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. ...
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.) ...
3. That private property in land deprives no
one of the use of land. (8.)
Your own statement that land is the inexhaustible
storehouse that God owes to man must have aroused in your
Holiness’s mind an uneasy questioning of its
appropriation as private property, for, as though to
reassure yourself, you proceed to argue that its
ownership by some will not injure others. You say in
substance, that even though divided among private owners
the earth does not cease to minister to the needs of all,
since those who do not possess the soil can by selling
their labor obtain in payment the produce of the
land.
Suppose that to your Holiness as a judge of morals one
should put this case of conscience:
I am one of several children to whom our father
left a field abundant for our support. As he assigned
no part of it to any one of us in particular, leaving
the limits of our separate possession to be fixed by
ourselves, I being the eldest took the whole field in
exclusive ownership. But in doing so I have not
deprived my brothers of their support from it, for I
have let them work for me on it, paying them from the
produce as much wages as I would have had to pay
strangers. Is there any reason why my conscience should
not be clear?
What would be your answer? Would you not tell him that
he was in mortal sin, and that his excuse added to his
guilt? Would you not call on him to make restitution and
to do penance?
Or, suppose that as a temporal prince your Holiness
were ruler of a rainless land, such as Egypt, where there
were no springs or brooks, their want being supplied by a
bountiful river like the Nile. Supposing that having sent
a number of your subjects to make fruitful this land,
bidding them do justly and prosper, you were told that
some of them had set up a claim of ownership in the
river, refusing the others a drop of water, except as
they bought it of them; and that thus they had become
rich without work, while the others, though working hard,
were so impoverished by paying for water as to be hardly
able to exist?
Would not your indignation wax hot when this was
told?
Suppose that then the river-owners should send to you
and thus excuse their action:
The river, though divided among private owners,
ceases not thereby to minister to the needs of all, for
there is no one who drinks who does not drink of the
water of the river. Those who do not possess the water
of the river contribute their labor to get it; so that
it may be truly said that all water is supplied either
from one’s own river, or from some laborious
industry which is paid for either in the water, or in
that which is exchanged for the water.
Would the indignation of your Holiness be abated?
Would it not wax fiercer yet for the insult to your
intelligence of this excuse?
I do not need more formally to show your
Holiness that between utterly depriving a man of
God’s gifts and depriving him of God’s gifts
unless he will buy them, is merely the difference between
the robber who leaves his victim to die and the robber
who puts him to ransom. But I would like to
point out how your statement that “the earth,
though divided among private owners, ceases not thereby
to minister to the needs of all” overlooks the
largest facts.
From your palace of the Vatican the eye may rest on
the expanse of the Campagna, where the pious toil of
religious congregations and the efforts of the state are
only now beginning to make it possible for men to live.
Once that expanse was tilled by thriving husbandmen and
dotted with smiling hamlets. What for centuries has
condemned it to desertion? History tells us. It was
private property in land; the growth of the great estates
of which Pliny saw that ancient Italy was perishing; the
cause that, by bringing failure to the crop of men, let
in the Goths and Vandals, gave Roman Britain to the
worship of Odin and Thor, and in what were once the rich
and populous provinces of the East shivered the thinned
ranks and palsied arms of the legions on the simitars of
Mohammedan hordes, and in the sepulcher of our Lord and
in the Church of St. Sophia trampled the cross to rear
the crescent!
If you will go to Scotland, you may see great tracts
that under the Gaelic tenure, which recognized the right
of each to a foothold in the soil, bred sturdy men, but
that now, under the recognition of private property in
land, are given up to wild animals. If you go to Ireland,
your Bishops will show you, on lands where now only
beasts graze, the traces of hamlets that, when they were
young priests, were filled with honest, kindly, religious
people.*
* Let any one who wishes visit this diocese and see
with his own eyes the vast and boundless extent of the
fairest land in Europe that has been ruthlessly
depopulated since the commencement of the present
century, and which is now abandoned to a loneliness and
solitude more depressing than that of the prairie or
the wilderness. Thus has this land system actually
exercised the power of life and death on a vast scale,
for which there is no parallel even in the dark records
of slavery. — Bishop Nulty’s
Letter to the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese of
Meath.
If you will come to the United States, you will find
in a land wide enough and rich enough to support in
comfort the whole population of Europe, the growth of a
sentiment that looks with evil eye on immigration,
because the artificial scarcity that results from private
property in land makes it seem as if there is not room
enough and work enough for those already here.
Or go to the Antipodes, and in Australia, as in
England, you may see that private property in land is
operating to leave the land barren and to crowd the bulk
of the population into great cities. Go wherever you
please where the forces loosed by modern invention are
beginning to be felt and you may see that private
property in land is the curse, denounced by the prophet,
that prompts men to lay field to field till they
“alone dwell in the midst of the earth.
To the mere materialist this is sin and shame. Shall
we to whom this world is God’s world — we who
hold that man is called to this life only as a prelude to
a higher life — shall we defend it? ... read the whole
letter
All thought processes start with premises and flow to
conclusions. Here are the main premises of this book.
1. WE HAVE A CONTRACT
— Each generation has a
contract with the next to pass on the gifts it has
jointly inherited. These gifts fall into three
broad categories: nature, community, and culture. The
first category includes air, water, and ecosystems. The
second includes laws, infrastructure, and many systems
by which we connect with one another. The third
includes language, art, and science. All of these gifts
are immensely valuable, and need to be preserved if not
enhanced.
2. WE ARE NOT ALONE
— We living humans could benefit
from a bit more humility. Not only do our children and
grandchildren matter, so do other beings and their
offspring. They have a right to be here, even if they
aren’t useful to us. An economic system should
represent their interests as well as ours. A practical
way to do this is needed.
3. ILLTH
HAPPENS — Poverty, pollution,
despair, and ill-health — what John Ruskin called
illth — is the dark side of capitalism. This dark
side needs to be addressed.
4. FIX THE CODE, NOT THE
SYMPTOMS — If we want to reduce
illth on an economy-wide scale, we need to change the
code that produces it. Ameliorating symptoms after the
fact is a losing strategy. Unless the code itself is
changed, our economic machine will always create more
illth than it cleans up. Moreover, illth prevention is
a lot cheaper than illth cleanup.
5. REVISE
WISELY — Most of what’s in
our current code is fine as is, and shouldn’t be
tinkered with. “If it ain’t broke,
don’t fix it,” is a valid maxim. What does
need fixing should be fixed gradually whenever
possible, as fairly as possible, and at the lowest cost
possible. Efficiency and grace matter.
6. MONEY ISN’T
EVERYTHING — Money is the blood
of our economic system; it shouldn’t be the soul.
Humans have needs and desires that can’t be met
by exchanging dollars. These needs include connection
to family and community, closeness to nature, and
meaning in life. A twenty-first-century economic system
must address these needs, too. This doesn’t mean
it must fill them directly; often, the best it can do
is leave space for them to be filled in nonmonetary
ways. What it shouldn’t do is get in the way of
their being met.
7. GET THE INCENTIVES RIGHT
— Notwithstanding the above, an
economic system works best when it rewards desired
behavior. As Mary Poppins put it, “A spoonful of
sugar helps the medicine go down” (and as
I’ve never forgotten, offering a free pint of Ben
& Jerry’s was the best way Working Assets
ever found to get customers). While we’re looking
for methods to protect nature and future generations,
we need to make the incentives work for living humans
as well.
If you disagree with any of these premises,
you’re unlikely to fancy my conclusions. If, on the
other hand, these premises make sense to you, then
welcome to these pages. I won’t bore you with
statistics, or tell you, yet again, that our planet is
going to hell; I’m tired, as I suspect you are, of
numbers and gloom. Nor will I tell you we can save the
planet by doing ten easy things; you know it’s not
that simple. What I will tell you is how we can retool
our economic system, one step at a time, so that after a
decent interval, it respects nature and the human psyche,
and still provides abundantly for our material needs.
Perhaps capitalism will always involve a Faustian deal
of some sort: if we want the goods, we must accept the
bads. But if we must make a deal with the devil, I
believe we can make a much better one than we presently
have. We’ll have to be shrewd, tough, and bold.
But I’m confident that, if we understand how to
get a better deal, we will get one. After all, our
children and lots of other creatures are counting on us.
...
read the whole chapter