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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