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Possession
Georgists are not opposed to private property.
Indeed, we recognize it as a fundamental right and a
basis for human progress. One must have secure title to
land before one can be comfortable investing in
improvements to it, be they as short-term as planting a
crop or as long-term as building a skyscraper. But
property rights are not monolithic or unlimited.
Elsewhere on this
website, you'll find a list of nine kinds of
property rights. Are individuals entitled to privatize
them all, or are some different from others?
There was a sixties song with the lyrics "take what
you need and leave the rest, but they should never have
taken the very best."
Georgists say "pay for what you take, not for what
you make." For the piece of land you call your own, you
owe your fellow citizens — the community —
payment, every month. But then whatever you
create from it is yours to keep (assuming of
course, that you don't harm others or harm the
environment in the process).
Poverty deepens as wealth increases, and wages are
forced down while productive power grows, because
land, which is the source of all wealth and the field
of all labor, is monopolized. To extirpate poverty,
to make wages what justice commands they should be,
the full earnings of the laborer, we must therefore
substitute for the individual ownership of land a
common ownership.*
*By the phrase "common ownership" of
land, Henry George did not mean that land should be
held in common or by the State, nor did he propose
to interfere with the existing system of land
tenures. (See Sections 7 and 12, post.) As in this
condensation much of George's argument necessarily
has been omitted, the following extracts from his
later work "Protection or Free Trade," chapter
XXVI, are appended to make his position clear to
the present reader.
"No one would sow a crop, or
build a house, or open a mine, or plant an
orchard, or cut a drain, so long as any one else
could come in and turn him out of the land in
which or on which such improvement must be fixed.
Thus is it absolutely necessary to the proper use
and improvement of land that society should
secure to the user and improver safe possession.
... We can leave land now being used in the
secure possession of those using it. ... on
condition that those who hold land shall pay to
the community a ... rent based on the value of
the privilege the individual receives from the
community in being accorded the exclusive use of
this much of the common property, and which
should have no reference to any improvement he
has made in or on it, or to any profit due to the
use of his labor and capital. In this way all
would be placed on an equality in regard to the
use and enjoyment of those natural elements which
are clearly the common heritage."
Henry George: The Condition of Labor
— An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII in response to
Rerum Novarum (1891)
As to the use of land, we hold: That —
While the right of ownership that justly attaches
to things produced by labor cannot attach to land,
there may attach to land a right of possession. As
your Holiness says, “God has not granted the
earth to mankind in general in the sense that all
without distinction can deal with it as they
please,” and regulations necessary for its best
use may be fixed by human laws. But such regulations
must conform to the moral law — must secure to
all equal participation in the advantages of
God’s general bounty. The principle is the same
as where a human father leaves property equally to a
number of children. Some of the things thus left may
be incapable of common use or of specific division.
Such things may properly be assigned to some of the
children, but only under condition that the equality
of benefit among them all be preserved.
In the rudest social state, while industry
consists in hunting, fishing, and gathering the
spontaneous fruits of the earth, private possession
of land is not necessary. But as men begin to
cultivate the ground and expend their labor in
permanent works, private possession of the land on
which labor is thus expended is needed to secure the
right of property in the products of labor. For who
would sow if not assured of the exclusive possession
needed to enable him to reap? who would attach costly
works to the soil without such exclusive possession
of the soil as would enable him to secure the
benefit?
This right of private possession in things created
by God is however very different from the right of
private ownership in things produced by labor. The
one is limited, the other unlimited, save in cases
when the dictate of self-preservation terminates all
other rights. The purpose of the one, the exclusive
possession of land, is merely to secure the other,
the exclusive ownership of the products of labor; and
it can never rightfully be carried so far as to
impair or deny this. While any one may hold exclusive
possession of land so far as it does not interfere
with the equal rights of others, he can rightfully
hold it no further.
Thus Cain and Abel, were there only two men on
earth, might by agreement divide the earth between
them. Under this compact each might claim exclusive
right to his share as against the other. But neither
could rightfully continue such claim against the next
man born. For since no one comes into the world
without God’s permission, his presence attests
his equal right to the use of God’s bounty. For
them to refuse him any use of the earth which they
had divided between them would therefore be for them
to commit murder. And for them to refuse him any use
of the earth, unless by laboring for them or by
giving them part of the products of his labor he
bought it of them, would be for them to commit theft.
...
God’s laws do not change. Though their
applications may alter with altering conditions, the
same principles of right and wrong that hold when men
are few and industry is rude also hold amid teeming
populations and complex industries. In our cities of
millions and our states of scores of millions, in a
civilization where the division of labor has gone so
far that large numbers are hardly conscious that they
are land-users, it still remains true that we are all
land animals and can live only on land, and that land
is God’s bounty to all, of which no one can be
deprived without being murdered, and for which no one
can be compelled to pay another without being robbed.
But even in a state of society where the elaboration
of industry and the increase of permanent
improvements have made the need for private
possession of land wide-spread, there is no
difficulty in conforming individual possession with
the equal right to land. For as soon as any piece of
land will yield to the possessor a larger return than
is had by similar labor on other land a value
attaches to it which is shown when it is sold or
rented. Thus, the value of the land itself,
irrespective of the value of any improvements in or
on it, always indicates the precise value of the
benefit to which all are entitled in its use, as
distinguished from the value which, as producer or
successor of a producer, belongs to the possessor in
individual right.
To combine the advantages of private possession
with the justice of common ownership it is only
necessary therefore to take for common uses what
value attaches to land irrespective of any exertion
of labor on it. The principle is the same as in the
case referred to, where a human father leaves equally
to his children things not susceptible of specific
division or common use. In that case such things
would be sold or rented and the value equally
applied.
It is on this common-sense principle that we, who
term ourselves single-tax men, would have the
community act.
We do not propose to assert equal rights to land
by keeping land common, letting any one use any part
of it at any time. We do not propose the task,
impossible in the present state of society, of
dividing land in equal shares; still less the yet
more impossible task of keeping it so divided.
We propose — leaving land in the private
possession of individuals, with full liberty on their
part to give, sell or bequeath it — simply to
levy on it for public uses a tax that shall equal the
annual value of the land itself, irrespective of the
use made of it or the improvements on it. And since
this would provide amply for the need of public
revenues, we would accompany this tax on land values
with the repeal of all taxes now levied on the
products and processes of industry — which
taxes, since they take from the earnings of labor, we
hold to be infringements of the right of
property.
This we propose, not as a cunning device of human
ingenuity, but as a conforming of human regulations
to the will of God.
God cannot contradict himself nor impose on his
creatures laws that clash.
If it be God’s command to men that they
should not steal — that is to say, that they
should respect the right of property which each one
has in the fruits of his labor;
And if he be also the Father of all men, who in
his common bounty has intended all to have equal
opportunities for sharing;
Then, in any possible stage of civilization,
however elaborate, there must be some way in which
the exclusive right to the products of industry may
be reconciled with the equal right to land.
If the Almighty be consistent with himself, it
cannot be, as say those socialists referred to by
you, that in order to secure the equal participation
of men in the opportunities of life and labor we must
ignore the right of private property. Nor yet can it
be, as you yourself in the Encyclical seem to argue,
that to secure the right of private property we must
ignore the equality of right in the opportunities of
life and labor. To say the one thing or the other is
equally to deny the harmony of God’s laws.
But, the private possession of land, subject to
the payment to the community of the value of any
special advantage thus given to the individual,
satisfies both laws, securing to all equal
participation in the bounty of the Creator and to
each the full ownership of the products of his labor.
...
For refusal to take for public purposes the
increasing values that attach to land with social
growth is to necessitate the getting of public
revenues by taxes that lessen production, distort
distribution and corrupt society. It is to leave some
to take what justly belongs to all; it is to forego
the only means by which it is possible in an advanced
civilization to combine the security of possession
that is necessary to improvement with the equality of
natural opportunity that is the most important of all
natural rights. It is thus at the basis of all social
life to set up an unjust inequality between man and
man, compelling some to pay others for the privilege
of living, for the chance of working, for the
advantages of civilization, for the gifts of their
God. But it is even more than this. The very robbery
that the masses of men thus suffer gives rise in
advancing communities to a new robbery. For the value
that with the increase of population and social
advance attaches to land being suffered to go to
individuals who have secured ownership of the land,
it prompts to a forestalling of and speculation in
land wherever there is any prospect of advancing
population or of coming improvement, thus producing
an artificial scarcity of the natural elements of
life and labor, and a strangulation of production
that shows itself in recurring spasms of industrial
depression as disastrous to the world as destructive
wars. It is this that is driving men from the old
countries to the new countries, only to bring there
the same curses. It is this that causes our material
advance not merely to fail to improve the condition
of the mere worker, but to make the condition of
large classes positively worse. It is this that in
our richest Christian countries is giving us a large
population whose lives are harder, more hopeless,
more degraded than those of the veriest savages. It
is this that leads so many men to think that God is a
bungler and is constantly bringing more people into
his world than he has made provision for; or that
there is no God, and that belief in him is a
superstition which the facts of life and the advance
of science are dispelling. ...
Your Holiness will see from the explanation I have
given that the reform we propose, like all true
reforms, has both an ethical and an economic side. By
ignoring the ethical side, and pushing our proposal
merely as a reform of taxation, we could avoid the
objections that arise from confounding ownership with
possession and attributing to private property in
land that security of use and improvement that can be
had even better without it. All that we seek
practically is the legal abolition, as fast as
possible, of taxes on the products and processes of
labor, and the consequent concentration of taxation
on land values irrespective of improvements. To put
our proposals in this way would be to urge them
merely as a matter of wise public expediency. ...
Your use, in so many passages of your Encyclical,
of the inclusive term “property” or
“private” property, of which in morals
nothing can be either affirmed or denied, makes your
meaning, if we take isolated sentences, in many
places ambiguous. But reading it as a whole, there
can be no doubt of your intention that private
property in land shall be understood when you speak
merely of private property. With this interpretation,
I find that the reasons you urge for private property
in land are eight. Let us consider them in order of
presentation. You urge:
1. That what is bought with rightful property is
rightful property. (RN, paragraph 5) ...
2. That private property in land proceeds from
man’s gift of reason. (RN, paragraphs 6-7.)
...
3. That private property in land deprives no one of
the use of land. (RN, paragraph 8.) ...
4. That Industry expended on land gives ownership in
the land itself. (RN, paragraphs 9-10.) ...
5. That private property in land has the support of
the common opinion of mankind, and has conduced to
peace and tranquillity, and that it is sanctioned by
Divine Law. (RN, paragraph 11.) ...
6. That fathers should provide for their children and
that private property in land is necessary to enable
them to do so. (RN, paragraphs 14-17.) ...
7. That the private ownership of land stimulates
industry, increases wealth, and attaches men to the
soil and to their country. (RN, paragraph 51.)
...
8. That the right to possess private property in land
is from nature, not from man; that the state has no
right to abolish it, and that to take the value of
landownership in taxation would be unjust and cruel
to the private owner. (RN, paragraph 51.) ...
2. That private property in land
proceeds from man’s gift of
reason. (6-7.)
In the second place your Holiness argues that man
possessing reason and forethought may not only
acquire ownership of the fruits of the earth, but
also of the earth itself, so that out of its products
he may make provision for the future.
Reason, with its attendant forethought, is indeed
the distinguishing attribute of man; that which
raises him above the brute, and shows, as the
Scriptures declare, that he is created in the
likeness of God. And this gift of reason does, as
your Holiness points out, involve the need and right
of private property in whatever is produced by the
exertion of reason and its attendant forethought, as
well as in what is produced by physical labor. In
truth, these elements of man’s production are
inseparable, and labor involves the use of reason. It
is by his reason that man differs from the animals in
being a producer, and in this sense a maker. Of
themselves his physical powers are slight, forming as
it were but the connection by which the mind takes
hold of material things, so as to utilize to its will
the matter and forces of nature. It is mind, the
intelligent reason, that is the prime mover in labor,
the essential agent in production.
The right of private ownership does therefore
indisputably attach to things provided by man’s
reason and forethought. But it cannot attach to
things provided by the reason and forethought of
God!
To illustrate: Let us suppose a company traveling
through the desert as the Israelites traveled from
Egypt. Such of them as had the forethought to provide
themselves with vessels of water would acquire a just
right of property in the water so carried, and in the
thirst of the waterless desert those who had
neglected to provide themselves, though they might
ask water from the provident in charity, could not
demand it in right. For while water itself is of the
providence of God, the presence of this water in such
vessels, at such place, results from the providence
of the men who carried it. Thus they have to it an
exclusive right.
But suppose others use their forethought in
pushing ahead and appropriating the springs, refusing
when their fellows come up to let them drink of the
water save as they buy it of them. Would such
forethought give any right?
Your Holiness, it is not the forethought of
carrying water where it is needed, but the
forethought of seizing springs, that you seek to
defend in defending the private ownership of
land!
Let me show this more fully, since it may be worth
while to meet those who say that if private property
in land be not just, then private property in the
products of labor is not just, as the material of
these products is taken from land. It will be seen on
consideration that all of man’s production is
analogous to such transportation of water as we have
supposed. In growing grain, or smelting metals, or
building houses, or weaving cloth, or doing any of
the things that constitute producing, all that man
does is to change in place or form preexisting
matter. As a producer man is merely a changer, not a
creator; God alone creates. And since the changes in
which man’s production consists inhere in
matter so long as they persist, the right of private
ownership attaches the accident to the essence, and
gives the right of ownership in that natural material
in which the labor of production is embodied. Thus
water, which in its original form and place is the
common gift of God to all men, when drawn from its
natural reservoir and brought into the desert, passes
rightfully into the ownership of the individual who
by changing its place has produced it there.
But such right of ownership is in reality
a mere right of temporary possession. For
though man may take material from the storehouse of
nature and change it in place or form to suit his
desires, yet from the moment he takes it, it tends
back to that storehouse again. Wood decays, iron
rusts, stone disintegrates and is displaced, while of
more perishable products, some will last for only a
few months, others for only a few days, and some
disappear immediately on use. Though, so far as we
can see, matter is eternal and force forever
persists; though we can neither annihilate nor create
the tiniest mote that floats in a sunbeam or the
faintest impulse that stirs a leaf, yet in the
ceaseless flux of nature, man’s work of moving
and combining constantly passes away. Thus the
recognition of the ownership of what natural material
is embodied in the products of man never constitutes
more than temporary possession — never
interferes with the reservoir provided for all. As
taking water from one place and carrying it to
another place by no means lessens the store of water,
since whether it is drunk or spilled or left to
evaporate, it must return again to the natural
reservoirs — so is it with all things on which
man in production can lay the impress of his
labor.
Hence, when you say that man’s reason puts
it within his right to have in stable and permanent
possession not only things that perish in the using,
but also those that remain for use in the future, you
are right in so far as you may include such things as
buildings, which with repair will last for
generations, with such things as food or fire-wood,
which are destroyed in the use. But when you infer
that man can have private ownership in those
permanent things of nature that are the reservoirs
from which all must draw, you are clearly wrong. Man
may indeed hold in private ownership the fruits of
the earth produced by his labor, since they lose in
time the impress of that labor, and pass again into
the natural reservoirs from which they were taken,
and thus the ownership of them by one works no injury
to others. But he cannot so own the earth itself, for
that is the reservoir from which must constantly be
drawn not only the material with which alone men can
produce, but even their very bodies.
The conclusive reason why man cannot claim
ownership in the earth itself as he can in the fruits
that he by labor brings forth from it, is in the
facts stated by you in the very next paragraph (7),
when you truly say:
Man’s needs do not die out, but recur;
satisfied today, they demand new supplies tomorrow.
Nature, therefore, owes to man a storehouse that
shall never fail, the daily supply of his daily
wants. And this he finds only in the inexhaustible
fertility of the earth.
By man you mean all men. Can what nature owes to
all men be made the private property of some men,
from which they may debar all other men?
Let me dwell on the words of your Holiness,
“Nature, therefore, owes to man a storehouse
that shall never fail.” By Nature you mean God.
Thus your thought, that in creating us, God himself
has incurred an obligation to provide us with a
storehouse that shall never fail, is the same as is
thus expressed and carried to its irresistible
conclusion by the Bishop of Meath:
God was perfectly free in the act by which He
created us; but having created us he bound himself by
that act to provide us with the means necessary for
our subsistence. The land is the only source of this
kind now known to us. The land, therefore, of every
country is the common property of the people of that
country, because its real owner, the Creator who made
it, has transferred it as a voluntary gift to them.
“Terram autem dedit filiis hominum.” Now,
as every individual in that country is a creature and
child of God, and as all his creatures are equal in
his sight, any settlement of the land of a country
that would exclude the humblest man in that country
from his share of the common inheritance would be not
only an injustice and a wrong to that man, but,
moreover, be AN IMPIOUS RESISTANCE TO THE BENEVOLENT
INTENTIONS OF HIS CREATOR. ...
4. That Industry expended on land
gives ownership in the land itself.
(9-10.)
Your Holiness next contends that industry expended
on land gives a right to ownership of the land, and
that the improvement of land creates benefits
indistinguishable and inseparable from the land
itself.
This contention, if valid, could only justify the
ownership of land by those who expend industry on it.
It would not justify private property in land as it
exists. On the contrary, it would justify a gigantic
no-rent declaration that would take land from those
who now legally own it, the landlords, and turn it
over to the tenants and laborers. And if it also be
that improvements cannot be distinguished and
separated from the land itself, how could the
landlords claim consideration even for improvements
they had made?
But your Holiness cannot mean what your words
imply. What you really mean, I take it, is that the
original justification and title of landownership is
in the expenditure of labor on it. But neither can
this justify private property in land as it exists.
For is it not all but universally true that existing
land titles do not come from use, but from force or
fraud?
Take Italy! Is it not true that the greater part
of the land of Italy is held by those who so far from
ever having expended industry on it have been mere
appropriators of the industry of those who have? Is
this not also true of Great Britain and of other
countries? Even in the United States, where the
forces of concentration have not yet had time fully
to operate and there has been some attempt to give
land to users, it is probably true today that the
greater part of the land is held by those who neither
use it nor propose to use it themselves, but merely
hold it to compel others to pay them for permission
to use it.
And if industry give ownership to land what are
the limits of this ownership? If a man may acquire
the ownership of several square miles of land by
grazing sheep on it, does this give to him and his
heirs the ownership of the same land when it is found
to contain rich mines, or when by the growth of
population and the progress of society it is needed
for farming, for gardening, for the close occupation
of a great city? Is it on the rights given by the
industry of those who first used it for grazing cows
or growing potatoes that you would found the title to
the land now covered by the city of New York and
having a value of thousands of millions of
dollars?
But your contention is not valid. Industry
expended on land gives ownership in the fruits of
that industry, but not in the land itself, just as
industry expended on the ocean would give a right of
ownership to the fish taken by it, but not a right of
ownership in the ocean. Nor yet is it true that
private ownership of land is necessary to secure the
fruits of labor on land; nor does the improvement of
land create benefits indistinguishable and
inseparable from the land itself. That secure
possession is necessary to the use and improvement of
land I have already explained, but that ownership is
not necessary is shown by the fact that in all
civilized countries land owned by one person is
cultivated and improved by other persons. Most of the
cultivated land in the British Islands, as in Italy
and other countries, is cultivated not by owners but
by tenants. And so the costliest buildings are
erected by those who are not owners of the land, but
who have from the owner a mere right of
possession for a time on condition
of certain payments. Nearly the whole of London has
been built in this way, and in New York, Chicago,
Denver, San Francisco, Sydney and Melbourne, as well
as in continental cities, the owners of many of the
largest edifices will be found to be different
persons from the owners of the ground. So far from
the value of improvements being inseparable from the
value of land, it is in individual transactions
constantly separated. For instance, one-half of the
land on which the immense Grand Pacific Hotel in
Chicago stands was recently separately sold, and in
Ceylon it is a not infrequent occurrence for one
person to own a fruit-tree and another to own the
ground in which it is implanted.
There is, indeed, no improvement of land, whether
it be clearing, plowing, manuring, cultivating, the
digging of cellars, the opening of wells or the
building of houses, that so long as its usefulness
continues does not have a value clearly
distinguishable from the value of the land. For land
having such improvements will always sell or rent for
more than similar land without them.
If, therefore, the state levy a tax equal to what
the land irrespective of improvement would bring, it
will take the benefits of mere ownership, but will
leave the full benefits of use and improvement, which
the prevailing system does not do. And since the
holder, who would still in form continue to be the
owner, could at any time give or sell both
possession and improvements, subject
to future assessment by the state on the value of the
land alone, he will be perfectly free to retain or
dispose of the full amount of property that the
exertion of his labor or the investment of his
capital has attached to or stored up in the land.
Thus, what we propose would secure, as it is
impossible in any other way to secure, what you
properly say is just and right — “that
the results of labor should belong to him who has
labored.” But private property in land —
to allow the holder without adequate payment to the
state to take for himself the benefit of the value
that attaches to land with social growth and
improvement — does take the results of labor
from him who has labored, does turn over the fruits
of one man’s labor to be enjoyed by another.
For labor, as the active factor, is the producer of
all wealth. Mere ownership produces nothing. A man
might own a world, but so sure is the decree that
“by the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat
bread,” that without labor he could not get a
meal or provide himself a garment. Hence, when the
owners of land, by virtue of their ownership and
without laboring themselves, get the products of
labor in abundance, these things must come from the
labor of others, must be the fruits of others’
sweat, taken from those who have a right to them and
enjoyed by those who have no right to them.
The only utility of private ownership of
land as distinguished from possession is the evil
utility of giving to the owner products of labor he
does not earn. For until land will yield to
its owner some return beyond that of the labor and
capital he expends on it — that is to say,
until by sale or rental he can without expenditure of
labor obtain from it products of labor, ownership
amounts to no more than security of
possession, and has no value. Its importance
and value begin only when, either in the present or
prospectively, it will yield a revenue — that
is to say, will enable the owner as owner to obtain
products of labor without exertion on his part, and
thus to enjoy the results of others’ labor.
What largely keeps men from realizing the robbery
involved in private property in land is that in the
most striking cases the robbery is not of
individuals, but of the community. For, as I have
before explained, it is impossible for rent in the
economic sense — that value which attaches to
land by reason of social growth and improvement
— to go to the user. It can go only to the
owner or to the community. Thus those who pay
enormous rents for the use of land in such centers as
London or New York are not individually injured.
Individually they get a return for what they pay, and
must feel that they have no better right to the use
of such peculiarly advantageous localities without
paying for it than have thousands of others. And so,
not thinking or not caring for the interests of the
community, they make no objection to the system.
It recently came to light in New York that a man
having no title whatever had been for years
collecting rents on a piece of land that the growth
of the city had made very valuable. Those who paid
these rents had never stopped to ask whether he had
any right to them. They felt that they had no right
to land that so many others would like to have,
without paying for it, and did not think of, or did
not care for, the rights of all. ...
7. That the private ownership of land
stimulates industry, increases wealth, and attaches
men to the soil and to their country.
(51.)
The idea, as expressed by Arthur Young, that
“the magic of property turns barren sands to
gold” springs from the confusion of
ownership with possession, of which I have
before spoken, that attributes to private property in
land what is due to security of the products of
labor. It is needless for me again to point out that
the change we propose, the taxation for public uses
of land values, or economic rent, and the abolition
of other taxes, would give to the user of land far
greater security for the fruits of his labor than the
present system and far greater permanence of
possession. Nor is it necessary further to show how
it would give homes to those who are now homeless and
bind men to their country. For under it every one who
wanted a piece of land for a home or for productive
use could get it without purchase price and hold it
even without tax, since the tax we propose would not
fall on all land, nor even on all land in use, but
only on land better than the poorest land in use, and
is in reality not a tax at all, but merely a return
to the state for the use of a valuable privilege. And
even those who from circumstances or occupation did
not wish to make permanent use of land would still
have an equal interest with all others in the land of
their country and in the general prosperity.
But I should like your Holiness to consider how
utterly unnatural is the condition of the masses in
the richest and most progressive of Christian
countries; how large bodies of them live in
habitations in which a rich man would not ask his dog
to dwell; how the great majority have no homes from
which they are not liable on the slightest misfortune
to be evicted; how numbers have no homes at all, but
must seek what shelter chance or charity offers. I
should like to ask your Holiness to consider how the
great majority of men in such countries have no
interest whatever in what they are taught to call
their native land, for which they are told that on
occasions it is their duty to fight or to die. What
right, for instance, have the majority of your
countrymen in the land of their birth? Can they live
in Italy outside of a prison or a poorhouse except as
they buy the privilege from some of the exclusive
owners of Italy? Cannot an Englishman, an American,
an Arab or a Japanese do as much? May not what was
said centuries ago by Tiberius Gracchus be said
today: “Men of Rome! you are called the lords
of the world, yet have no right to a square foot of
its soil! The wild beasts have their dens, but the
soldiers of Italy have only water and air!”
What is true of Italy is true of the civilized
world — is becoming increasingly true. It is
the inevitable effect as civilization progresses of
private property in land. ... read the whole
letter
Henry George: The
Wages of Labor
To attach to things created by God the same right
of private ownership that justly attaches to things
produced by labor is to impair and deny the true rights
of property. For a man who out of the proceeds of his
labor is obliged to pay another man far the use of ocean
or air or sunshine or soil – all of which are
involved in the single term “land” – is
in this deprived of his rightful property; and thus
robbed.
While the right of ownership that
justly attaches to things produced by labor cannot attach
to land, there may attach to land a right of
possession.
God has not granted the earth to
mankind in general in the sense that all without
distinction can deal with it as they please; and
regulations necessary far its best use may be fixed by
human laws. But such regulations must conform to the moral
law – must secure to all equal participation in the
advantages of God’s general bounty.
The principle is the same as where a
father leaves property equally to a number of children.
Some of the things thus left may be incapable of common use
or of specific division. Such things may properly be
assigned to some of the children, but only under condition that the equality of benefit
among them all be preserved.
...
This right of private possession
in things created by God is, however, very different from
the right of private ownership in things produced by
labor. The one is limited, the other unlimited, save in
cases when the dictate of self-preservation may terminate
all other rights. The purpose of the one, the exclusive
possession of land, is merely to secure the other, the
exclusive ownership of the products of labor; and it can
never rightfully be carried so far as to impair or deny
this. While anyone may hold exclusive possession
of land so far as it does not interfere with the equal
rights of others, he can rightfully hold it no further.
...
We propose leaving land
in the private possession of individuals – with full
liberty on their part to transfer or bequeath it –
simply to take for public uses the annual value of the land
itself, irrespective of the use made of it or the
improvements on it. And, since this would provide amply for
the need of Public Revenue, we would accompany this
collection of land values with the repeal of all taxes now
levied on the products and processes of industry –
which taxes, since they take from the earnings of labor, we
hold to be infringements of the right of
property.
This we propose, not as a cunning
device of human ingenuity, but as a conforming of human
regulations to the will of God! ... read the whole
article
Henry George: This
World is the Creation of God (1891) -- Appendix to
The Condition of Labor: An Open Letter to
Pope Leo XIII
...While the right of ownership that justly
attaches to things produced by labor cannot attach to
land, there may attach to land a right of
possession.
This right of private possession in things
created by God is however very different from the right
of private ownership in things produced by labor. The one
is limited, the other unlimited, save in cases when the
dictate of self-preservation terminates all other rights.
The purpose of the one, the exclusive possession of land,
is merely to secure the other, the exclusive ownership of
the products of labor; and it can never rightfully be
carried so far as to impair or deny this. While any one
may hold exclusive possession of land so far as it does
not interfere with the equal rights of others, he can
rightfully hold it no further.
To combine the advantages of private possession
with the justice of common ownership it is only
necessarily therefore to take for common uses what value
attaches to land irrespective of any exertion of labor on
it.
We propose -- leaving land in the private
possession of individuals, with full liberty on their
part to give, sell or bequeath it -- simply to levy on it
for public uses a tax that shall equal the annual value
of the land itself, irrespective of the use made of it or
the improvements on it. And since this would provide
amply for the need of public revenues, we would accompany
this tax on land values with the repeal of all taxes new
levied on the products and processes of industry -- which
taxes, since they take from the earnings of labor, we
hold to be infringements of the right of property. ...
read the entire article
Rev. A. C. Auchmuty: Gems from George, a themed
collection of excerpts from the writings of Henry
George (with links to sources)
NATURE acknowledges no ownership or control in man
save as the result of exertion. In no other way can her
treasures be drawn forth, her powers directed, or her
forces utilized or controlled. She makes no
discriminations among men, but is to all absolutely
impartial. She knows no distinction between master and
slave, king and subject, saint and sinner. All men to her
stand upon an equal footing and have equal rights. She
recognizes no claim but that of labor, and recognizes
that without respect to the claimant. If a pirate spread
his sails, the wind will fill them as well as it will
fill those of a peaceful merchantman or missionary bark;
if a king and a common man be thrown overboard, neither
can keep his head above the water except by swimming;
birds will not come to be shot by the proprietor of the
soil any quicker than they will come to be shot by the
poacher; fish will bite or will not bite at a hook in
utter disregard as to whether it is offered them by a
good little boy who goes to Sunday school, or a bad
little boy who plays truant; grain will grow only as the
ground is prepared and the seed is sown; it is only at
the call of labor that ore can be raised from the mine;
the sun shines and the rain falls alike upon just and
unjust. The laws of nature are the decrees of the
Creator. There is written in them no recognition of any
right save that of labor; and in them is written broadly
and clearly the equal right of all men to the use and
enjoyment of nature; to apply to her by their exertions,
and to receive and possess her reward. Hence, as nature
gives only to labor, the exertion of labor in production
is the only title to exclusive possession. —
Progress & Poverty
— Book VII, Chapter 1, Justice of the Remedy:
Injustice of private property in land
PRIVATE property is not of one species, and moral
sanction can no more be asserted universally of it than
of marriage. That proper marriage conforms to the law of
God does not justify the polygamic or polyandric or
incestuous marriages that are in some countries permitted
by the civil law. And as there may be immoral marriage,
so may there be immoral private property. —
The Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo
XIII
THAT any species of property is permitted by the State,
does not of itself give it moral sanction. The State has
often made things property that are not justly property
but involve violence and robbery. —
The Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo
XIII
TO attach to things created by God the same right of
private ownership that justly attaches to things produced
by labor, is to impair and deny the true rights of
property. For a man, who out of the proceeds of his labor
is obliged to pay another man for the use of ocean or air
or sunshine or soil, all of which are to men involved in
the single term land, is in this deprived of his rightful
property, and thus robbed. —
The Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo
XIII
HOW then is it that we are called deniers of the right of
property? It is for the same reason that caused
nine-tenths of the good people in the United States,
north as well as south, to regard abolitionists as
deniers of the right of property; the same reason that
made even John Wesley look on a smuggler as a kind of
robber, and on a custom-house seizer of other men's goods
as a defender of law and order. Where violations of
the right of property have been long sanctioned by
custom and law, it is inevitable that those who really
assert the right of property will at first be thought to
deny it. For under such circumstances the idea of
property becomes confused, and that is thought to be
property which is in reality a violation of property.
—
A Perplexed Philosopher
(The Right Of Property And The Right Of
Taxation)
LANDLORDS must elect to try their case either by human
law or by moral law. If they say that land is
rightly property because made so by human law, they
cannot charge those who would change that law with
advocating robbery. But if they charge that such
change in human law would be robbery, then they must show
that land is rightfully property irrespective of human
law. — The Reduction to Iniquity (a reply to
the Duke of Argyll), The Nineteenth Century, July,
1884 ... go to "Gems
from George"
Louis Post: Outlines
of Louis F. Post's Lectures, with Illustrative Notes and
Charts (1894) — Appendix: FAQ
Q32. Is not ownership of land necessary to induce
its improvement? Does not history show that private
ownership is a step in advance of common
ownership?
A. No. Private use was doubtless a step in advance of
common use. And because private use seems to us to have
been brought about under the institution of private
ownership, private ownership appears to the superficial
to have been the real advance. But a little observation
and reflection will remove that impression. Private
ownership of land is not necessary to its private use.
And so far from inducing improvement, private ownership
retards it. When a man owns land he may accumulate wealth
by doing nothing with the land, simply allowing the
community to increase its value while he pays a merely
nominal tax, upon the plea that he gets no income from
the property. But when the possessor has to pay the value
of his land every year, as he would have to under the
single tax, and as ground renters do now, he must improve
his holding in order to profit by it. Private possession
of land, without profit except from use, promotes
improvement; private ownership, with profit regardless of
use, retards improvement. Every city in the world, in its
vacant lots, offers proof of the statement. It is the
lots that are owned, and not those that are held upon
ground-lease, that remain vacant.
Q53. Is it true that men are equally entitled to
land? Are they not entitled to it in proportion to their
use of it?
A. Yes, they are entitled to it in proportion to their
use of it and it is this title that the single tax would
secure. It would allow every one to possess as much land
as he wished, upon the sole condition that if it has a
value he shall account to the community for that value
and for nothing else; all that he produces from the land
above its value being absolutely his, free even from
taxation. The single tax is the method best adapted to
our circumstances, and to orderly conditions, for
limiting possession of land to its use. By making it
unprofitable to hold land except for use, or to hold more
than can be used to advantage, it constitutes every man
his own judge of the amount and the character of the land
that he can use. ... read the book
Charles B. Fillebrown: A Catechism of Natural
Taxation, from Principles of Natural Taxation
(1917)
Q13. What is meant by the right of
property?
A. As to the grain a man raises, or the house that he
builds, it means ownership full and complete. As to land,
it means legal title, tenure, "estate in land," perpetual
right of exclusive possession, a right not absolute, but
superior to that of any other man.
Q14. What is meant by the right of
possession?
A. As to land, if permanent and exclusive, as on
perpetual lease, it means the right to "buy and sell,
bequeath and devise," to "give, grant, bargain, sell, and
convey" together with the rights and privileges thereto
pertaining, in short, the same definition for
possession that the law applies to
property.
... read
the whole article
Fred Foldvary: A Geoist Robinson
Crusoe Story
Once upon a time, Robinson G. Crusoe was the only
survivor of a ship that sunk. He floated on a piece of
wood to an unpopulated island. Robinson was an absolute
geoist. He believed with his mind, heart, and soul that
everyone should have an equal share of land rent.
Since he was the only person on this
island, it was all his. He surveyed the island and found
that the only crop available for cultivation was alfalfa
sprouts. The land was divided into 5 grades that could grow
8, 6, 4, 2, and zero bushels of alfalfa sprouts per month.
There was one acre each for 8, 6, and 4, and 100 acres of
2-bushel land. For 8 hours per day of labor, he could work
4 acres. So he could grow, per month, 8+6+4+2 = 20 bushels
of alfalfa sprouts, much more than enough to feed on.
One day another survivor of a sunken ship floated to the
island. His name was Friday George. Friday was a boring
talker and kept chattering about trivialities, which
greatly irritated Robinson. "I possess the whole island.
You may only have this rocky area," said Robinson.
...
Robinson realized that it did not matter which
lands he possessed. He could possess better land, but so
long as the rent is split equally, if the wage rate is
equal, their income will not be affected. Lawyers
say that possession is nine tenths of the law, but the
law of rent says, possession does not
matter.
If the rent is split equally, those who possess
land and want to maximize their income will possess only
that amount that maximizes income for
all. If they possess too much
land, they would drive wages down and rents up, leaving
less for the possessors. So it does not matter who owns
what land, if the rent is equally split. ... Read the whole piece
Nic Tideman:
Private Possession as an Alternative to Rental and Private
Ownership for Agricultural Land
One of the reasons that the debate is so fierce
between the advocates of rental and the advocates of
private ownership of agricultural land is that each
position has important strengths as well as important
weaknesses. This paper argues that there is a third
possibility between rental and private ownership that
retains the strengths of both while avoiding the
weaknesses of both. The third possibility is private
possession of land. ...
Private possession of land is a form of land
privatization that combines the attractive features of
rental and private ownership without their disadvantages.
The private possessors of land are entitled to possess
and use as much land as they wish for as long as they
wish and to transfer it to whomever they wish on whatever
terms are mutually agreed. This provides incentives for
efficient improvements to land. As a condition for
continuing use of land, the private possessors are
required to pay its assessed rental value in an
unimproved condition to the local government. This keeps
the price of titles of possession down to amounts
approximating the sale value of improvements, eliminates
the profit from land speculation, and provides a source
of public revenue. The public collection of the rental
value of land gives expression to the idea that land is
the common heritage of all generations. The rental value
of land would be determined by assessors, who would
follow rental agreements and relate the value of each
parcel to agreed rental prices of near-by, similar land,
adjusted for the contribution of improvements to rental
value. Before an effort is made to measure the rental
value of agricultural land, there should be agricultural
reforms to eliminate all restriction on what farmers
grow, who they sell it to, or what prices they receive.
And food should not be imported when it is available
domestically at a lower price.
Payments for the use of land would be classified not
as taxes, but rather as compensation for the use of
common resources. Therefore these payments would not be
affected by the law specifying that farmers are not
required to pay taxes for five years. There could,
however, be an exemption for a modest amount of rental
value of land.
read the whole article
James Kiefer: James Huntington and the
ideas of Henry George
Henry George, author of Progress and Poverty, argued
that, while some forms of wealth are produced by human
activity, and are rightly the property of the producers
(or those who have obtained them from the previous owners
by voluntary gift or exchange), land and natural
resources are bestowed by God on the human race, and that
every one of the N inhabitants of the earth has a claim
to 1/Nth of the coal beds, 1/Nth of the oil wells, 1/Nth
of the mines, and 1/Nth of the fertile soil. God wills a
society where everyone may sit in peace under his own
vine and his own fig tree.
The Law of Moses undertook to implement this by making
the ownership of land hereditary, with a man's land
divided among his sons (or, in the absence of sons, his
daughters), and prohibiting the permanent sale of land.
(See Leviticus 25:13-17,23.) The most a man might do with
his land is sell the use of it until the next Jubilee
year, an amnesty declared once every fifty years, when
all debts were cancelled and all land returned to its
hereditary owner.
Henry George's proposed implementation is to tax all
land at about 99.99% of its rental value, leaving the
owner of record enough to cover his bookkeeping expenses.
The resulting revenues would be divided equally among the
natural owners of the land, viz. the people of the
country, with everyone receiving a dividend check
regularly for the use of his share of the earth (here I
am anticipating what I think George would have suggested
if he had written in the 1990's rather than the
1870's).
This procedure would have the effect of making the
sale price of a piece of land, not including the price of
buildings and other improvements on it, practically zero.
The cost of being a landholder would be, not the original
sale price, but the tax, equivalent to rent. A man who
chose to hold his "fair share," or 1/Nth of all the land,
would pay a land tax about equal to his dividend check,
and so would break even. By 1/Nth of the land is meant
land with a value equal to 1/Nth of the value of all the
land in the country.
Naturally, an acre in the business district of a great
city would be worth as much as many square miles in the
open country. Some would prefer to hold more than one
N'th of the land and pay for the privilege. Some would
prefer to hold less land, or no land at all, and get a
small annual check representing the dividend on their
inheritance from their father Adam.
Note that, at least for the able-bodied, this solves
the problem of poverty at a stroke. If the total land and
total labor of the world are enough to feed and clothe
the existing population, then 1/Nth of the land and 1/Nth
of the labor are enough to feed and clothe 1/Nth of the
population. A family of 4 occupying 4/Nths of the land
(which is what their dividend checks will enable them to
pay the tax on) will find that their labor applied to
that land is enough to enable them to feed and clothe
themselves. Of course, they may prefer to apply their
labor elsewhere more profitably, but the situation from
which we start is one in which everyone has his own plot
of ground from which to wrest a living by the strength of
his own back, and any deviation from this is the result
of voluntary exchanges agreed to by the parties directly
involved, who judge themselves to be better off as the
result of the exchanges.
Some readers may think this a very radical proposal.
In fact, it is extremely conservative, in the sense of
being in agreement with historic ideas about land
ownership as opposed to ownership of, say, tools or
vehicles or gold or domestic animals or other movables.
The laws of English-speaking countries uniformly
distinguish between real property (land) and personal
property (everything else). In this context, "real" is
not the opposite of "imaginary." It is a form of the word
"royal," and means that the ultimate owner of the land is
the king, as symbol of the people. Note that
English-derived law does not recognize "landowners." The
term is "landholders." The concept of eminent domain is
that the landholder may be forced to surrender his
landholdings to the government for a public purpose.
Historically, eminent domain does not apply to property
other than land, although complications arise when there
are buildings on the land that is being seized.
I will mention in passing that the proposals of Henry
George have attracted support from persons as diverse as
Felix Morley, Aldous
Huxley, Woodrow Wilson, Helen Keller, Winston Churchill, Leo Tolstoy, William F Buckley Jr, and Sun
Yat-sen. To the Five Nobel Prizes authorized by Alfred
Nobel himself there has been added a sixth, in Economics,
and the Henry George Foundation claims eight of the Economics
Laureates as supporters, in whole or in part, of the
proposals of Henry George (Paul Samuelson, 1970; Milton Friedman, 1976; Herbert A
Simon, 1978; James Tobin, 1981; Franco Modigliani, 1985;
James M Buchanan, 1986; Robert M Solow, 1987; William S Vickrey, 1996).
The immediate concrete proposal favored by most
Georgists today is that cities shall tax land within
their boundaries at a higher rate than they tax buildings
and other improvements on the land. (In case anyone is
about to ask, "How can we possibly distinguish between
the value of the land and the value of the buildings on
it?" let me assure you that real estate assessors do it
all the time. It is standard practice to make the two
assessments separately, and a parcel of land in the
business district of a large city very often has a
different owner from the building on it.) Many cities
have moved to a system of taxing land more heavily than
improvements, and most have been pleased with the
results, finding that landholders are more likely to use
their land productively -- to their own benefit and that
of the public -- if their taxes do not automatically go
up when they improve their land by constructing or
maintaining buildings on it.
An advantage of this proposal in the eyes of many is
that it is a Fabian proposal, "evolution, not
revolution," that it is incremental and reversible. If a
city or other jurisdiction does not like the results of a
two-level tax system, it can repeal the arrangement or
reduce the difference in levels with no great upheaval.
It is not like some other proposals of the form,
"Distribute all wealth justly, and make me absolute
dictator of the world so that I can supervise the
distribution, and if it doesn't work, I promise to
resign." The problem is that absolute dictators seldom
resign. ... read
the whole article
Charles T. Root — Not a Single Tax! (1925)
Briefly defined the land value or economic rent of any
piece of ground is the largest annual amount voluntarily
offered for the exclusive use of that ground, or of an
equivalent parcel, independent of improvements thereon.
Every holder or user of land pays economic rent, but he
now pays most of it to the wrong party. The aggregate
economic rent of the territory occupied by any political
unit is, as has been stated above, always sufficient,
usually more than sufficient, for the legitimate expenses
of the government of that unit. As also stated above, the
economic rent belongs to the community, and not to
individual landowners. ...
Under the normal system which this article advocates,
the user of land would pay substantially the same
economic rent as now, for the reason that economic rent
is fixed by the payer and not by the payee; but it would
be paid to the credit of the community instead of for the
benefit of the individual landowner. And the economic
rent is all the land user would have to pay; no taxes on
industry or personal product and no other forced
contribution for governmental purposes. ...
To illustrate simply, let us suppose a state which has
never parted with its natural income but is supported by
its own economic rent. A farmer wishes to take up a tract
of government land in this state and offers an economic
rent of fifty cents per year per acre in its raw
condition. The government (i.e., the community) accepts
this rent, subject to re-adjustment every five years. The
farmer then gets his deed without other cost than that of
drawing and recording the instrument, or a nominal price
of, say, one dollar an acre. ...
... Furthermore, he has built on these parcels a barn
and two storehouses.
The method of computing the proper selling price under
such circumstances would have to be the result of
experience, but that price would certainly include the
present value of the improvements and probably some lump
sum besides, as compensation for loss of farming
opportunity. But just as certainly it would not include,
(as it would do under our present conditions), the
increased location value which the town itself has
created by its own growth and public works, and which in
all justice belongs to the town or community and not to
the individual. ...
Let us roughly restate the proposition: All members of
the community having a joint right to the income which
the social advantages of the land will command, they are
all partners in this income.
Therefore, when one of their number wishes to take for
his private use a parcel of this land, he should buy out
his partners, i.e., the rest of the community, by paying
regularly into the common treasury the economic rent of
that parcel, instead of paying, as at present, the
purchase price, i.e., the right to collect the economic
rent, in a lump, to some other individual who has no more
original right to it than himself.
But before this time the reader, unless he has given
previous attention to the subject, is full of objections
to the above doctrine: "How about the law?" he is asking.
"Hasn't a man the right to buy a piece of land as cheaply
as he can, to do what he pleases with it, and hold on to
it till he gets ready to sell?" The answer is that at
present he certainly has this statutory right, which has
been so long and so universally recognized that most
people suppose it to be not only a legal, but a real or
equitable right. A shrewd man, foreseeing the direction
of growth of population in a city, for example, can buy a
well-located block at a moderate figure from some less
far-seeing owner, can let it grow up to weeds, fence it
off against all comers and give it no further attention
except to pay the very small tax usually imposed upon
vacant land.
Meantime the increasing community builds up all around
it with homes, banks, stores, churches, schools, paving
and lighting the streets, giving police and fire
protection, etc., and at last comes to need this block so
urgently that the owner is fairly begged to sell it, at
three or ten or fifty times what it cost him. Quite often
the purchaser at this enormous advance is the very
community which has through its presence and the
expenditure of its taxes created practically the whole
value of the land in question!
It was said above that an individual has a statutory
right to pursue this very common course. That was an
error. The statement should have been that he has a
statutory wrong; for no disinterested person can follow
the course of land speculation as almost universally
practiced, without feeling its rank injustice.
How did so evident a wrong become so firmly
established? ... read
the whole article
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