Malthus
Frank Stilwell and Kirrily Jordan: The
Political Economy of Land: Putting Henry George in His Place
Land is the most basic of all economic resources, fundamental to the form
that economic development takes. Its use for agricultural purposes is integral
to the production of the means of our subsistence. Its use in an urban context
is crucial in shaping how effectively cities function and who gets the principal
benefits from urban economic growth. Its ownership is a major determinant
of the degree of economic inequality: surges of land prices, such as have
occurred in Australian cities during the last decade, cause major redistributions
of wealth. In both an urban and rural context the use of land – and
nature more generally – is central to the possibility of ecological
sustainability. Contemporary social concerns about problems of housing affordability
and environmental quality necessarily focus our attention on ‘the land
question.’
These considerations indicate the need for a coherent political economic
analysis of land in capitalist society. Indeed, the analysis of land was
central in an earlier era of political economic analysis. The role
of land in relation to economic production, income distribution and economic
growth
was a major concern for classical political economists, such as Smith, Ricardo
and Malthus. But the intervening years have seen land slide into
a more peripheral status within economic analysis. Political economists working
in the Marxian
tradition have tended to focus primarily on the capital-labour relation as
the key to understanding the capitalist economy.1 Neo-classical economists
typically treat land, if they acknowledge it at all, as a ‘factor of
production’ equivalent to labour or capital, thereby obscuring its
distinctive features and differences. Keynesian and post-Keynesian economists
have also given little attention to land because typically their analyses
focus more on consumption, saving, investment and other economic aggregates.
... read the whole article
Henry George: The Condition
of Labor — An
Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII in response to Rerum Novarum (1891)
And in taking for the uses of society what we clearly see is the great fund
intended for society in the divine order, 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
by virtue of beautiful adaptations in the economic laws of the Creator, it
is impossible for any one honestly to acquire wealth, without at the same
time adding to the wealth of the world.
To persist in a wrong, to refuse to undo it, is always to become involved
in other wrongs. Those who defend private property in land, and thereby deny
the first and most important of all human rights, the equal right to the
material substratum of life, are compelled to one of two courses. Either
they must, as do those whose gospel is “Devil take the hindermost,” deny
the equal right to life, and by some theory like that to which the English
clergyman Malthus has given his name, assert that nature (they do not venture
to say God) brings into the world more men than there is provision for; or,
they must, as do the socialists, assert as rights what in themselves are
wrongs. ... read the whole letter
Rev. A. C. Auchmuty: Gems from George,
a themed collection of excerpts from the writings of Henry George (with
links to sources)
DOES not the fact that all of the things which furnish man's subsistence
have the power to multiply many fold — some of them many thousand
fold, and some of them many million or even billion fold — while
he is only doubling his numbers, show that, let human beings increase to
the full extent of their reproductive power, the increase of population
can never exceed subsistence? This is clear when it is remembered that
though in the vegetable and animal kingdoms each species, by virtue of
its reproductive power, naturally and necessarily presses against the conditions
which limit its further increase, yet these conditions are nowhere fixed
and final. No species reaches the ultimate limit of soil, water, air, and
sunshine; but the actual limit of each is in the existence of other species,
its rivals, its enemies, or its food. Thus the conditions which limit the
existence of such of these species as afford him subsistence man can extend
(in some cases his mere appearance will extend them), and thus the reproductive
forces of the species which supply his wants, instead of wasting themselves
against their former limit, start forward in his service at a pace which
his powers of increase cannot rival. If he but shoot hawks, food-birds
will increase: if he but trap foxes the wild rabbits will multiply; the
bumble bee moves with the pioneer, and on the organic matter with which
man's presence fills the rivers, fishes feed. — Progress & Poverty — Book
II, Chapter 3: Population and Subsistence: Inferences from Analogy
IF bears instead of men had been shipped from Europe to the North American
continent, there would now be no more bears than in the time of Columbus,
and possibly fewer, for bear food would not have been increased nor the conditions
of bear life extended, by the bear immigration, but probably the reverse.
But within the limits of the United States alone, there are now forty-five
millions of men where then there were only a few hundred thousand, and yet
there is now within that territory much more food per capita for the forty-five
millions than there was then for the few hundred thousand. It is not the
increase of food that has caused this increase of men; but the increase of
men that has brought about the increase of food. There is more food, simply
because there are more Man. — Progress & Poverty — Book II,
Chapter 3: Population and Subsistence: Inferences from Analogy
TWENTY men working together will, where nature is niggardly, produce more
than twenty times the wealth that one man can produce where nature is most
bountiful. The denser the population the more minute becomes the subdivision
of labor, the greater the economies of production and distribution, and,
hence, the very reverse of the Malthusian doctrine is true; and, within the
limits in which we have any reason to suppose increase would still go on,
in any given state of civilization a greater number of people can produce
a larger proportionate amount of wealth and more fully supply their wants,
than can a smaller number. — Progress & Poverty — Book II,
Chapter 4: Population and Subsistence: Disproof of the Malthusian Theory
WE talk about the supply of labor, and the demand for labor, but, evidently,
these are only relative terms. The supply of labor is everywhere the same — two
hands always come into the world with one mouth, twenty-one boys to every
twenty girls; and the demand for labor must always exist as long as men want
things which labor alone can procure. We talk about the "want of work," but,
evidently it is not work that is short while want continues; evidently, the
supply of labor cannot be too great, nor the demand for labor too small,
when people suffer for the lack of things that labor produces. The real trouble
must be that the supply is somehow prevented from satisfying demand, that
somewhere there is an obstacle which prevents labor from producing the things
that laborers want.
Take the case of anyone of these vast masses of unemployed men, to whom,
though he never heard of Malthus, it today seems that there are too many
people in the world. In his own wants, in the needs of his anxious wife,
in the demands for his half cared for, perhaps even hungry and shivering,
children, there is demand enough for labor, Heaven knows! In his own willing
hands is the supply. Put him on a solitary island, and though cut off from
all the enormous advantages which the co-operation, combination, and machinery
of a civilized community give to the productive powers of man, yet his two
hands can fill the mouths and keep warm the backs that depend upon them.
Yet where productive power is at its highest development, he cannot. Why?
Is it not because in the one case he has access to the material and forces
of nature, and in the other this access is denied? — Progress & Poverty
Book V, Chapter 1, The Problem Solved: The primary cause of recurring paroxysms
of industrial depression ... go to "Gems
from George"
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