The right
of property in things produced by labor— and this is the only true right of
property—springs directly from the right of the individual to himself, or as
Locke expresses it, from his "property in his own person."
It is as
clear and has as fully the sanction of equity in any savage state as in the most
elaborate civilization. Labor can, of com-se, produce nothing without land; but
the right to the use of land is a primary individual right, not springing from
society, or depending on the consent of society, either expressed or implied,
but inhering in the individual, and resulting from his presence in the world.
Men must
have rights before they can have equal rights. Each man has a right to use the
world because he is here and wants to use the world. The equality of this right
is merely a limitation arising from the presence of others with like rights.
Society, in
other words, does not grant, and cannot equitably withhold from any individual,
the right to the use of land. That right exists before society and
independently of society, belonging at birth to each individual, and ceasing
only with his death. Society itself has no original right to the use of land.
What right
it has with regard to the use of land is simply that which is derived from and is
necessary to the determination of the rights of the individuals who compose it.
That is to say, the function of society with regard to the use of land only
begins where individual rights clash, and is to secure equality between these
clashing rights of individuals.
The primary
error of the advocates of land nationalization is in their confusion of equal
rights with joint rights, and in their consequent failure to realize the nature
and meaning of economic rent— errors which I have pointed out in commenting on
Mr. Spencer's declarations in “Social Statics".
In truth
the right to the use of land is not a joint or common right, but an equal right;
the joint or common right is to rent, in the economic sense of the term. Therefore,
it is not necessary for the state to take land, it is only necessary for it to
take rent.
This taking
by the commonalty of what is of common right, would of itself secure equality
in what is of equal right —for since the holding of land could be profitable
only to the user, there would be no inducement for anyone to hold land that he
could not adequately use, and monopolization being ended no one who wanted to
use land would have any difficulty in finding it.
And it
would at the same time secure the individual right, for in taking what is of
common right for its revenues the state could abolish all those taxes which now
take from the individual what is of individual right.
The truth
is that customs taxes, and improvement taxes, and income taxes, and taxes on
business and occupations and on legacies and successions, are morally and economically
no better than highway robbery or burglary, all the more disastrous and
demoralizing because practiced by the state. There is no necessity for them.
The seeming
necessity arises only from the failure of the state to take its own natural and
adequate source of revenue—a failure which entails a long train of evils of another
kind by stimulating a forestalling and monopolization of land which creates an
artificial scarcity of the primary element of life and labor, so that in the
midst of illimitable natural resources the opportunity to work has come to be
looked on as a boon, and in spite of the most enormous increase in the powers
of production the great mass find life a hard struggle to maintain life, and millions
die before their time, of overstrain and under nurture.
When the
matter is looked on in this way, the idea of compensation—the idea that justice
demands that those who have engrossed the natural revenue of the state must be
paid the capitalized value of all future engrossment before the state can
resume those revenues—is too preposterous for serious statement.
And while
in the nature of things any change from wrong-doing to right-doing must entail
loss upon those who profit by the wrong-doing, and this can no more be prevented
than can parallel lines be made to meet; yet it must also be remembered that in
the nature of things the loss is merely relative, the gain absolute. Whoever will
examine the subject will see that in the abandonment of the present unnatural
and unjust method of raising public revenues and the adoption of the natural
and just method even those who relatively lose will be enormous gainers.
Private
property in land— the subjecting of land to that exclusive ownership which
rightfully attaches to the products of labor—is a denial of the true right of property,
which gives to each the equal right to exert his labor and the exclusive right
to its results.
It
differs from
slavery only in its form, which is that of making property of the
indispensable natural factor of production, while slavery makes property
of the human factor; and it has the same purpose and effect, that of
compelling some men to work for others.
Its
abolition therefore does not mean the destruction of any right but the
cessation of a wrong—that for the future the municipal law shall conform to the
moral law, and that each shall have his own.
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