Month: March 2019

The Injustice of Private Property in Land

In Henry George’s Progress and Property, George touches on the definition of property and what is considered property. George views the right to own land as one that humans are not justified to have due to its lack of being created by someone. Land is a natural occurrence, while everything else in the world is not. In “The Injustice of Private Property in Land”, George poses multiple opinions as to why owning land is an injustice to society, but he provokes readers to question the validity of his writings. For example, George writes, “As each person belongs to himself or herself, so labor belongs to the individual when put in concrete form. For this reason, what someone makes or produces belongs to that person — even against the claim of the whole world. It is that person’s property, to use or enjoy, give or exchange, or even destroy. No one else can rightfully claim it” (George). While George does make a great point that property is what is manmade or paid for, this idea of owning what one creates makes me question any exception to this view. One that immediately comes to mind is humans. Humans are literally man made and created by another person, but they are not viewed as property when they are old enough to survive on their own. Yes, children are considered property of their parents, but they are not treated like such.

Furthermore, I question the difference between natural and manmade. One could argue that humans are natural beings and cannot be property, therefor they cannot create it. While George’s personal beliefs are unknown to me, I am sure religion played some role in George’s opinion. If this is the case, why does the idea that humans are God’s creatures and cannot be owned not show in George’s beliefs? This creates the question of whether or not anything can be owned. Is everything on Earth “natural” because the means to create everything are on Earth? While these questions are extreme, they are an equal response to the radical opinions Henry George has.

George’s main argument, although there are many, focuses on the fact that we have no right to own land and that owning land is wrong. His main proof is that property is anything manmade and that only property can be sold or traded. George writes, “It is production that gives the producer the right to exclusive possession and enjoyment. If so, there can be no right to exclusive possession of anything that is not the product of labor. Therefore, private property in land is wrong” (George). George’s argument that land cannot be private because it was not produced by another person is convincing, but the validity of his statement depends on what people define property as. While George view’s it as something one has created and has the rights to, other may argue that property is anything one legally or financially owns. George’s whole argument can be thrown away if a majority of society does not define property is the same way George does.

Another question I had in response to this reading was “what is the solution?”. If George is so adamant that owning land is wrong, how does he propose we fix this? Does everyone get their money back and live on a piece of land for as long as they can? If humans are no longer able to own land, how are people guaranteed to live a peaceful life? George says it himself when he writes, “in a word, ownership of land rests upon conquest” (George). Kings fought wars over land, and who is to say that will not happen again. The dissolution of real estate will result in major turmoil and chaos. This possibility makes it harder to fully support George’s arguments even though they are reasonable.

John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government remains a foundational text today. His understanding of property rights has shaped our contemporary liberal societal framework. Personal property is the basis for Lock’s argument. Thus, by understanding the Lockean property rights, we can understand how they have shaped our current society.

Locke uses two principles to justify private property. Firstly, “God gave the world to men in common,” and—or perhaps rather but—secondly, “individual man has a property in his own person; […] the labour of his body [is] strictly his” (Locke 13, 11). These two principles drive his understanding of property, both as they stand alone and how they conflict with one another. Through the first principle, Locke rebukes the sole ownership of property by monarchs. While prior theorists had limited property rights to the king, Locke believes “God gave the world to Adam and his posterity in common” (Locke 10).

This is true for the expansive and “unworked” land in the Americas. Yet, because bodily labor has individual ownership, so does the products of that labor. For example, once a man gathers acorns, they become his. While Locke does not explain precisely why when personal labor and communal (natural) property are mixed together they become solely private, it appears to be a part of his rationale that spatial productivity must be maximized. He explains that “[God] gave it them for their benefit and for the greatest conveniences of life they could get from it” and because labor contributes so much to value, it is the determinant of (Locke 13, 15). This is seen in land. As it becomes cultivated, it becomes private property for the cultivator, who, in turn, becomes the owner of the land. In doing so, they add value to the land. Unworked land has little value, according to Locke—this does not necessarily hold true today—compared the value of cultivated land.  

In the natural state, one’s own land ownership does not affect other’s ability to own land. Again, looking towards the Americas, the land seemed limitlessly expansive. Thus, everyone has the ability to attain land. Property thus is a right for all people through both their bodily ownership and the land itself. Because God gave man land for their greatest conveniences vis a vis private ownership, land and bodily ownership become the basis of all forms of ownership. In industrial cases, like London, the government exists to maintain these property rights for the people and ensure that these “natural” property rights are maintained.

When considering the built environment today, Locke’s schemes are paramount with the vast majority of land held privately and the notion of private ownership appearing pre-political, as it is within the Lockean schema. Yet three questions I had of Locke’s rationalization pertaining to New York are, first, how does it rationalize one’s own labor as not a right but rather a commodity? From slavery to contemporary construction workers, the owners of New York City are not the builders, but rather the owners of labor. Second, land appears to have a value determined by neither the person who works the land nor in the land itself. An undeveloped parcel of land in New York City would have immense value compared to the same land in the 1970s or the early colonial era. How does Locke compensate for these external market forces? Finally, I was struck by Locke’s understanding of money corrupting property rights because now people could own more than they could consume. With land being the ultimate commodity in New York City, how would Locke understand this?

 

       Both Locke and George seemed to have similar takes on the ideas of the absurdity of private property.  Every man has a natural right to survive using the tools and resources granted to us by God.  God also bestowed us with reason so that we could make use of our environment.  If every man owns himself then he therefore owns his labor and the products of his labor. In this way land is simply the raw materials and our labor is what adds value to it as we produce what’s necessary to sustain life. Land is essentially valueless in that it is only worth something until it’s value has been increased by its joining to one’s labor.  For this reason in nature, it is more valuable to have a large population than avast expanses of space.  

       While Locke asserts that it is fine to take more than one could need so long that everything that is reaped from the environment is used completely before it perishes however, George writes that the production of a product gives exclusive rights of use and enjoyment to the producer and the producer has the right to use the product however they chose, including allowing it to spoil or be destroyed arguing that it wrongs no one else. The idea that you could hoard resources and allow them to go unused simply because you own the labor that produced them seems to be at odds with Locke’s ideas surrounding the natural limits of nature. This limit exists so that we don’t try to gain more than we will use as to let something perishable spoil before it is used is to rob others of the potential use or enjoyment of said product. It was this switch from valuing perishable goods and the use of them to a more tangible, durable form of currency that could not perish that facilitated to beginning of man being able to hoard wealth and grow their possessions, wanting past what nature would allow.  This fundamental shift in valuing items and how much wealth one has amassed is the turning point at which in our desire to have more than we need, we foster injustices pertaining to who is allowed to exist where as the rights of others are infringed upon to the benefit of others.

John Locke begins his argument in “Of Property” with the idea that God gave the Earth and its fruits in common to men for their use. No one man has a right that excludes or limits the rest of mankind. Yet, before the gifts on nature can be useful or beneficial, there must be a particular man to appropriate them. This “appropriation” occurs when something from the state of nature is mixed with the labor of man. Locke makes clear that one’s labor, and the “works of his hands are strictly his”. The labor removes the land or object from the common state, and establishes the man as its owner. Private property acquired in this manner is not only moral but useful. Therefore, Locke’s premise in this section is quite simple: people have the right to appropriate goods by adding their labor to that good, thus making it their own.

While Locke argues that men have a right to create and enjoy their property, he also argues that there are limits to that right in the state of nature. The first limit is alluded to when he describes how property is created. He says, “Labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough and as good left in common for others.” The implication is that one’s right to property is only clear and exclusive so long as it doesn’t jeopardize anyone else’s ability to create equivalent kinds of property for himself. Secondly, and the subject of a good deal of the chapter, Locke stresses the force of the limitation on property. Man should only obtain as much property “as [he] can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils…Whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others.” The reason for this limit is that “Nothing was made by God for Man to spoil or destroy.”

Perhaps most similar to the notion of ownership put forth by Locke can be found in Andro Linklater’s presentation of Reverend John Winthrop’s sermon in “Owning the Earth”. Winthrop put foreword that private ownership of the Earth did not depend upon the law, but was created only through human toil of the land. Moreover, every man had the natural right to occupy empty land, and ultimately grew from God’s injunction in the Book of Genesis to, “Increase & multiply, replenish the Earth & subdue.” Both Locke and Winthrop’s positions stand in stark opposition to the idea of the divine right of kings, and address the then divisive question of did authority lie with the people or with the crown?

The main issue I have with John Locke’s “On Property” is that he is unclear regarding what type of labor is needed to obtain private property. Some kinds of labor are obvious, such as planting crops, but suppose I am raising sheep and need a certain amount of land to feed those sheep. May I claim as my private property all land that I deem necessary for pasturage? Or even today what if I am an environmentalist and want to preserve the environment as is? Can I fence off the area I want to protect? Such questions are difficult to deduce from Locke’s premise (at least in “On Property” alone), and would be addressed by social conventions and governmental rules. These conventions and standards may vary significantly among different cultures, traditions, and societies.

Nature, irrespective of the humans living with it, provides countless ecosystem services to the creatures on Earth: carbon sequestration, climate regulation, and nutrient cycling to name a few. Additionally, conservationists like Aldo Leopold argue that even if the Earth was not populated by living, cognizant beings, the plants and non-living features of nature would still have inherent value based off the fact that it exists in the first place and is a beautiful product of the world. Yet, in John Locke’s chapter “Property” from his book Second Treatise of Government and Henry George’s chapter “Seventh Part Justice of the Remedy” from his book Progress and Poverty, both of them assert that nature has no, or reduced, value until it is labored upon by human and that labor is the process in which humans claim ownership of nature’s parts. As an environmentalist and considering the crisis nature is in today, I find flawed logic regarding ownership, value of nature, and property as a whole.

 

Overall, both Locke and George subscribe to Blackstone’s “pick up theory,” where humans can own anything from nature that isn’t being currently used by mixing one’s labor into it. The main difference is that George believes land cannot be labored upon and thus cannot be owned. This is illogical, as land can be labored upon, as Locke confirms, and in the modern day, there is no land on Earth that has not been shaped or changed by humans in some way.

Additionally, both writers seem to follow the dogma that nature is separate from humans, particularly as said in the bible, as humans are given “dominion over all the Earth.” Thus, Locke and George’s arguments are entirely based off this truth from one God and that this God is right. Although I personally believe humans do not have inherent claim to rule other beings like animals and plants, I will go along with their assumption for this discussion.

The main issue with Locke and George’s argument is that, contrary to their belief, nature already has value and is being used. Although the trees in a forest may be untouched by a tribe, they are providing a service to the tribe by being a habitat for the tribe’s prey. This brings into question how much can be privately taken from nature before disrupting human’s current, more passive uses of nature.

Also under the assumption that nature has little to no value, Locke supposes that “wine [ is ] more valuable than water,” and labor is what adds all value. This may be so, but labor can add positive and negative value. Take the atomic bomb for instance. It has higher monetary value than a forest, as determined by humans and according to Locke, however which entity will produce more good relative to harm- the bomb or the forest? Yet again, Locke’s argument neglects the fact that nature, like forests, are providing services humans often take for granted.

Next, the two writers make assumptions regarding private right to property. Locke and George assume that every human has a private right to the fruits of their labor. Where does this private right come from however? Locke reasons that “consent from all mankind” to claim property is ridiculous, but perhaps when God gave humans the land, he meant for the fruits of their labor to be shared publicly. Perhaps this does not entail getting permission from all humankind, but instead ensuring that all humans in one’s immediate vicinity are properly cared for and not excluded, which then lets permission fall upon the individual. Perhaps this is the private property Locke and George speak of.

Locke gets into this when he describes how his principle of “picking up whatever is being unused” is ethically based on the fact that there is enough land to go around. He does not, however, explore what happens when there is not enough land to go around, as that was not an issue during his time. It is plausible that private property rights may cease completely under God once it cannot be distributed equally, as that would be unfair, and no human is superior to the next.

Even before all land becomes unable to equitably distribute, God-given property rights may have to cease if one were to weigh harm against benefit. At a certain point, turning a parcel of land into agriculture may produce more suffering globally than the benefit it has to a particular group of humans. At that point, one needs to morally question what should be prioritized, human pleasure, animal pleasure, all living pleasure, or nature as a whole?  

Lastly, they seem to believe that the rules in which state private ownership of land and monetary trading of land are justified systems that all humans must abide by. Locke asserts trade as a form of use, and that when this is combined with the monetary system, it allows human to accumulate more than they could individually benefit from at one point in time. This seems like an over-extension of God’s principles, however, as God didn’t endorse money and private accumulation of it. One may argue that even if a human can trade land for money, if the human does not spend the money soon, then the money is not serving them benefit, and they should get rid of it. If private accumulation and the monetary system were a divine commandment, God would be a capitalist. Finally, Locke’s argument falls flat when acknowledging that not all humans, particularly those being born, agreed to monetary systems or state private ownership. So, although an Englishman may not be able to claim French land, a random nomad should be able to. When reading Locke and George’s texts, it is pertinent to recognize that not everyone agrees to human-made systems, or even seemingly basic assumptions like belief in God or human prevalence over nature.