer, society? Does not the assumption
rest upon a misconception of the moral validity of production as a
canon of distribution? Let us examine some of the ways in which
values are produced.
The man who converts leather and other suitable raw materials into a
pair of shoes, increases the utility of these materials, and in normal
market conditions increases their value. In a certain sense he has
created value, and he is universally acknowledged to have a right to
this product. Similarly the man who increases the utility and value of
land by fertilising, irrigating, or draining it, is conceded the
benefit of these improvements by the title of production.
But value may be increased by mere restriction of supply, and by mere
increase in demand. If a group of men get control of the existing
supply of wheat or cotton, they can artificially raise the price,
thereby producing value as effectively as the shoemaker or the farmer.
If a syndicate of speculators gets possession of all the land of a
certain quality in a community, they can likewise increase its value,
produce new value. If a few powerful leaders of fashion decide to
adopt a certain style of millinery, their action and example will
effect an increase in the demand for and the value of that kind of
goods. Yet none of these producers of value are regarded as having a
moral right to their product.
When we turn to what is called the social creation of land values, we
find that it takes two forms. It always implies increase of social
demand; but the latter may be either purely subjective, reflecting
merely the desires and power of the demanders themselves, or it may
have an objective basis connected with the land. In the first case it
may be due solely to an increase of population. Within the last few
years, agricultural land which is no more fertile nor any better
situated with regard to markets or other social advantages than it was
thirty years ago, has risen in value because its products have risen
in value. Its products have become dearer because population, and
therefore demand, have grown faster than agricultural production.
Merely by increasing its wants the population has produced land
values; but it has obviously no more right to them than have the
leaders of fashion to the enhanced value which they have given to
feminine headgear. On the other hand, the increased demand for land,
and the consequent increase in its value, are frequently attributable
specifically to changes connected with the land itself. They are
changes which affect its utility rather than its scarcity. The farmer
who irrigates desert land increases its utility, as it were,
_intrinsically_. The community that establishes a city increases the
utility of the land therein and thereabout _extrinsically_. New
_relations_ are introduced between that land and certain desirable
social institutions. Land that was formerly useful only for
agriculture becomes profitable for a factory or a store. Through its
new external relations, the land acquires new utility; or better, its
latent and potential uses have become actual. Now these new relations,
these utility-creating and value-creating relations, have been
established by society, in its corporate capacity through civil
institutions and activities, and in its non-corporate capacity through
the economic and "social" (in the narrower "society" sense) activities
of groups and individuals. In this sense, then, the community has
created the increased land values. Has it a strict right to them? a
right so rigorous and exact that private appropriation of them is
unjust?
As we have just seen, men do not admit that mere production of value
constitutes a title of ownership. Neither the monopolist who increases
value by restricting supply, nor the pace-makers of fashion, who
increase value by merely increasing demand, are regarded as possessing
a moral right to the value that they have "created." It is increase of
utility, and not either actual or virtual increase of scarcity to
which men attribute a moral claim. Why do men assign these different
ethical qualities to the production of value? Why has the shoemaker a
right to the value that he adds to the raw material in making a pair
of shoes? What is the precise basis of his right? It cannot be labour
merely; for the cotton monopolist has laboured in getting his corner
on cotton. It cannot be the fact that the shoemaker's labour is
socially useful; for a chemist might spend laborious days and nights
producing water from its component elements, and find his product a
drug on the market. Yet he would have no reasonable ground of
complaint. Why, then, is it reasonable for the shoemaker to require,
why has he a right to require payment for the utilities that he
produces? Because men want to use his products, and because they have
no right to require him to serve them without compensation. He is
morally and juridically their equal, and has the same right as they to
have access on reasonable terms to the earth and the earth's
possibilities of a livelihood. Being thus equal to his fellows, he is
under no obligation to subordinate himself to them by becoming a mere
instrument for their welfare. To assume that he is obliged to produce
socially useful things without remuneration, is to assume that all
these propositions are false; it is to assume that his life and
personality and personal development are of no intrinsic importance,
and that his pursuit of the essential ends of life has no meaning
except in so far as may be conducive to his function as an instrument
of production. In a word, the ultimate basis of the producer's right
to his product, or its value, is the fact that this is the only way in
which he can get his just share of the earth's goods, and of the means
of life and personal development. His right to compensation does not
rest on the mere fact of value-production.
As a producer of land values, the community is not on the same moral
ground with the shoemaker. Its productive action is indirect and
extrinsic, instead of direct and intrinsic, and is merely incidental
to its principal activities and purposes. Land values are a
by-product which do not require the community to devote thereto a
single moment of time or a single ounce of effort. The activities of
which land values are a by-product, have already been remunerated in
the price paid to the wage-earner for his labour, the physician for
his services, the manufacturer and the merchant for their wares, and
the municipal corporation in the form of taxes. On what ground can the
community, or any part of it, set up a claim in strict justice to the
increased land values? The right of the members of the community to
the means of living and self development is not dependent upon the
taking of these values by the community. Nor are they treated as
instruments to the welfare of the private owners who do get the
socially created land values; for they expend neither time nor labour
in the interest of the latter directly. Their labour is precisely what
it would have been had there been no increase in the value of the
land.
Since social production does not constitute a right to land values nor
to rent, it affords not a shadow of justification for the confiscation
of these things by the community. If social appropriation of socially
created land values had been introduced with the first occupation of a
piece of land, it might possibly have proved more generally beneficial
than the present system. In that case, however, the moral claim of the
community to these values would have rested on the fact that they did
not belong to anybody by a title of strict justice. They would have
been a "res nullius" ("nobody's property") which might fairly have
been taken by the community according as they made their appearance.
The community could have appropriated them by the title of first
occupancy. But there could have been no moral title of social
production. When, however, the community or the State failed to take
advantage of its opportunity to be the first occupant of these values,
when it permitted the individual proprietor to appropriate them, it
forfeited its own claim. Ever since it has had no more right to
already existing land values than it has to seize the labourer's wages
or the capitalist's interest,--no more right than one person has to
recover a gift or donation that he has unconditionally bestowed upon
another.
To sum up the conclusions of this chapter: The argument against first
occupancy is valid only with regard to the abuses of private
ownership, not with regard to the institution; the argument based upon
the title of labour is the outcome of a faulty analysis, and is
inconsistent with other statements of its author; the argument derived
from men's equal rights to land merely proves that private ownership
does not secure perfect justice, and the proposal to correct this
defect by confiscating rent is unjust because it would produce greater
evils; and the so called production of the social values of land
confers upon the community no property right whatever.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific," p. 45; Chicago, 1900.
[9] "A summary of the Principles of Socialism," p. 23; London, 1899.
[10] "Socialism: A Reply to the Pope's Encyclical," p. 4; London,
1899.
[11] "Progress and Poverty," book vii, ch. i.
[12] "La Propriété Privée," par L. Garriguet, I, 62; Paris, 1903.
[13] Cf. Ardant, "Papes et Paysans," pp. 41, sq.
[14] "Social Statics," chap, ix; 1850. Spencer's retractation, in a
later edition of this work, of his earlier views on the right of
property in land does not affect the truth of the description quoted
in the passage above.
[15] "Progress and Poverty," loc. cit.
[16] "Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII," page 25 of Vierth's edition.
[17] "Progress and Poverty," loc. cit.
[18] "Progress and Poverty," loc. cit.
[19] "Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII," loc. cit.
[20] Whittaker, op. cit., p. 32.
[21] "Open Letter," loc. cit.
[22] "Progress and Poverty," book vii, ch. i.
[23] Cf. chapter entitled "Compensation" in "A Perplexed Philosopher."
[24] Cf. "Principles of Political Economy," 1891, p. 130.
[25] "Progress and Poverty."
[26] "Progress and Poverty," book vii, ch. iii.