Progress and Poverty

Private land ownership necessarily leads to slave-like ownership of people, as the law of rent shows. The institution of chattel slavery or serfdom featuring farmers attached to the land in Russia and in feudal Japan shows how this type of slavery functions. This unequal relationship between land and labor, especially for those who do not own land, demonstrates the way in which ideas and institutions “so utterly repugnant to the natural sense of liberty and equality” developed (348). When ownership involves land, it is “the strongest and most cunning” who “easily acquire a superior share” (348). Nature designed land for everyone’s equal use. Thus its monopolization leads to slavery, even if the political system and its “boasted freedom” claim otherwise (355).

There is no justification to possess land exclusively. Philosophers like Herbert Spencer demonstrated that exclusive possession of land titles is invalid. However, he also suggested that landowners must be compensated for having their land rights liquidated. Others, like John Stuart Mill, also believed that private land property was unjust. However, Mill’s “plan was that a fair and even liberal estimate should be made of the market value of all the land in the kingdom, and that future addition to that value, not due to the improvements of the proprietor, should be taken by the state” (358). The latter would extend government power and make it prone to corruption. Compensating landowners for their land would require taxation in “the same proportion of earnings of labor and capital that they are now enabled to appropriate in land” (358). Land rent is “a toll levied upon labor constantly and continuously” (362). It comes from the present, not the past. Since land is a shared resource, landowners should not be allowed to continue to collect rent. After all, rent “does not arise spontaneously from land,” but rather is “a value created by the whole community” (363). Landowners may keep their personal property on top of the land which is a shared resource.

The assumption that historical practices are “natural and necessary” is one of the reasons why the concept of private land property and its fundamental injustice has not been adequately considered (367). However, history shows how quickly the old ways can be discarded: “Not long ago monarchy seemed all but universal” (367), yet France and the United States carry on without it. Similarly, the fact that land has been considered private property historically does not mean that it should be treated in this way today. Indeed, in early history, land was shared, and “This recognition of the common right to land did not prevent the full recognition of the particular and exclusive right in things which are the result of labor” (368).

Long ago, the state of warfare and disunity allowed chieftains to monopolize shared land. The establishment of great estates caused tremendous harm to ancient Greece. It is from ancient Rome that modern concepts of private individual land ownership came. In Rome, “the denial of the common right to land has resulted in decay” (372). The feudal system in its heyday “was a triumph of the idea of the common right to land, changing an absolute tenure into a conditional tenure, and imposing peculiar obligations in return for the privilege of receiving rent” (375).

Gradually, however, since the feudal period, civilizational development involved “the subversion of these natural and primary ideas of collective ownership of the soil” (377). The rise of national power led to the “disintegration of the large feudal estates” (379). Thus, even the history of civilization painted in broad strokes shows that individual land ownership has not always been the case.

Land was believed to be common property early on in civilization development. Even today, “men instinctively recognize the equality of right to the bounty of nature” (383), as the Gold Rush shows. All those looking for gold had an equal chance of finding it in nature even if only some did. However, patents for mineral-rich lands introduced private property into this field as well. Early New England settlers also divided land into lots for each family, “while beyond lay the free commons” (386).

Eventually, with the rise of private landed property, the American people allowed for another type of slavery “more widespread and dangerous” even though they abolished chattel slavery (387). Overall, “the American people have failed to see the essential injustice of private property in land, because as yet they have not felt its full effects” (387). However, since there is nowhere else to expand in the continental United States, this period is one in which land monopolization will increase. Land ownership in the U.S. is contrary to the ideas of the early American republic and the inalienable rights of man.