Month: February 2019

               The readings by John Locke and Henry George both do an outstanding job at framing an argument in which they address the concept of land and property. With John Locke there is a greater stance upon the concept of property, while on the other hand Henry George places greater emphasis on land.

               John Locke’s stance is an interesting one that diverges into a multitude of ideas. However, the one idea that stands at the center of his argument is that of past possession in contrast to his “modern day” possession. He brings up contrast to how in the past possessions were perishable goods and one would own what they needed. If one does over consume or horde the laws of nature would regulate this. “…were forced to seek for their sheer survival – are things that will decay and perish if they are not consumed soon.” (Locke, 17). With the introduction of assigning things value, such as the ide of money, does the nature of over consumption come into play. This is due to the nature of which, by applying a monetary system to things does the natural regulator of a good’s expiration gets negated. Locke places this under a loss in which there is negative connotation towards this change, however I disagree with that. I believe that by adding a monetary system is adding order into the system of owning property. Locke discounts a lot of the benefits in trade and specialization we see in todays modern day brought about by the creation of a monetary system. His argument of how the idea of money being a bad influencer for it allows man to “…take more than he needs.” (Locke, 18) doesn’t address the pros money has brought. Money creates a system in which uniforms a system of trade. It places order into the hand of the participants and places a foundation for measuring the value of what could be in one’s possession. So ultimately, I consider Locke to be correct in stating that money has allowed for over consumption, however, it’s a positive creation for it helped revolutionize trade by creating the foundations of mass markets.

               Henry George’s stance focuses more upon the idea of owning land. George dives deeper into the idea, that Locke opened his writing with, of how labor should define ownership. Where as Locke goes into how money has altered the system of labor producing possession, George dives into how ownership of land produces a negative aspect upon this idea. George argues that landowners who don’t labor upon the land, rather profit from workers of the land are unjust. “one is unjustly enriched – the others are robbed” (George). This is George’s perception of rent, a plain robbery from workers. However, I feel that George dismisses a very important concept that comes with land ownership. That being the control over the land’s utilization. I feel that under George’s idea of should happen to land there is a very blatant problem. That being the disagreement of a community on what should be done with the land. Take for example someone wanting to build an amusement park right next to a quiet neighborhood. The only people who would be able to say anything and stop such a matter would be the legal system, thus if this action is done then the government technically owns, to a degree, the land near the neighborhood. They got to say what can and can’t happen on it. In short, I believe that land ownership is a good thing, in the matter of which it helps funnel the direction of land development.

 

Both John Locke and Henry George agree that labor is the essential ingredient in ownership. Locke describes the process of coming to own property as taking, “something from the state that nature has provided and left it in” and mixing his labor with it, “thus joining it to something that is his own; and in that way he makes it his property” (Locke 11). George’s opinion is similar in that “as nature gives only to labor, the exertion of labor in production is the only title to exclusive possession” (The Injustice of Private Property in Land). However, Locke and George disagree about the validity of owning land. Whereas George believes that the idea of private property in the land is “wrong” because humans cannot produce land, Locke contends, “A man owns whatever land he tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the products of. By his labor he as it were fences off that land from all that is held in common” (Locke 12). Central to this disagreement is George’s opinion that “the essential characteristic of the land is that it does not embody labor” (The Injustice of Private Property in Land). This is where I’d like to intervene.

I would like to question if, in fact, land does not embody labor and if it exists “irrespective of human exertion,” as George argues. Both authors are products of their time, therefore unable to foresee the kind of globalized world we live in, which displays such vast inequality between industrialized and undeveloped areas. From a 21st century lens, it is almost harder to extract labor from land to imagine it without than to conceptualize how we could, as George may try, to envision humans producing land, implying a kind of unnatural labor. Today, land is nearly unrecognizable without thinking about our relation to it. Patrick Wolfe, author of “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native” posits that “land is life.” In other words, we cannot exist without it, and as Locke notes, “when God gave the world in common to all mankind, he commanded man to work and man needed to work in order to survive” (Locke 13). Thus, obeying God, man’s relationship to land became the very basis of his own life, which he owns according to both Locke and George. The key here is making the jump from being entitled to hold land in common to privately owning it.

Locke argues that, “No man’s labour could tame or appropriate all the land; no man’s enjoyment could consume more than a small part; so that is was impossible for any man in this way to infringe on the right of another; or acquire a property to the disadvantage of his neighbor” (Locke 14). What Locke is saying is that so long as everyone can acquire only so much property as they have the capacity to use for themselves, privately owned land is not in itself a bad thing. In this scenario, “fencing off” land for oneself is not a detriment to the community because everybody has the opportunity to do so and thrive from it. Here, Locke’s argument connects to George’s assertion that, “All people exist in nature on equal footing and have equal rights,” in that so long as this natural right of equality lends itself to equal opportunity, there is no room for co-opting the commonality of land in a harmful way. I see two snags here. First is that making an argument about “natural rights” becomes moot in a society which has written and unwritten social contracts that have worked and continue to privilege certain identities in socioeconomic life. Second, and interrelated, is Locke’s argument that money, fiat currency, has created lots of problems.

The invention of money, gold as a fiat currency namely, created a system that would take man, “beyond the bounds of his rightful property” because with money, the basis of accumulation was no longer necessarily for use and thus goods could spoil, creating a waste (Locke 17). Money was “a durable thing that men could keep without it spoiling;” men could take more than what was needed to support life and manipulate trade for more than sustenance (Locke 18). It was no longer a mixing of rights and convenience which curbed man’s temptation to labour for than what he could use, but rather a creation of artificial value (Locke 18).

These ideas bring up some final, half-baked, thoughts and questions for me: Was private property a valid concept before the invention and widespread use of money? Will it ever be valid, according to Locke, for as long as money is a dominant tool in trade? What about the role of overpopulation and overdevelopment? Are we far past any redemption of private property in the land given that theoretically there may no longer be enough space for everyone to use only what they would need? Have we “improved” land too much for it to be of use?

Although private property rights are accepted as dogma in Western society, it’s valuable to question how this conclusion arose. Additionally, there is the curiosity of how humans claimed rights to the planet they appeared on millions of years ago, who or what the right came from, and whether ownership is ethical. These topics are excellently explored in the 1760’s book Commentaries on the Laws of England by Sir William Blackstone and the 2013 book Owning the Earth by Andro Linklater. Despite the time difference of books’ publication, both authors grapple the same issue of validity and ownership origin. Clearly, property rights are a philosophical and ethical question to be discussed alongside human nature and the wonders of the world; it is not just a modern debate limited to politics and discussions of socialism versus capitalism. The origins of anthropological property (as these documents only discuss human ownership of Earth, not other species’ ownership, which is an equally valid preponderance, as humans are a species like any other) are hypothesized by Blackstone and Linklater, which give insight into interpreting historical documents like Peter Schaheger’s 1626 letter.

 

Blackstone proposes three possible origins: God, nature, and scarcity. First, Blackstone cites Genesis, which states that God gave human “dominion over all the earth.” Blackstone sees this as possible, but not sufficient. Philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, however, would find this answer completely unsatisfactory, as he’d assert God granting property only reasons if everyone believes in the same God. Otherwise, law is rendered useless. Also, even if humans followed one God, divine commandment would justify public property, not private property.

Blackstone then moves on to discuss human nature in property. Humans find a resource no one else is using, claim it, and then it’s theirs until willing relinquishment. So, once all resources are claimed, do new humans simply have to wait their turn in line? This seems ridiculous, so there should be some partitioning of goods as new humans emerge. Furthermore, Blackstone’s “pick-up theory” is far less applicable in determining when relinquishment occurs. For instance, does death allow property to fall back to the hands of Earth? Blackstone agrees that  “the instant a man ceases to be, he ceases to have any dominion.” This terminates the legitimacy of wills, which are an important tool of capitalism as it encourages saving resources, investment, and wealth hoarding.

Lastly, Blackstone asserts that humans adopted private property of land to ensure their livelihoods when resources were scarce. However, historian Yuval Noah Harari claims in his book Sapiens than agriculture and private land emerged organically as a result of gradual increase in the time spent by natural wheat fields and former generations forgetting the hunter-gatherer way of life. Either way, “both sides agree [ . . . ] that occupancy is the thing by which the title was in fact originally gained.” The discrepancy is on how that occupancy emerged.

 

Author Linklater starts his book on property with a microscope on human living quarters to see how private rooms and property have developed. Linklater heavily discusses engrossment and profit as the leading agent in property rights. By recounting economic incentives that led to feudalism’s fall and how shepherds engrossed land, Linklater paints private property as a product of individual economic interest. Also discussed by Linklater were the feudalism-era, rich landlords influencing government, which is reminiscent of today’s dollar-voting democracy and makes past landlords’ greed believable.

On the subject of God-given property rights, Linklater goes more in depth than Blackstone by citing various religions. Although Christianity bestowed exploitation rights to human, Linklater cites Islam and Judaism, which deny human Earth ownership rights. Thus, leaders like the Babylonian king and Chinese emperors would claim divine authority granted them property rights. However, even if rulers did receive divine property rights, it’s questionable whether rights to own and exploit are transferable to other humans. Perhaps God is a landlord who rented out land to human rulers, but doesn’t allow subletters. Then, the ruler should not be allowed to reap profits from non-divine humans using the land.

 

After reading these thorough texts, documents like Peter Schagher’s 1626 letter to the directors of the West India Company breathe new life. The historical document plainly lays out the state of people in what would become New Netherland, the animal products and harvest aboard the ship, and the purchase of the Island Manhattes, which would later become the U.S.’s most populated metropolitan area. This produces further thought on property rights, monetary profit from land, and right of use to goods produced by land. For instance, did natives have the right to sell land to the colonizers? Blackstone would argue that natives achieved right-to-own by being the first to use it and that the colonizers only justly use the land once it is willingly relinquished by the initial owner. Blackstone and Linklater would agree that some societies believe the natives got permission from God or spirits, such as the indigenous people of Iban, who “offered a lavish sacrifice [ . . . ] to the god of the harvest [ . . . ] who actually possessed the land.” Another issue brought about by Schlagher’s document is the right to profit off land; the natives got the Island Manhattes for free, but then sold it for 60 guilders. Blackstone may assert that the natives should have just “dropped” the land to let colonizers pick it up for free.

 

What’s more, do property rights entail full ownership of the plot of Earth or simply a right to exploit the resources on that plot of Earth? Additionally, does the right to exploit resources include profit rights or merely subsistence rights? If only the latter, then the grains and animal skins aboard the arms of Amsterdam would be unethical. As was claimed at the The Catholic Worker, profiting off of land is unjustifiable. However, all resources stem from land, even human bodies, so then all profiting would be evil. Perhaps even the Iban people would be unethical, as they were taking from God’s land, and even their sacrifices ultimately stemmed from God’s land. In a sense, they had nothing to give, not even their own bodies. Clearly, with property rights, the granter of said right is equally as important as determining the extent of rights.

Barely three centuries ago, the the majority of the worlds productive land belonged either communally to traditional societies, or to the higher power of the monarchy or the church.  Yet that pattern, and the way of life that accompanied it, had largely disappeared by the start of the nineteenth century.

In “Owning the Earth”, Andrew Linklater undertakes an examination of how the revolutionary idea, “that one person could own part of the Earth exclusively” (Page 11), developed, and the drastic reverberations felt by society at large.

Before the development of the idea of private property, English social structure had been organized around the notions of “mutual obligation” and feudalism since the early Middle Ages. In practice this dynamic meant that the country was not governed by the monarch, but by individual lords who “leased” land from the king and oversaw their own manors or estates. In exchange for the land, these lords would provide military and other services to the King when he requested. Under the same reasoning, in exchange for housing, land and protection, serfs had to perform tasks to maintain and cultivate the estate, as well as to pay several different kinds of taxes. The serf was neither a slave nor property, but was considered to be a fixture of the land. As such, a serf’s children were also tied to the land.

A similar sentiment in present in St. Augustine, Excerpt from Tractate 6 (John 1:32-33), in that, “God has distributed to mankind these very human rights [of having property] through the emperors and kings of this world”. It is up to their discretion to determine how land is divided, and which territories lords are given.

Linklater makes clear that the idea that these rights (to raise cattle and crops, construct buildings, rent land) could be owned individually promoted a, “sense of greed and selfishness in stark opposition to the previous belief that people help about property” (13).

Several events lead to this transformation. The first was the exponential growth of the wool market due Europe’s rapidly rising population. Driven by the prospect of wool profits, landowners competed to take exclusive control of the ground, and proceeded to move as many families as possible out, “whole villages and townships were soon emptied” (Page 17). The manipulation and displacement of tenants was so widespread that the church of England even found it necessary to implement a special prayer, “we heartily pray [O Lord] to send thy Holy Spirit into the heart of them that possess the grounds, pastures, and dwellings…may not rack and stretch out the rents of their houses and lands…[nor create] unreasonable fines” (Page 17).

Another major development was the seizure and subsequent redistribution of the Church’s land by King Henry VIII. Over the course of four centuries, England’s monasteries had acquired over 2 million acres of farmland, more than 20% of all the cultivated land in England at the time. Moreover, the Church’s land included some of the most fertile and valuable in the kingdom. Yet by 1540 Henry VIII had confiscated much of this estate, and subsequently sold it off over the course of seven years to pay for his seemingly unquenchable thirst for war. Aristocrats with influence were at the top of the queue to purchase this monastic land, but when the wool market collapse for the first time in a century, they were forced put it up for sale once again. This time, London merchants, careful farmers, government officials, and even tenants on fixed rents, purchased the land. Essentially, anyone who had the cash was a viable and considered buyer. This large scale redistribution of land laid waste to traditional communal civilizations, displaced entire peoples from their homelands, and for the first time made it possible fro a commoner to hold considerable territory.

Lastly, I found most fascinating the new ideas of property ownership that arose from some of the settlers in the New World. Prior to the arrival of the Puritans, possession of the Earth in both America and the Caribbean was deemed to be derived from the royal charter backed by “divine grace”, given to a particular people or company. John Winthrop however put foreword the idea that ownership of the Earth did not depend on the law, but was created by human toil. Even more, since the Native Americans did not, “inclose no land neither have any settled habitation, nor any cattle to improve the land” (Page 28). This line of reasoning was in complete opposition to the beliefs the Lenape had concerning their relationship to the Earth. While the Lenape saw themselves as part of nature (no more important than trees, animals, or the rivers), the Puritan settlers perceived nature as something to be conquered and possessed if certain criteria were met.

 

Andro Linklater’s opinions on private property are not subtle. With descriptions like “contagion” and “monster”, he is clearly not a fan of the principle that helped form a new psychological outlook and sensibility that prioritized the individual. Linklater lists the results of the private property revolution: “The traditional rights of villeins and laborers were overturned. The claims of the feudal superior, whether lord or king, were frozen out. The needs of wives and children were subsumed. All those who might have challenged the solitary male owner’s right to exclusive possession of the land were sidelined” (Linklater 36). Unsurprisingly, each of these results was presented as deeply tangled with religious values and histories. A few points in Linklater’s work regarding the conversation between private property and religion are worth noting.

First, the process of putting church land on the market circa 1540  is crucial. Since the Protestant Reformation spread rumors of the “luxury and decadence of monastic life,” monasteries attracted a degree of scrutiny that would result in King Henry VIII’s seizure of religious property (Linklater 20). The seized land would be sold to pay for the King’s navy and foreign wars, leading to several turnovers of the land that was priorly incredibly lucrative for wool production. The seizures of lands formerly held by monasteries accelerated the psychological development of individualized sensibilities. The seizures also set in motion the horrible conditions of what Marx would call “primitive accumulation” in which “so many peasants were driven off the manors that once supported them, they were deemed a menace to England’s emerging property-owning society” (Linklater 21). It seemed that in effort to rebuke the corruption of the Catholic church, an even greater corruption would take its place. Yet whereas the corruption of the Catholic church was blamed on a community, eventual criticism of private-property owning societies would be placed on a system. Curiously, in both scenarios the individual is protected.

Next worth mentioning is this unmistakable linkage between private property and Protestantism, tied tighter by a democratic knot. Referring to the development of private property for commercial usage other than subsistence farming, Max Weber argued that, “profit driven enterprise sprang out of the individualized tenets of the protestant reformation” (Linklater 18). However, Linklater disagrees with Weber in that, “it would be more accurate to say that individual property owners were naturally drawn to a faith that gave priority to the individual conscience” (Linklater 18). Linklater’s critique based on Weber’s incorrect dating would support his later description of the “new American” inclination toward Reverend John Cotton’s sermon. Linklater describes Cotton’s sermon as giving private property a “biblical backing”, noting, “there was biblical evidence to reassure the new Americans that their right to individually owned, landed property depended on their own efforts in improving the ground, and not on English law” (Linklater 28). In the “new American” frame of reference, another ingredient is added to Linklater’s contagious recipe for disaster: democracy. He reminds us, “The first major democratic decision taken on American soil,” was, “in favor of individual ownership,” and, “carried a symbolism that echoes down the centuries,” referencing the Mayflower settlers’ decision to turn away from a more “communist”-like model of living toward conjoining allotments of private property to form a community (Linklater 25). However, this tripartite “monster”, Protestantism, private property, and democracy, formed during a time when private property was still widely regarded as validated by monarchies.

As such, lastly, I’d like to mention how the Divine Right of Kings plays a role according to Linklater. The author’s discussion on colonies highlighted the nature of the relationship between monarchy and property. As he outlines the legality of royal charters that granted territory to a company or powerful proprietor, Linklater claims, “The King’s royal power, backed by ‘divine grace’, as the charter also specified, was the ultimate authority that enabled colonists to claim that particular bit of the earth’s surface as their property… Real estate was literally and legally, royal estate” (Linklater 29). This unprovable notion chafes against the Judaic concept, stemming from Leviticus, that humans are “mortals”, “mere strangers and sojourners” by definition unable to own land (Linklater 26). Similarly, the Divine Right of Kings grates against the idea held dear to third century B.C. Chinese emperors that rulers are but, “intermediaries between the spiritual and material worlds” (Linklater 26). Both the Judaic and Chinese perceptions (and others that Linklater mentions) of a person’s orientation in the universe speak to the individual, but do not prioritize it making private property an unstable concept. I wonder how these rather humble and beautiful existential ideas could be incorporated or reimagined in a society indisputably defined by an “individualized ethos of the property-owner influenced government, the law, and everyday life” (Linklater 38). It very well may be impossible, as private property seems less an ethos, but more a religion; a religion with its own mystical all-powerful beings who really own the earth: corporations.

Each of this week’s readings addresses the validity of private property by presenting theological or spiritual approaches to the relationship between people and land. In the Hebrew Bible, man is characterized as a caretaker of the land. Adam is placed in the Garden of Eden to “dress it and keep it,” but is also sent forth from the Garden, “to till the ground from whence he was taken” (Genesis, 2). It is clear that the Hebrew Bible paints man as originating from the earth he is meant to take care of, which begs the legitimacy of privately owned property if all people, as descendants of Adam and Eve, were made from earth they may be barred from inhabiting. The underlying question here is, as St. Augustine asks, “By what right does every man possess what he possesses?” (Gibb 1). As Christians and Jews today certainly own private property, origin is by no means a right to possession. For St. Augustine, the Lockean alternative seems also ill-fitted. Nowhere does St. Augustine mention labor as a necessary component for man to possess what he possesses. And if we were to go down the Lockean route, since God created the heaven and the earth, and since that creation can be construed as labor, he technically owns everything. However, the Lockean interpretation is anachronistic, and therefore perhaps not applicable.

Chief Seattle’s discussion of land is similar to the Hebrew Bible’s in that there seems an obvious tether between the physical and spiritual. In the Hebrew Bible, “everything that creepeth upon the earth,” within exists, “a living soul” (Genesis, 1). Comparably, Chief Seattle claims, “the soil is rich with the life of our kindred,” when describing the deep sorrow his people felt as white settlers violently took over the natives’ land. However, Chief Seattle’s explanation of man’s connection to the earth seems deeper and more mystical because the connection does not stem from an all-powerful, central being but animates the inherent spirit inside the living and nonliving alike. And because of the spirits so deeply ingrained in the landscape, Chief Seattle describes why man can never truly be alone despite desires to privatize the uses of land. He says, “In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not altogether powerless.” The values of community so crucial to Native American culture insisted that even without other people around, man was in the spirited company of the natural world around him. Whereas Native Americans saw the natural world as a force to cohabitate and act in symbiosis with, the white settlers saw it as something to tame and control. For the settlers, the earth was not a living thing, but something to subdue for the progress of civilization. As such, nature and civilization would never be able to exist at the same time; civilization depends on such a subduing. Even to be considered a “man” in the eyes of the settlers required a recognition of private property. “Rights” to such “property” were given to Native Americans often as code for the true intent to break up their communal ties to land, leaving the natives defenseless against this damning liberty.

Radically different from both conceptions of property and ownership in the Hebrew Bible and by Chief Seattle is Confucius’ offering of the Dao. Confucius proclaims that popular interest in government is a sign of political failure and moreover that, “when the Dao prevails in the world, governance does not lie in the hands of grandees. When the Dao prevails in the world, the common people do not discuss governance” (16.2). I cannot speak to the governing structure of Chief Seattle’s tribe, but white, and by 1854, “American”, settlers were bound by the principles of “democracy” which necessitating the allocation of private property. Suffrage was linked to property ownership and race. Civic participation was (and is) inextricably linked to private ownership and wealth. Yet Confucius insists the goal is for “common people” to be unconcerned with governance. Clearly we are straddling two very different conceptions of the best way to organize society, but what is intriguing is that the organization of society is primarily talked about in terms of property. The thread of all of these readings seems to be that in order to discuss how to live, we also must discuss our relationship as to where we do that. Whether it be a relationship of caretaking, symbiosis, or duty, it becomes clear that the basis of society rests upon our relationship with land– how we treat it, who it’s been stolen from, and what say we even have over it.