Injustice
To what should our elected representatives, our executive branch and our
courts be devoted, if not to creating social and economic justice and a society
with no victims?
Our primary social adjustment is a denial of justice. In allowing
one man to own the land on which and from which other men must live, we
have made them his bondsmen in a degree which increases as material progress
goes on. This is the subtile alchemy that in ways they
do not realize is extracting from the masses in every civilized country
the fruits
of their weary toil; that is instituting a harder and more hopeless slavery
in place of that which has been destroyed; that is bringing political despotism
out of political freedom, and must soon transmute democratic institutions
into anarchy. — Henry George
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side
of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and
you say that
you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality." — Archbishop
Desmond Tutu
H.G. Brown: Significant
Paragraphs from Henry George's Progress & Poverty:
14 Liberty, and Equality of Opportunity (in the unabridged P&P: Part
X: The Law of Human Progress — Chapter 5: The Central Truth)
The truth to which we were led in the politico-economic branch of our inquiry
is as clearly apparent in the rise and fall of nations and the growth and decay
of civilizations, and it accords with those deep-seated recognitions of relation
and sequence that we denominate moral perceptions. Thus are given to our conclusions
the greatest certitude and highest sanction.
This truth involves both a menace and a promise. It shows that the evils arising
from the unjust and unequal distribution of wealth, which are becoming more
and more apparent as modern civilization goes on, are not incidents of progress,
but tendencies which must bring progress to a halt; that they will not cure
themselves, but, on the contrary, must, unless their cause is removed, grow
greater and greater, until they sweep us back into barbarism by the road every
previous civilization has trod. But it also shows that these evils are not
imposed by natural laws; that they spring solely from social maladjustments
which ignore natural laws, and that in removing their cause we shall be giving
an enormous impetus to progress.
The poverty which in the midst of abundance pinches and embrutes men,
and all the manifold evils which flow from it, spring from a denial of justice.
In permitting the monopolization of the opportunities which nature freely offers
to all, we have ignored the fundamental law of justice — for,
so far as we can see, when we view things upon a large scale, justice seems
to be
the supreme law of the universe. But by sweeping away this injustice and
asserting the rights of all men to natural opportunities, we shall conform
ourselves
to the law —
- we shall remove the great cause of unnatural inequality in the distribution
of wealth and power;
- we shall abolish poverty;
- tame the ruthless passions of greed;
- dry up the springs of vice and misery;
- light in dark places the lamp of knowledge;
- give new vigor to invention and a fresh impulse to discovery;
- substitute political strength for political weakness; and
- make tyranny and anarchy impossible.
The reform I have proposed accords with all that is politically, socially,
or morally desirable. It has the qualities of a true reform, for it will
make all other reforms easier. What is it but the carrying out in letter
and spirit
of the truth enunciated in the Declaration of Independence — the "self-evident" truth
that is the heart and soul of the Declaration —"That all men
are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!"
These rights are denied when the equal right to land — on which and
by which men alone can live — is denied. Equality of political rights
will not compensate for the denial of the equal right to the bounty of nature.
Political liberty, when the equal right to land is denied, becomes, as population
increases and invention goes on, merely the liberty to compete for
employment at starvation wages. This is the truth that we have ignored. And so
- there come beggars in our streets and tramps on our roads; and
- poverty enslaves men who we boast are political sovereigns; and
- want breeds ignorance that our schools cannot enlighten; and
- citizens vote as their masters dictate; and
- the demagogue usurps the part of the statesman; and
- gold weighs in the scales of justice; and
- in high places sit those who do not pay to civic virtue even the compliment
of hypocrisy; and
- the pillars of the republic that we thought so strong already bend under
an increasing strain.
We honor Liberty in name and in form. We set up her statues and sound her
praises. But we have not fully trusted her. And with our growth so grow her
demands. She will have no half service!
Liberty! it is a word to conjure with, not to vex the ear in empty boastings.
For Liberty means Justice, and Justice is the natural law — the law
of health and symmetry and strength, of fraternity and co-operation.
They who look upon Liberty as having accomplished her mission when
she has abolished hereditary privileges and given men the ballot, who think
of her
as having no further relations to the everyday affairs of life, have not seen
her real grandeur — to them the poets who have sung of her
must seem rhapsodists, and her martyrs fools! As the sun is the lord of
life, as well
as of light; as his beams not merely pierce the clouds, but support all
growth, supply all motion, and call forth from what would otherwise be
a cold and inert
mass all the infinite diversities of being and beauty, so is liberty to
mankind. It is not for an abstraction that men have toiled and died; that
in every age
the witnesses of Liberty have stood forth, and the martyrs of Liberty have
suffered.
We speak of Liberty as one thing, and of virtue, wealth, knowledge,
invention, national strength, and national independence as other things.
But, of all these,
Liberty is the source, the mother, the necessary condition. ...
Only in broken gleams and partial light has the sun of Liberty yet beamed
among men, but all progress hath she called forth. ...
Shall we not trust her?
In our time, as in times before, creep on the insidious forces that, producing
inequality, destroy Liberty. On the horizon the clouds begin to lower. Liberty
calls to us again. We must follow her further; we must trust her fully. Either
we must wholly accept her or she will not stay. It is not enough that
men should vote; it is not enough that they should be theoretically equal before
the law.
They must have liberty to avail themselves of the opportunities and means of
life; they must stand on equal terms with reference to the bounty of nature.
Either this, or Liberty withdraws her light! Either this, or darkness comes
on, and the very forces that progress has evolved turn to powers that work
destruction. This is the universal law. This is the lesson of the centuries.
Unless its foundations be laid in justice the social structure cannot stand.
Our primary social adjustment is a denial of justice. In allowing
one man to own the land on which and from which other men must live, we have
made them
his bondsmen in a degree which increases as material progress goes on. This
is the subtile alchemy that in ways they do not realize is extracting from
the masses in every civilized country the fruits of their weary toil; that
is instituting a harder and more hopeless slavery in place of that which has
been destroyed; that is bringing political despotism out of political freedom,
and must soon transmute democratic institutions into anarchy.
It is this that turns the blessings of material progress into a curse. It
is this that crowds human beings into noisome cellars and squalid tenement
houses; that fills prisons and brothels; that goads men with want and consumes
them with greed; that robs women of the grace and beauty of perfect womanhood;
that takes from little children the joy and innocence of life's morning.
Civilization so based cannot continue. The eternal laws
of the universe forbid it. Ruins of dead empires testify, and the witness
that is in every soul answers,
that it cannot be. It is something grander than Benevolence, something
more august than Charity — it is Justice herself that demands of us to right
this wrong. Justice that will not be denied; that cannot be put off — Justice
that with the scales carries the sword. Shall we ward the stroke with liturgies
and prayers? Shall we avert the decrees of immutable law by raising churches
when hungry infants moan and weary mothers weep?
Though it may take the language of prayer, it is blasphemy that attributes
to the inscrutable decrees of Providence the suffering and brutishness that
come of poverty; that turns with folded hands to the All-Father and lays
on Him the responsibility for the want and crime of our great cities. We
degrade the Everlasting. We slander the Just One. A merciful man would
have better ordered the world; a just man would crush with his foot such
an ulcerous
ant-hill! It is not the Almighty, but we who are responsible for the
vice and misery that fester amid our civilization. The Creator showers
upon us
his gifts — more than enough for all. But like swine scrambling for
food, we tread them in the mire — tread them in the mire, while
we tear and rend each other!
In the very centers of our civilization today are want and suffering
enough to make sick at heart whoever does not close his eyes and steel his
nerves. Dare we turn to the Creator and ask Him to relieve it? Supposing
the prayer were heard, and at the behest with which the universe sprang into
being there should glow in the sun a greater power; new virtue fill the air;
fresh vigor the soil; that for every blade of grass that now grows two should
spring up, and the seed that now increases fiftyfold should increase a hundredfold!
Would poverty be abated or want relieved? Manifestly no! Whatever benefit
would accrue would be but temporary. The new powers streaming through the
material universe could be utilized only through land.
This is not merely a deduction of political economy; it is a fact of experience. We
know it because we have seen it. Within our own times, under our
very eyes, that Power which is above all, and in all, and through all; that
Power of which the whole universe is but the manifestation; that Power which
maketh all things, and without which is not anything made that is made, has
increased the bounty which men may enjoy, as truly as though the fertility
of nature had been increased.
- Into the mind of one came the thought that harnessed steam for the service
of mankind.
- To the inner ear of another was whispered the secret that compels the
lightning to bear a message round the globe.
- In every direction have the laws of matter been revealed;
- in every department of industry have arisen arms of iron and fingers
of steel, whose effect upon the production of wealth has been precisely
the
same as an increase in the fertility of nature.
What has been the result? Simply that landowners get all the gain.
Can it be that the gifts of the Creator may be thus misappropriated
with impunity? Is it a light thing that labor should be robbed of its earnings
while greed rolls in wealth — that the many should want while the few
are surfeited? Turn to history, and on every page may be read
the lesson that such wrong never goes unpunished; that the Nemesis that
follows
injustice never falters nor sleeps! Look around today. Can this state
of things continue? May we even say, "After us the deluge!" Nay;
the pillars of the State are trembling even now, and the very foundations
of
society begin to quiver with pent-up forces that glow underneath. The
struggle that must either revivify, or convulse in ruin, is near at hand,
if it be
not already begun.
The fiat has gone forth! With steam and electricity, and the new powers born
of progress, forces have entered the world that will either compel us to a
higher plane or overwhelm us, as nation after nation, as civilization after
civilization, have been overwhelmed before. ...
- We cannot go on permitting men to vote and forcing them to tramp.
- We cannot go on educating boys and girls in our public schools and then
refusing them the right to earn an honest living.
- We cannot go on prating of the inalienable rights of man and then denying
the inalienable right to the bounty of the Creator.
Even now, in old bottles the new wine begins to ferment, and elemental forces
gather for the strife!
But if, while there is yet time, we turn to Justice and obey her,
if we trust Liberty and follow her, the dangers that now threaten must disappear, the
forces that now menace will turn to agencies of elevation. Think
of the powers now wasted; of the infinite fields of knowledge yet to be explored;
of the possibilities of which the wondrous inventions of this century give
us but a hint.
- With want destroyed;
- with greed changed to noble passions;
- with the fraternity that is born of equality taking the place of the
jealousy and fear that now array men against each other;
- with mental power loosed by conditions that give to the humblest comfort
and leisure; and
- who shall measure the heights to which our civilization may soar?
Words fail the thought! It is the Golden Age of which poets have sung
and high-raised seers have told in metaphor! It is the glorious vision which
has always haunted man with gleams of fitful splendor. It is what he saw
whose eyes at Patmos were closed in a trance. It is the culmination of Christianity — the
City of God on earth, with its walls of jasper and its gates of pearl! It
is the reign of the Prince of Peace! ... read the whole
chapter
Henry George: Thy Kingdom Come
(1889 speech)
... But there are people, who,
looking around on the suffering and
injustice with which, even in so-called Christian countries, human
life is full, say there is no Father in Heaven, there can be no God,
or He would not permit this. How superficial is that thought! ...
When we consider the achievements
of humanity and then look upon
the misery that exists today in the very centres of wealth; upon the
ignorance, the weakness, the injustice, that characterise our highest
civilisation, we may know of a surety that it is not the fault of
God; it is the fault of humanity. May we not know that in that very
power that God has given to His children here, in that power of
rising higher, there is involved — and necessarily involved
— the power of falling lower.
“Our Father!” “Our Father!”
Whose? Not my
Father — that is not the prayer. “Our Father” —
not the father of any sect, or any class, but the Father of all
humanity. The All-Father, the equal Father, the loving Father. He it
is we ask to bring the kingdom. Aye, we ask it with our lips! We call
Him “Our Father,” the All, the Universal Father, when we
kneel down to pray to Him.
But that He is the All-Father —
that He is all
people’s Father — we deny by our institutions. The
All-Father who made the world, the All-Father who created us in His
image, and put us upon the earth to draw subsistence from its bosom;
to find in the earth all the materials that satisfy our wants,
waiting only to be worked up by our labour! If He is the All-Father,
then are not all human beings, all children of the Creator, equally
entitled to the use of His bounty? And, yet, our laws say that this
God’s earth is not here for the use of all His children, but
only for the use of a privileged few!
There was a little dialogue
published in the United States, in
the west, some time ago. Possibly you may have seen it. It is between
a boy and his father when visiting a brickyard. The boy looks at the
men making bricks, and he asks who those dirty men are, why they are
making up the clay, and what they are doing it for. He learns, and
then he asks about the owner of the brickyard. “He does not make
any bricks; he gets his income from letting the other men make
bricks.”
Then the boy wants to know how
the man who owns the brickyard
gets his title to the brickyard — whether he made it. “No,
he did not make it,” the father replies: “God made
it.” The boy asks, “Did God make it for him?” Whereat
his father tells him that he must not ask questions such as that, but
that anyhow it is all right, and it is all in accordance with
God’s law. The boy, who of course was a Sunday school boy, and
had been to church, goes off mumbling to himself “that God so
loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to die for all
men”; but that He so loved the owner of this brickyard that He
gave him the brickyard too.
This has a blasphemous sound. But
I do not refer to it lightly.
I do not like to speak lightly of sacred subjects. Yet it is well
sometimes that we should be fairly shocked into thinking.
Think of what Christianity
teaches us; think of the life and
death of Him who came to die for us! Think of His teachings, that we
are all the equal children of an Almighty Father, who is no respecter
of persons, and then think of this legalised injustice — this
denial of the most important, most fundamental rights of the children
of God, which so many of the very men who teach Christianity uphold;
nay, which they blasphemously assert is the design and the intent of
the Creator Himself. ...
What God gives are the natural
elements that are indispensable
to labour. He gives them, not to one, not to some, not to one
generation, but to all. They are His gifts, His bounty to the whole
human race. And yet in all our civilised countries what do we see?
That a few people have appropriated these bounties, claiming them as
theirs alone, while the great majority have no legal right to apply
their labour to the reservoirs of Nature and draw from the
Creator’s bounty.
Thus it happens that all over
the civilised world that class
that is called peculiarly ‘the labouring class’ is the poor
class, and that people who do no labour, who pride themselves on
never having done honest labour, and on being descended from fathers
and grandfathers who never did a stroke of honest labour in their
lives, revel in a superabundance of the things that labour brings
forth.
Really, if we could imagine it,
it is impossible to think of
heaven treated as we treat this earth, without seeing that, no matter
how salubrious were its air, no matter how bright the light that
filled it, no matter how magnificent its vegetable growth, there
would be poverty, and suffering, and a division of classes in heaven
itself, if heaven were parcelled out as we have parceled out the
earth. And, conversely, if people were to act towards each other as
we must suppose the inhabitants of heaven to do, would not this earth
be a very heaven?
“Thy kingdom come.” No one can
think of the kingdom
for which the prayer asks without feeling that it must be a kingdom
of justice and equality — not necessarily of equality in
condition, but of equality in opportunity. And no one can think of it
without seeing that a very kingdom of God might be brought on this
earth if people would but seek to do justice — if people would
but acknowledge the essential principle of Christianity, that of
doing to others as we would have others do to us, and of recognising
that we are all here equally the children of the one Father, equally
entitled to share His bounty, equally entitled to live our lives and
develop our faculties, and to apply our labour to the raw material
that He has provided. ...
Early Christianity did not mean,
in its prayer for the coming of
Christ’s kingdom, a kingdom in heaven, but a kingdom on earth.
If Christ had simply preached of the other world, the high priests
and the Pharisees would not have persecuted Him, the Roman soldiery
would not have nailed His hands to the cross. Why was Christianity
persecuted? ...
What was persecuted was a great
movement for social reform
— the gospel of justice — heard by common fishermen with
gladness, carried by labourers and slaves into the imperial city of
Rome. The Christian revelation was the doctrine of human equality, of
the fatherhood of God, of the brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity.
It struck at the very basis of that monstrous tyranny that then
oppressed the civilised world; it struck at the fetters of the
captive, and at the bonds of the slave, at that monstrous injustice
which allowed a class to revel on the proceeds of labour, while those
who did the labour fared scantily. ...
And, instead of preaching the
essential Fatherhood of God, the
essential brotherhood and sisterhood of humankind, its high priests
grafted onto the pure truths of the gospel the blasphemous doctrine
that the All-Father is a respecter of persons, and that by His will
and on His mandate is founded that monstrous injustice which condemns
the great mass of humanity to unrequited hard toil. There has been no
failure of Christianity. The failure has been in the sort of
Christianity that has been preached. ... Read
the whole speech
Henry George: Ode to
Liberty (1877 speech)
WE HONOR LIBERTY in name and in
form. We set up her statues and
sound her praises. But we have not fully trusted her. And with our
growth so grow her demands. She will have no half service! Liberty! it
is a word to conjure with, not to vex the ear in empty boastings. For
Liberty means Justice, and Justice is the natural law — the law of
health and symmetry and strength, of fraternity and co-operation.
They who look upon Liberty as having accomplished her mission
when she has abolished hereditary privileges and given men the
ballot, who think of her as having no further relations to the
everyday affairs of life, have not seen her real grandeur — to
them the poets who have sung of her must seem rhapsodists, and her
martyrs fools! ...
We speak of Liberty as one thing, and of virtue, wealth,
knowledge, invention, national strength and national independence as
other things. But, of all these, Liberty is the source, the mother,
the necessary condition. ...
Our primary social
adjustment is a denial of justice. In
allowing one man to own the land on which and from which other men
must live, we have made them his bondsmen in a degree which increases
as material progress goes on. This is the subtle alchemy that in
ways they do not realize is extracting from the masses in every
civilized country the fruits of their weary toil; that is
instituting
a harder and more hopeless slavery in place of that which has been
destroyed; that is bringing political despotism out of political
freedom, and must soon transmute democratic institutions into
anarchy.
It is this that turns the
blessings of material progress into a
curse. ...
Though it may take the language of prayer, it is blasphemy that
attributes to the inscrutable decrees of Providence the suffering
and brutishness that come of poverty; that turns with folded hands to
the All-Father and lays on Him the responsibility for the want and
crime of our great cities. We degrade the Everlasting. We slander the
Just One. ...
But if,
while there is yet time, we turn to Justice and obey
her, if we trust Liberty and follow her, the dangers that now
threaten must disappear, the forces that now menace will turn to
agencies of elevation. Think of the powers now wasted; of the
infinite fields of knowledge yet to be explored; of the possibilities
of which the wondrous inventions of this century give us but a hint.
With want destroyed; with greed changed to noble passions; with the
fraternity that is born of equality taking the place of the jealousy
and fear that now array men against each other; with mental power
loosed by conditions that give to the humblest comfort and leisure;
and who shall measure the heights to which our civilization may soar?
Words fail the thought! It is the Golden Age of which poets have sung
and high-raised seers have told in metaphor! It is the glorious
vision which has always haunted man with gleams of fitful splendor.
It is what he saw whose eyes at Patmos were closed in a trance. It is
the culmination of Christianity — the City of God on earth, with
its walls of jasper and its gates of pearl! It is the reign of the
Prince of Peace! ... read the whole speech
Henry George: The Wages of
Labor
As the unduly rich are the
corollary of the unduly poor, so is
the soul-destroying quality of riches but the reflex of the want that
embrutes and degrades. The real evil lies in the injustice from which
unnatural possession and unnatural deprivation both spring.
This injustice can hardly be
charged on individuals or
classes. The existence of private property in land is a great social
wrong from which society at large suffers, and of which the very rich
and the very poor are alike victims, though at the opposite extremes.
Seeing this, if seems like a violation of Christian charity to speak of
the rich as though they individually were responsible for the
sufferings of the poor. Yet many do this while at the same time
insisting that land monopoly, the cause of monstrous wealth and
degrading poverty, shall not be touched.
In seeking to restore to all men
their equal and natural
rights we do not seek the benefit of any class, but of all. For we both
know by faith and see by fact that injustice can profit no one and that
justice must benefit all. Nor do we seek any futile and ridiculous
equality. We recognise that there must always be differences and
inequalities. In so far as these are in conformity with the moral law,
in so far as they do not violate the command, “Thou shalt not steal,”
we are content.
The equality we would bring about
is not the equality of
fortune, but the equality of natural opportunity; the equality that
reason and religion alike proclaim – the equality in usufruct of all
His children to the bounty of Our Father Who art in Heaven!
In doing this, we would not levy
the slightest tax on the
possessors of wealth, no matter how rich they might be.
Not only do we deem such taxes a
violation of the right of
property, but we see that it is impossible for any one to produce
wealth for himself without adding to the wealth of the world.... read
the whole article
Henry George: Concentrations
of Wealth Harm America
(excerpt from Social Problems) (1883)
The Evils of
Monopolists
Consider the important part in building up fortunes which the
increase of land values has had, and is having, in the United States.
This is, of course, monopoly, pure and simple. When land
increases in
value it does not mean that its owner has added to the general
wealth. The owner may never have seen the land or done aught to
improve it. He may, and often does, live in a distant city or in
another country. Increase of
land values simply means that the
owners, by virtue of their appropriation of something that existed
before man was, have the power of taking a larger share of the wealth
produced by other people's labor. Consider
- how much the monopolies
created and the advantages given to the unscrupulous by the tariff
and by our system of internal taxation --
- how much the railroad (a
business in its nature a monopoly), telegraph, gas, water and other
similar monopolies, have done to concentrate wealth;
- how special
rates, pools, combinations, corners, stock-watering and
stock-gambling, the destructive use of wealth in driving off or
buying off opposition which the public must finally pay for, and many
other things which these will suggest, have operated to build up
large fortunes, and it will at least appear that the unequal
distribution of wealth is due in great measure to sheer spoliation;
- that the reason why those
who work hard get so little, while so many
who work little get so much, is, in very large measure, that the
earnings of the one class are, in one way or another, filched away
from them to swell the incomes of the other.
That individuals are constantly
making their way from the
ranks of those who get less than their earnings to the ranks of those
who get more than their earnings, no more proves this state of things
right than the fact that merchant sailors were constantly becoming
pirates and participating in the profits of piracy, would prove that
piracy was right and that no effort should be made to suppress
it.
I am not denouncing the rich,
nor seeking, by speaking of
these things, to excite envy and hatred; but if we would get a clear
understanding of social problems, we must recognize the fact that it
is due
- to monopolies which we permit and create,
- to advantages which
we give one man over another,
- to methods of extortion sanctioned by
law and by public opinion,
that some men are enabled to get
so
enormously rich while others remain so miserably poor. If we look
around us and note the elements of monopoly, extortion and spoliation
which go to the building up of all, or nearly all, fortunes, we see
on the one hand now disingenuous are those who preach to us that
there is nothing wrong in social relations and that the inequalities
in the distribution of wealth spring from the inequalities of human
nature; and on the other hand, we see how wild are those who talk as
though capital were a public enemy, and propose plans for arbitrarily
restricting the acquisition of wealth. Capital
is a good; the
capitalist is a helper, if he is not also a monopolist. We can safely
let any one get as rich as he can if he will not despoil others in
doing so.
There are deep wrongs in the
present constitution of society,
but they are not wrongs inherent in the constitution of man nor in
those social laws which are as truly the laws of the Creator as are
the laws of the physical universe. They are wrongs resulting from
bad
adjustments which it is within our power to amend. The ideal social
state is not that in which each gets an equal amount of wealth, but
in which each gets in proportion to his contribution to the general
stock. And in such a social
state there would not be less incentive
to exertion than now; there would be far more incentive. Men
will be
more industrious and more moral, better workmen and better citizens,
if each takes his earnings and carries them home to his family, than
where they put their earnings in a "pot" and gamble for them until
some have far more than they could have earned, and others have
little or nothing. ... 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)
"Wise" and "Babes"
IT is as bad for a man to think that he can know nothing as to think he knows
all. There are things which it is given to all possessing reason to know, if
they will but use that reason. And some things it may be there are, that — as
was said by one whom the learning of the time sneered at, and the high priests
persecuted, and polite society, speaking through the voice of those who knew
not what they did, crucified — are hidden from the wise and prudent and
revealed unto babes. — A Perplexed
Philosopher (Conclusion)
THAT thought on social questions is so confused and perplexed, that the aspirations
of great bodies of men, deeply though vaguely conscious of injustice, are in
all civilized countries being diverted to futile and dangerous remedies, is largely
due to the fact that those who assume and are credited with superior knowledge
of social and economic laws have devoted their powers, not to showing where the
injustice lies but to hiding it; not to clearing common thought but to confusing
it. — A Perplexed Philosopher (Conclusion)
POLITICAL economy is the simplest of the sciences. It is but the intellectual
recognition, as related to social life, of laws which in their moral aspect men
instinctively recognize, and which are embodied in the simple teachings of him
whom the common people heard gladly. But, like Christianity, political economy
has been warped by institutions which, denying the equality and brotherhood of
man, have enlisted authority, silenced objection, and ingrained themselves in
custom and habit of thought. — Protection or Free Trade, Chapter
1 econlib
Power of Thought
THE power of a special interest, though inimical to the general interest,
so to influence common thought as to make fallacies pass as truths, is a great
fact, without which neither the political history of our own time and people,
nor that of other times and peoples, can be understood. A comparatively small
number of individuals brought into virtual though not necessarily formal agreement
of thought and action by something that makes them individually wealthy without
adding to the general wealth, may exert an influence out of all proportion
to their numbers. A special interest of this kind is, to the general interests
of society, as a standing army is to an unorganized mob. It gains intensity
and energy in its specialization, and in the wealth it takes from the general
stock finds power to mold opinion. Leisure and culture and the circumstances
and conditions that command respect accompany wealth, and intellectual ability
is attracted by it. On the other hand, those who suffer from the injustice
that takes from the many to enrich the few, are in that very thing deprived
of the leisure to think, and the opportunities, education, and graces necessary
to give their thought acceptable expression. They are necessarily the "unlettered," the "ignorant," the "vulgar," prone
in their consciousness of weakness to look up for leadership and guidance to
those who have the advantages that the possession of wealth can give. — The
Science of Political Economy — Book II, Chapter 2, The Nature of
Wealth: Causes of Confusion as to the Meaning of Wealth unabridged • abridged
WE may be wise to distrust our knowledge; and, unless we have tested them, to
distrust what we may call our reasonings; but never to distrust reason itself.
. . . That the powers with which the human reason must work are limited and are
subject to faults and failures, our reason itself teaches us as soon as it begins
to examine what we find around us and to endeavor to look in upon our own consciousness.
But human reason is the only reason that men can have, and to assume that in
so far as it can see clearly it does not see truly, is in the man who does it
not only to assume the possession of a superior to human reason, but it is to
deny the validity of all thought and to reduce the mental world to chaos. — The
Science of Political Economy — Book
III, Chapter 5, The Production of Wealth: Of Space and Time (unabridged)
SOCIAL reform is not to be secured by noise and shouting; by complaints and denunciation;
by the formation of parties, or the making of revolutions; but by the awakening
of thought and the progress of ideas. Until there be correct thought, there cannot
be right action; and when there is correct thought, right action will follow.
Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses
is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness. — Social
Problems — Chapter
22: Conclusion
LET no one imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever
he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power. — Social
Problems — Chapter
22: Conclusion
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
THE common law we are told is the perfection of reason, and certainly
the landowners cannot complain of its decision, for it has been built
up by and for landowners. Now what does the law allow to the innocent
possessor when the land for which he paid his money is adjudged to
rightfully belong to another?
Nothing at all. That he purchased in good faith gives him no right
or claim whatever. The law does not concern itself with the "intricate
question of compensation" to the innocent purchaser. The law does
not say, as John Stuart Mill says: "The land belongs to A, therefore
B who has thought himself the owner has no right to anything but
the rent, or compensation for its salable value." For that would
be indeed like a famous fugitive slave case decision in which the
Court was said to have given the law to the North and the nigger
to the South. The law simply says: "The land belongs to A, let the
Sheriff put him in possession! " — Progress & Poverty — Book
VII, Chapter 3, Justice of the Remedy: Claim of Landowners to Compensation
COMPENSATED for what? For giving up what has been unjustly taken? The demand
of land-owners for compensation is not that. We do not seek to spoil the Egyptians.
We do not ask that what has been unjustly taken from laborers shall be restored.
We are willing that bygones should be bygones, and to leave dead wrongs to bury
their dead. We propose to let those who, by the past appropriation of land-value,
have taken the fruits of labor, retain what they have thus got. We merely propose
that for the future such robbery of labor shall cease. — NOW, is the State
called on to compensate men for the failure of their expectations as to its action,
even where no moral element is involved? If it make peace, must it compensate
those who have invested on the expectation of war. If it open a shorter highway,
is it morally bound to compensate those who may lose by the diversion of travel
from the old one? If it promote the discovery of a cheap means of producing electricity
directly from heat, is it morally bound to compensate the owners of all the steam
engines thereby thrown out of use and all who are engaged in making them? If
it develop the air-ship, must it compensate those whose business would be injured?
Such a contention would be absurd. — The
Condition of Labor
Yet the contention we are considering is worse. It is that the State must compensate
for disappointing the expectations of those who have counted on its continuing
to do wrong. — A Perplexed
Philosopher (Compensation)
COMPENSATION implies equivalence. To compensate for the discontinuance of a wrong
is to give those who profit by the wrong the pecuniary equivalent of its continuance.
Now the State has nothing that does not belong to the individuals who compose
it. What it gives to some it must take from others. Abolition with compensation
is therefore not really abolition, but continuance under a different form — on
one side of unjust deprivation, and on the other side of unjust appropriation. — A
Perplexed Philosopher (Compensation)
"CAVEAT emptor" is the maxim of the law — "Let the buyer beware!" If
a man buys a structure in which the law of gravity is disregarded or mechanical
laws ignored, he takes the risk of those laws asserting their sway. And so
he takes the risk in buying property which contravenes the moral law. When
he ignores the moral sense, when he gambles on the continuance of a wrong,
and when at last the general conscience rises to the point of refusing to
continue that wrong, can he then claim that those who have refrained from
taking part in it, those who have suffered from it, those who have borne
the burden and heat and contumely of first moving against it, shall share
in his losses on the ground that as members of the same state they are equally
responsible for it? And must not the acceptance of this impudent plea tend
to prevent that gradual weakening and dying out of the wrong, which would
otherwise occur as the rise of the moral sense against it lessened the prospect
of its continuance; and by promise of insurance to investors tend to maintain
it in strength and energy till the last minute? — A
Perplexed Philosopher (Compensation)
ALL pleas for compensation on the abolition of unequal rights to land are excuses
for avoiding right and continuing wrong; they all, as fully as the original wrong,
deny that equalness which is the essential of justice. Where they have seemed
plausible to any honestly-minded man, he will, if he really examines his thought,
see that this has been so because he has, though perhaps unconsciously, entertained
a sympathy for those who seem to profit by injustice which he has refused to
those who have been injured by it. He has been thinking of the few whose incomes
would be cut off by the restoration of equal right. He has forgotten the many,
who are being impoverished, degraded, and driven out of life by its denial. If
he once breaks through the tyranny of accustomed ideas and truly realizes that
all men are equally entitled to the use of the natural opportunities for the
living of their lives and the development of their powers, he will see the injustice,
the wickedness, of demanding compensation for the abolition of the monopoly of
land. He will see that if anyone is to be compensated on the abolition of a wrong,
it is those who have suffered by the wrong, not those who have profited by it. — A
Perplexed Philosopher (Compensation)
... go to "Gems from George"
Nic Tideman: Basic Tenets of the
Incentive Taxation Philosophy
We recognize that the
implementation of our ideas will lead to the
disappearance of the sale value of titles to unimproved land and
other forms of privilege. While some will see this as an unjust
confiscation of property, we deny this.
We believe that it is possible to implement our ideas while
remaining true to principles of
justice. We note first that, while we
propose to introduce or increase fees for exclusive access to
opportunities assigned by governments, we also propose to eliminate
existing taxes.
For many people the value of eliminating existing taxes will
offset the fall in the market value of the privileges they now claim.
But it cannot be expected that all persons experience full offsets.
There will be some persons whose
income prospects fall as a
consequence of the implementation of our ideas. But this in itself
does not constitute injustice. Every change disappoints someone.
It is our view that what makes a
disappointing change an injustice
is not the fact of disappointment, but rather a self-seeking
disregard for adverse consequences to those whose prospects fall.
Such selfish disregard for others must be distinguished from the
implementation of new moral insights. Of course, one can always try
to hide self-seeking proposals behind a facade of alleged
principle.
Thus the necessary distinctions are difficult to make, but this
does not justify abandoning the effort to make them. ... Read
the whole article
Nic Tideman: The
Morality of Taxation: The Local Case
From a moral perspective, taxation
is dubious or worse. We tell
our fellow citizens that if they do not pay taxes that we say they
owe, their property will be seized or they will be sent to prison.
Why do we treat people this way? Is there a justification?
The dubiousness of taxation
increases when we consider its
origins. Government seems to have originated as roving bandits who
learned that total destruction was less profitable than protecting
their victims from other bandits and allowing them to keep a fraction
of what they produced (Olson, 1993). In time, scheduled partial
plunder evolved into taxation. Over the centuries, regimes that
started as tyrannies evolved into democracies. The public sector
evolved from an apparatus for implementing the will of despots into a
mechanism for carrying out democratic decisions. But public finance
continues to rely on the power of tax collectors, developed under
early tyrants, to coerce citizen to pay taxes. The wrath that
citizens feel toward tax collectors is probably the strongest
antagonistic feeling that citizens have toward a governmental
institution. Why do we allow ourselves to do this to one another?
There is a gentler side of
taxation that provides some explanation
of our tolerance of this coercion. Taxation can be the way that
people achieve their common purposes. People may agree to be taxed so
that there will be money to pay for public services that they want.
From this perspective, taxation may be considered no more than the
dues for belonging to a club that provides people with things that
they would rather pay their share of than do without. However, to
make this "voluntary exchange" theory of taxation relevant, people
must be able to choose freely whether or not to "join the club," to
be a citizen of the taxing jurisdiction. With all land claimed by
some taxing jurisdiction, the choice isn't exactly free.
The problem of morality in
taxation is the following:
- How do we
retain the possibility of people pooling their contributions to the
cost of services that they agree are worthwhile, while eliminating
the possibility of citizens treating their fellow citizens as targets
of plunder?
- What are the limits of obligations that we can justly
impose on our fellow citizens?
- And how do we set up a structure of
government that will ensure that these limits are observed? ...
we would probably have a much
more efficient public sector if
every public expenditure required two-thirds approval in legislative
bodies.
But to make taxation truly
voluntary, the option to leave must be
viable. If people could move costlessly from one jurisdiction to
another, taking all of their belongings with them, then competition
among jurisdictions would tend to eliminate oppressive taxation. This
would leave only the fees that people were prepared to pay to have
public services (Tiebout, 1956).
Of course, moving will always have
some costs, so the ideal will
not be attainable. But what can be imagined is a system in which all
taxes were local taxes. Then people would not have to move nearly as
far to escape from taxes that they regarded as oppressive. Higher
levels of government would not need to disappear; if the services
that they provide are desired, they could be financed by levies on
lower levels of government. ...
...Thus communities would not be
able to raise much revenue from income
tax or taxes on capital before they would drive residents and
investment away. It might seem that there would be no way that
localities could finance themselves.
Such a conclusion would be
unwarranted, because there is a very
significant source of public revenue that can survive when localities
compete for mobile residents. This source is land. When people are
taxed in proportion to the land they possess, no land moves to
another locality where taxes are lower. Thus two questions arise:
- Would taxes on land be sufficient to finance the public
activities
that ought to be undertaken, and
- would such a system be fair? ...
If
people cannot be
expected to pay for educating the children that they ought to be able
to have, doesn't that mean that there is some fundamental unfairness
in the starting conditions? Is it not the combination of past
injustice and current unequal access to natural opportunities that
makes us reluctant to require people to pay the full costs of having
children? In my conception of justice, we have not adequately
compensated for past injustice until we have put people in a position
where we are content to oblige them to pay the full costs of their
choices. ... Read the whole article
Dan Sullivan: Are you a Real Libertarian, or a ROYAL
Libertarian?
A favorite excuse of royal
libertarians is that the land has been
divided up for so long that tracing the rightful owners would be
pointless. But there can be no rightful owners if we all have an
inalienable right of access to the earth. It is not some ancient
injustice we seek to rectify, but an ongoing injustice. The piece of
paper granting title might be ancient, but the tribute levied on the
landless goes on and on.
One might as well have accepted
monarchy under the excuse that
whatever conquest led to monarchy occurred centuries ago, and that
tracing the rightful monarchs would be pointless. Indeed, landed
aristocracy is the last remnant of monarchy. ... Read
the whole piece
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