Kingdom of God
Henry George: The Condition
of Labor — An
Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII in response to Rerum Novarum (1891)
For in this beautiful provision made by natural law for the social needs
of civilization we see that God has intended civilization; that all our discoveries
and inventions do not and cannot outrun his forethought, and that steam,
electricity and labor-saving appliances only make the great moral laws clearer
and more important. In the growth of this great fund, increasing with social
advance — a fund that accrues from the growth of the community and
belongs therefore to the community — we see not only that there is
no need for the taxes that lessen wealth, that engender corruption, that
promote inequality and teach men to deny the gospel; but that to take this
fund for the purpose for which it was evidently intended would in the highest
civilization secure to all the equal enjoyment of God’s bounty, the
abundant opportunity to satisfy their wants, and would provide amply for
every legitimate need of the state. We see that God in his dealings with
men has not been a bungler or a niggard; that he has not brought too many
men into the world; that he has not neglected abundantly to supply them;
that he has not intended that bitter competition of the masses for a mere
animal existence and that monstrous aggregation of wealth which characterize
our civilization; but that these evils which lead so many to say there is
no God, or yet more impiously to say that they are of God’s ordering,
are due to our denial of his moral law. We see that the law of justice, the
law of the Golden Rule, is not a mere counsel of perfection, but indeed the
law of social life. We see that if we were only to observe it there would
be work for all, leisure for all, abundance for all; and that civilization
would tend to give to the poorest not only necessities, but all comforts
and reasonable luxuries as well. We see that Christ was not a mere
dreamer when he told men that if they would seek the kingdom of God and its
right-doing
they might no more worry about material things than do the lilies of the
field about their raiment; but that he was only declaring what political
economy in the light of modern discovery shows to be a sober truth. ... read the whole letter
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