PROPERTY in land, like property in slaves, is
essentially different from property in things that are
the result of labor. Rob a man or a people of money, or
goods, or cattle, and the robbery is finished there and
then. The lapse of time does not, indeed, change wrong
into right, but it obliterates the effects of the deed.
That is done; it is over; and, unless it be very soon
righted, it glides away into the past, with the men who
were parties to it, so swiftly that nothing save
omniscience can trace its effects; and in attempting to
right it we would be in danger of doing fresh wrong. The
past is forever beyond us. We can neither punish nor
recompense the dead. But rob a people of the land on
which they must live, and the robbery is continuous. It
is a fresh robbery of every succeeding generation —
a new robbery every year and every day; it is like the
robbery which condemns to slavery the children of the
slave. To apply to it the statute of limitations,
to acknowledge for it the title of prescription, is not
to condone the past; it is to legalese robbery in the
present, to justify it in the future. — The (Irish) Land
Question
How to Stop it
LABOR may be likened to a man who as he
carries home his earnings is waylaid by a series of
robbers. One demands this much, and another that much,
but last of all stands one who demands all that is left,
save just enough to enable the victim to maintain life
and come forth next day to work. So long as this last
robber remains, what will it benefit such a man to drive
off any or all of the other robbers?
Such is the situation of labor today throughout the
civilized world. And the robber that takes all that is
left, is private property in land. Improvement, no matter
how great, and reform, no matter how beneficial in
itself, cannot help that class who, deprived of all right
to the use of the material elements, have only the power
to labor — a power as useless in itself as a sail
without wind, a pump without water, or a saddle without a
horse. — Protection or Free Trade —
Chapter 25: The Robber That Takes All That Is Left -
econlib | abridged
THERE is but one way to remove an evil — and that
is, to remove its cause. 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. Nothing else will go to the cause of
the evil — in nothing else is there the slightest
hope. —
Progress & Poverty
— Book VI, Chapter 2, The Remedy: The True
Remedy
BUT is there not some line the recognition of which
will enable us to say with something like scientific
precision that this man is rich and that man is poor;
some line of possession which will enable us truly to
distinguish between rich and poor in all places and
conditions of society; a line of the natural mean or
normal possession, below which in varying degrees is
poverty, and above which in varying degrees is
wealthiness? It seems to me that there must be. And if we
stop to think of it, we may see that there is. If we set
aside for the moment the narrower economic meaning of
service, by which direct service is conveniently
distinguished from the indirect service embodied in
wealth, we may resolve all the things which directly or
indirectly satisfy human desire into one term service,
just as we resolve fractions into a common denominator.
Now is there not a natural or normal line of the
possession or enjoyment of service? Clearly there is. It
is that of equality between giving and receiving. This is
the equilibrium which Confucius expressed in the golden
word of his teaching that in English we translate into
"reciprocity." Naturally the services which a
member of a human society is entitled to receive from
other members are the equivalents of those he renders to
others. Here is the normal line from which what we call
wealthiness and what we call poverty take their start.
He who can command more service than he need
render, is rich. He is poor, who can command less service
than he does render or is willing to render: for in our
civilization of today we must take note of the monstrous
fact that men willing to work cannot always find
opportunity to work. The one has more than he ought to
have; the other has less. Rich and poor are thus
correlatives of each other; the existence of a class of
rich involves the existence of a class of poor, and the
reverse; and abnormal luxury on the one side and abnormal
want on the other have a relation of necessary sequence.
To put this relation into terms of morals, the rich are
the robbers, since they are at least sharers in the
proceeds of robbery; and the poor are the
robbed. This is the reason, I take it, why
Christ, Who was not really a man of such reckless speech
as some Christians deem Him to have been, always
expressed sympathy with the poor and repugnance of the
rich. In His philosophy it was better even to be robbed
than to rob. In the kingdom of right doing which He
preached, rich and poor would be impossible, because rich
and poor in the true sense are the results of
wrong-doing. And when He said, "It is easier for a camel
to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man
to enter the kingdom of heaven," He simply put in the
emphatic form of Eastern metaphor a statement of fact as
coldly true as the statement that two parallel lines can
never meet. Injustice cannot live where justice rules,
and even if the man himself might get through, his riches
— his power of compelling service without rendering
service — must of necessity be left behind. If
there can be no poor in the kingdom of heaven, clearly
there can be no rich. And so it is utterly impossible in
this, or in any other conceivable world, to abolish
unjust poverty, without at the same time abolishing
unjust possessions. This is a hard word to the softly
amiable philanthropists, who, to speak metaphorically,
would like to get on the good side of God without
angering the devil. But it is a true word nevertheless.
— The Science of Political Economy
unabridged: Book II, Chapter 19, The Nature of Wealth:
Moral Confusions as to Wealth • abridged:
Part II, Chapter 15, The Nature of Wealth: Moral
Confusions as to Wealth
GREAT as John Stuart Mill was and pure as he was
— warm heart and noble mind — he yet never
saw the true harmony of economic laws, nor realized how
from this one great fundamental wrong flow want and
misery, and vice and shame. Else he could never have
written this sentence: "The land of Ireland, the land of
every country, belongs to the people of that country. The
individuals called landowners have no right in morality
and justice to anything but the rent, or compensation for
its salable value."
In the name of the Prophet — figs! If the land of
any country belong to the people of that country, what
right, in morality and justice, have the individuals
called landowners 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?
Herbert Spencer says: "Had we to deal with the parties
who originally robbed the human race of its heritage, we
might make short work of the matter?" Why not make short
work of the matter anyhow? For this robbery is not like
the robbery of a horse or a sum of money, that ceases
with the act. It is a fresh and continuous robbery, that
goes on every day and every hour. It is not from the
produce of the past that rent is drawn; it is from the
produce of the present. It is a toll levied upon labor
constantly and continuously. Every blow of the hammer,
every stroke of the pick, every thrust of the shuttle,
every throb of the steam engine pay it tribute. It levies
upon the earnings of the men who, deep underground, risk
their lives, and of those who over white surges hang to
reeling masts; it claims the just reward of the
capitalist and the fruits of the inventor's patient
effort; it takes little children from play and from
school, and compels them to work before their bones are
hard or their muscles are firm; it robs the shivering of
warmth; the hungry, of food; the sick, of medicine; the
anxious, of peace. It debases, and embrutes, and
embitters. —
Progress & Poverty
— Book VII, Chapter 3, Justice of the Remedy: Claim
of Landowners to Compensation
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