SOCIALIST VIEWS AND PROPOSALS REGARDING LAND AND THE LANDLORDS
British Socialists, as we have learned in Chapter IV.,[411] adopting
the celebrated formula of Proudhon, have proclaimed "Property is
theft," and they are of opinion that property in land is a
particularly heinous form of theft. Therefore they demand the
restitution of the land to the people, not as a matter of expediency
but as a matter of right. "Man has a right only to what his labour
makes. No man 'makes' the land."[412] "Land is the gift of Nature. It
is not made by man. Now, if a man has a right to nothing but that
which he has himself made, no man can have a right to the land, for no
man made it."[413] "The land belongs by inalienable right not to any
body of individuals but to all."[414]
O high cliffs looking heavenward,
O valleys green and fair.
Sea cliffs that seem to gird and guard
Our island once so dear,
In vain your beauty now ye spread,
For we are numbered with the dead;
A robber band has seized the land,
And we are exiles here.
The ploughman ploughs, the sower sows.
The reaper reaps the ear;
The woodman to the forest goes
Before the day grows clear,
But of our toil no fruit we see;
The harvest's not for you and me:
A robber band has seized the land,
And we are exiles here.[415]
Appealing to the passions, hatred, and greed of their followers, and
relying on their credulity, Socialist leaders proclaim not only that
the landlords are useless, but also that the people will have the land
rent free as soon as the present owners have been expropriated. "The
landlord, _qua_ landlord, performs no function in the economy of
industry or of food production. He is a rent-receiver; that, and
nothing more. Were the landlord to be abolished, the soil and the
people who till it would still remain, and the disappearance of the
landowner would pass almost unnoticed."[416] "Rent is brigandage
reduced to a system. So long as the English people are content to be
tenants-at-will on their own soil, and to pay for the privilege, they
will remain virtually slaves."[417] "The tenant earns the rent. The
landlord spends it. If the tenant had not to pay the rent he could
spend it himself, and so it would get spent, and get spent by the man
who earns it and has the best right to spend it."[418]
Whilst some Socialist agitators are unscrupulous enough to make their
followers believe that in the Socialist State they may have land for
the asking, others are so unkind as to destroy that pleasing illusion.
For instance, we learn from a Fabian pamphlet, "A Socialist State or
municipality will charge the full economic rent for the use of its
land and dwellings, and apply that rent to the common purposes of the
community."[419] Another Socialist authority very pertinently remarks:
"It is of not the least consequence to the person who rents the land
whether he pays the rent for it to an individual or whether he Pays it
to the State,"[420] and therefore it is clear that statements such as
"If the tenant had not to pay the rent he could spend it himself," are
merely meant to deceive the simple. Tenants, instead of paying their
rent to a human landlord, would have to pay it to an impersonal State
or municipality, and the latter might prove as grasping and as
heartless as rating committees are now.
Others base their demand for the spoliation of landlords upon the
Bible and upon the ideal of a "Divine brotherhood," forgetting that
the Bible contains a commandment "Thou shalt not steal," as well as
many warnings against lying, deceit, cant, and covetousness. One of
the champion Bible-Socialists, for instance, writes: "If all men are
brothers, as Christ undoubtedly taught, then the land, the source of
wealth, the means by which men can earn their livelihood, should not
be the property of any set of individuals, but should belong to the
whole community. The fact of a man being born into the world gives him
the divine right to the opportunity of earning his living, and that
right cannot be enjoyed so long as there is a single man on earth
deprived of access to the land from which to earn his bread. When the
spirit of brotherhood prevails, it will be a simple and a natural
thing to arrange that these things shall be used not in the interests
of the few, but for the common good. There are innumerable signs that
the hearts and minds of men are now turning in this direction, and
that they are coming to see that the only just and permanent
arrangement is the divine solution of working on the basis of
universal brotherhood."[421] There is a fraternity among Sicilian
bandits. The "Divine brotherhood" of the writer would be based on
robbery, and have robbery as its object.
Others demand the confiscation of all land by relying upon
misrepresentation: "If the injustice of the land monopoly is great in
the country, by robbing the grower of his improvements or scaring him
from making any, by robbing the nation of its own legitimate
independent food supply, and by laying waste vast tracts of the
surface, the injustice is even greater in the towns, if only by reason
of the greater numbers whose interests are now involved: (1) by
flooding the town labour markets with surplus labourers, and so--by
their competition between each other for jobs of any sort at any
terms, rather than starve--keeping wages down at the privation point;
(2) by robbing the town workers of that proper and legitimate home
market which a flourishing and proportionately numerous agricultural
population would afford; (3) by the bloated rentals in cities, only
made possible by driving and crowding the people into our unnaturally
swollen centres; and (4) by the continuous re-investment of those
enormous rent extortions in all those secondary monopolies of transit,
finance, and business generally, which can only arise from the primary
monopoly of the soil, and which complete this devil's chain of the
subjection of labour and the dependence of the community."[422]
The complaints that land is going out of cultivation, that the British
home market has been spoiled, and that towns are overgrown and
overcrowded are unfortunately only too well justified, but these
phenomena are not due to private property in land. Private property in
land is universal, but the desertion of the country and overcrowding
in towns are not universal. These evils are to be found chiefly in
Great Britain, because British economic policy, whilst fostering trade
and the manufacturing industries, has deliberately sacrificed to them
the rural industries. That fact is acknowledged by many Socialists,
as will be seen in Chapter XXL., "Some Socialist's Views on Free Trade
and Protection."
The question now arises: How do the Socialists propose to deal with
the land and the owners of land? Mr. Blatchford informs us: "The
titled robbers of England have always done their robberies in a legal
manner. We propose to enforce their cessation in a legal manner. We
respect the law, and mean to use it. We are not mere brigands. We are
the new police; our duty is to 'arrest the rogues and dastards'; our
motto is, 'The law giveth and the law taketh away, blessed be the name
of the law.'"[423] A leading Christian-Socialist clergyman tells us
"As for compensation, from the point of view of the highest Christian
morality, it is the landlords who should compensate the people, not
the people the landlords. But practically if you carry out this reform
by taxation, no compensation would be necessary or even
possible."[424] Mines and mine-owners are to be treated in the same
way as land and land-owners. "The minerals should be at once taken
over without compensation; the present owners should think themselves
well off if they escape paying compensation for previous robbery of
the people."[425] Views such as those expressed in the foregoing are
held not only by some unscrupulous agitators. At the last Annual
Conference of the Independent Labour Party the following resolution
was carried: "This Conference, being of opinion that the high price of
coal is a serious menace to the nation, and bears extremely hard upon
householders and especially upon the working classes of the country,
declares in favour of the nationalisation of the mines and
municipalisation of the coal-supply."[426] At the last Annual
Conference of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, various
resolutions urging the nationalisation of all mines were proposed and
carried. Mr. W.E. Harvey, M.P., for instance, moved "That the members
of Parliament supported by this federation be instructed to direct the
attention of the Government to bring in a Bill for the nationalisation
of land, mines, and mining royalties, as we believe that it is only by
such reforms that the workers can obtain full value for their
labours."[427] It will be observed that nothing is said about
compensation in this resolution, which was passed unanimously.
How is the nationalisation of the land to be effected? "The land of
every country belongs of natural and inalienable right to the whole
body of the people in each generation. We say therefore, 'You need not
kick the landlords out; you must not buy them out; you had better tax
them out.'"[428] "If the people rose in revolt, took up arms,
confiscated the lands of the nobles, and handed them over to the
control of a Parliament, that would not be brigandage; it would be
revolution. But if the people by the exercise of constitutional means,
passed an Act through Parliament making the estates of the nobles the
property of the nation, with or without compensation, that would be
neither brigandage nor revolution; it would be a legal, righteous, and
constitutional reform. We propose to be neither revolutionaries nor
brigands, but legal, righteous, and constitutional reformers."[429]
Legality implies and presupposes justice, but Socialist law and
justice are different from that conception of law and justice which
has been held hitherto. Chapter XXIV. will make that point clear.
The foregoing should suffice to show that the Socialists intend to
abolish private property in land by "taxing landowners out of
existence."
They apparently forget that not all the owners of land are rich; that
many small farmers, shopkeepers, artisans, &c., own freehold land and
freehold houses; and that the insurance companies have a very large
proportion of their funds invested in land and on the security of
land. A confiscation of land would therefore ruin a vast number of
hard-working people. It would cripple some insurance companies and
ruin others. Hence the savings of thrifty workers would be confiscated
or destroyed by the State together with those of the larger
capitalists.
The Socialists are not entirely agreed as to the way by which the
abolition of private ownership in land should be effected, but some
interesting proposals will be found in Chapter X., "Socialist Views
and Proposals regarding Taxation and the National Budget." The purely
agricultural aspect of the land question is treated in Chapter XVIII.,
"Socialism and Agriculture," and in Chapter XXI., "Some Socialist
Views on Free Trade and Protection."
FOOTNOTES:
[411] Page 81.
[412] Blatchford, _Merrie England_, p. 61.
[413] _Ibid._ p. 60.
[414] Washington, _A Corner in Flesh and Blood_, p. 60.
[415] _Clarion Song Book_, p. 6.
[416] Keir Hardie, _From Serfdom to Socialism_, p. 11.
[417] Davidson, _Book of Lords_, p. 25.
[418] Blatchford, _Land Nationalisation_, p. 9.
[419] Sidney Webb, _Socialism, True and False_, p. 19.
[420] _Socialism and the Single Tax_, p. 7.
[421] Ward, _Are All Men Brothers?_ pp. 14, 15.
[422] Hall, _Land, Labour, and Liberty_, p. 12.
[423] Blatchford, _Some Tory Socialisms_, p. 6.
[424] Headlam, _Christian Socialism_, p. 14.
[425] _Forward_, October 12, 1907.
[426] _Independent Labour Party Report, Annual Conference, 1907_, p.
59.
[427] _Times_, October 12, 1907.
[428] Headlam, _Christian Socialism_, p. 7.
[429] Blatchford, _Some Tory Socialisms_, p. 3.