This is an excellent exposition of a lot of what I have been trying to
say. Writing in an email extemporaneously, though, I don't have the
ability to say it so eloquently. Ah, the limitations of email.
Nevertheless, this was based on history, irrefutable historical fact.
But you know, of course, that no matter how irrefutable it is capitalist
apologists will just turn red in the face and jump up and down
exclaiming that common ownership of land is against human nature.
On 3/3/2016 9:58 PM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
I found this interesting chapter on google. As I have the time, I'll
read additional chapters.
Carl Jarvis
Chapter 29.
ANY CUSTOM that has existed for a long time seems natural and
necessary to us. This is merely habit. Nonetheless, this, more than
anything else, keeps
us from realizing the basic injustice of private property in land —
and prevents us from considering any proposal to abolish it. We are so
used to treating
land as individual property that the vast majority of people never
think of questioning it. It is thoroughly recognized in our laws,
manners, and customs.
Most people even think it is required for the use of land. They are
unable to conceive of society as possible without reducing land to
private possession.
The first step in improving land is to find an owner. A person's land
is looked on as property to sell, lease, give, or bequeath — the same
as houses,
cattle, goods, or furniture. The "sacredness of property" has been
preached so constantly — especially by the "conservators of ancient
barbarism," as Voltaire
called lawyers — that most people view private ownership of land as
the very foundation of civilization. They fancy returning land to
common ownership
as some wild fantasy — or an attempt to return society to barbarism.
Even if it were true — which it is not — that land had always been
treated as private property, this would not prove the justice or
necessity of continuing
to treat it as such. The universal existence of slavery was once
affirmed. Yet that did not prove it just or necessary. Not long ago,
monarchy seemed all
but universal. Not only kings, but the majority of their subjects,
really believed that no country could survive without a king. Yet
France, to say nothing
of America, gets along quite well without a king. And the Queen of
England has as much power to govern the realm as the wooden figurehead
of a ship has
to determine its course.
But the assumption that land had always been treated as private
property is not true. On the contrary, the common right to land has
always been recognized
as the primary right. Private ownership has appeared only as the
result of usurpation — that is, being seized by force.
The primary and persistent perception of mankind is that everyone has
an equal right to land. The opinion that private property in land is
necessary to
society is a comparatively modern idea, as artificial and as baseless
as the divine right of kings. It is only the result of an ignorance
that cannot look
beyond its immediate surroundings. History, research, and the
observations of travelers prove that wherever human society has
formed, the common right
of people to use the earth has been recognized. Unrestricted
individual ownership has never been freely adopted. It has always been
born in war and conquest
— and in the selfish use the cunning have made of law and superstition.
Wherever we can trace the early history of society — in Europe, Asia,
Africa, America, and Polynesia — land was once considered common
property. All members
of the community had equal rights to the use and enjoyment of the land
of the community.
This recognition of the common right to land did not prevent the full
recognition of the exclusive right to the products of labor. Nor was
it abandoned
when the development of agriculture imposed the necessity of
recognizing exclusive possession of land — to secure the results of
labor expended in cultivating
it.
How, then, has private ownership of land become so widespread? Why was
the original idea of equal rights supplanted by the idea of exclusive
and unequal
rights? The causes are the same ones that led to the establishment of
privileged classes. We can summarize them briefly: (1) The
concentration of power
in the hands of chieftains and the military. (2) Conquest that reduces
the conquered to slavery and divides their lands, with a
disproportionate share
going to the chiefs. (3) The differentiation and influence of a
priestly class. (4) The differentiation and influence of a class of
professional lawyers.
The interests of priests and lawyers were served by the substitution
of exclusive property in place of common land. In Europe lawyers have
been especially
effective in destroying all vestiges of the ancient tenure by
substituting Roman law — exclusive ownership.
Unfortunately, inequality, once produced, always tends toward greater
inequality. This struggle — between equal rights to the soil and the
tendency to
monopolize it in individual possession — caused the internal conflicts
of ancient Greece and Rome. But the final triumph of the tendency
toward ownership
eventually destroyed both.
By the power with which the great attracts the less, small family
estates became part of the great estates — the latifundia — of
enormously rich patricians.
The former owners were forced into slave gangs, or became virtual
serfs. Others fled to the cities, swelling the ranks of the
proletariat, who had nothing
to sell but their votes. As a result, population declined, art sank,
the intellect weakened, and once splendid civilizations became empty
shells.
The hardy virtues born of personal independence died out, while
exhaustive agriculture impoverished the soil. At length the barbarians
broke through; a
civilization once proud was left in ruins. During Rome's grandeur,
such a fate would have seemed as impossible as it seems to us now that
the Comanches
could conquer the United States or Laplanders desolate Europe.
The fundamental cause was tenure of land. On the one hand, denial of
the common right to land resulted in decay; on the other, equality
gave strength.
Every family in the German villages was entitled to an equal share of
common land. This impressed a remarkable character on the individual,
which explains
how small bands of barbarians overran a great empire. Rome perished
from "the failure of the crop of men."
After the Roman Empire fell, the idea of common rights was blended
with the idea of exclusive property. The feudal system was the result.
But side by side and underneath the feudal system, a more primitive
organization revived. Based on the common rights of cultivators, it
has left traces
all over Europe, and still survives in many places.
Feudalism clearly recognized — in theory at least — that land belongs
to society at large, not to the individual. A fief (a feudal estate)
was essentially
a trust to which certain obligations attached. The sovereign was,
theoretically, the representative of the collective power and rights
of the whole people.
Though land was granted to individual possession, specific duties were
required. Through these, some equivalent to the benefits received from
the common
right was rendered back to the commonwealth.
Under the feudal scheme, crown lands supported public expenditures.
Church lands defrayed the cost of public worship and instruction, as
well as care for
the sick and destitute. The military tenant was under obligation to
raise a certain force when needed.
These duties were a rude and inefficient recognition — but
unquestionably still a recognition — of a fact obvious to the natural
perceptions of all men:
Land is not individual property, but common property.
Amid the feudal system there were communities who tilled the soil as
common property, though subject to feudal dues. Of course the lords,
if they had the
power, claimed pretty much all they thought worth claiming. Yet the
idea of common right was strong enough to attach itself, by custom, to
a considerable
part of the land.
The commons must have been a very large proportion of most European
countries in those times. After centuries of appropriation by the
aristocracy, France
still retains almost ten million acres of communal land. In England,
while over eight million acres have been enclosed since 1710, some two
million acres
still remain as commons, though mostly worthless soil.
But these are not the only things that prove the universality and
persistence of a common right to the soil. There are also the very
institutions under
which modern civilization has developed. Certain things persist in our
legal systems that point to this common right, though they have lost
their original
meaning. For instance, the doctrine of eminent domain arises from
nothing but the recognition of the sovereign or government as
representing the collective
rights of the people. Legal terminology also distinguishes between
real and personal property. This very difference is the survival of a
primitive distinction
between what was originally looked on as common property and what,
from its nature, was always considered the exclusive property of the
individual.
The general course of development of modern civilization since the
feudal period has subverted the natural and primary ideas of
collective ownership of
the soil. Paradoxical as it may appear, the emergence of liberty from
feudal bonds has been accompanied by a tendency toward a form of land
ownership that
enslaves the working class. This is being felt all over the civilized
world. Political economists mistake it for the pressure of natural
laws, while workers
mistake it for the oppression of capital.
It is clear that in Great Britain today, the right of the people as a
whole to the soil of their native country is much less fully
acknowledged than it
was in feudal times. The commons, once so extensive, largely
contributed to the independence and support of the lower classes.
Today, all but a small remnant
of worthless land has been appropriated for individual ownership and
enclosed. Most crown lands have passed into private possession. Now
the British workingman
must pay to support the royal family and all the petty princelings who
marry into it.
A smaller proportion of the people now own the land. And their
ownership is much more absolute. Thirty thousand people have legal
power to expel the whole
population from five-sixths of the British Islands. The vast majority
of the British people have no right whatsoever to their native land,
except to walk
the streets.
The reason, I take it, that the idea of private property in land has
grown alongside the idea of personal freedom is this:
In the progress of civilization, the grosser forms of supremacy
connected with land ownership were dropped, or abolished, or became
less obvious. Parliamentary
government gradually stripped the great lords of individual importance
and repressed their most striking abuses. As this happened, attention
was diverted
from the more insidious — but really more potent — forms of domination.
Meanwhile, there was a steady progression of legal ideas drawn from
Roman law, the great storehouse of modern jurisprudence. This tended
to level the natural
distinction between property in land and property in other things.
Landowners were then able to put property in land on the same basis as
other property.
Moreover, the political power of land barons was not broken by the
revolt of those classes who could clearly feel the injustice of land
ownership. What
broke their power was the growth of the artisan and trading classes.
But the relation between their wages and rent is not as obvious.
These classes developed under a system of guilds and corporations. As
I explained previously, trade unions and monopolies enabled them to
somewhat fence
themselves off from the general law of wages. But those were more
easily maintained then than now, when population is steadily becoming
more mobile due
to improved transportation, education, and access to current news.
These classes did not see — and still do not see — that land tenure is
the fundamental fact that ultimately determines the conditions of
industrial, social,
and political life. And so the tendency has been to assimilate the
idea of property in land with that of property in things of human
production.
The original landholders of England got their land on terms that
required them to provide military defense and meet other conditions,
which amounted to
a considerable part of their rent. Had the form of feudal dues simply
been changed into ones better adapted to the changed times, English
wars need never
have incurred a single pound of debt. English labor and capital need
not have been taxed a single farthing. All this would have come from
rent. But since
that time, landholders have appropriated it to themselves.
What if landholders had been kept to this contract? What if any land
enclosed required similar terms? There would be no need for customs
duties, excise,
license, or income taxes. The income accruing to the nation from these
landowners would meet all present expenditures and, in addition, leave
a large surplus.
This could be used for any purpose aiding the comfort or well-being of
the people as a whole.
Looking back, wherever there is light to guide us, we see that people
recognized the common ownership in land in their earliest perceptions.
Private property
in land is a usurpation, a creation of force and fraud.
block quote end
