On Henry George (by Hannah Benhamo)

In part seven of political economist Henry George’s Progress and Property, George attempts to provide a remedy for the injustice of personal property in land. Like John Locke, Henry George asserts that it is the production of property which gives its producer a claim to it. However, the ownership of land results from the act of conquest rather than any natural act of labor, and is therefore “not a right that binds, but a force that compels.” Land is a natural right that belongs to all of nature’s inhabitants, and the private ownership of land subsequently represents “the monopolization by some of what nature has meant for all.” George recommends that rent be redefined as the amount an individual pays to the community at large to compensate others members for their equal, natural right to land. Recognizing that his remedy for the injustice of private property appears extreme, George offers the analogy of chattel slavery. Just as slave-owners were not compensated for their slaves lost to emancipation, landowners should not compensated for land purchased before the restoration of common land rights to all.

The chapter succeeds in effectively conveying its argument in part because it resists any displays of sentimentality, and appeals to the reader’s sense of reason rather than morality. George is adamant that personal property in land is wrong, but he frames his judgement in the language of justice rather than probity. He similarly argues for man’s common right to land on the basis of logic, reminding readers that the notion of common right has always remained intertwined with the concept of personal property in language. The distinction between “real” and “personal” estate, for example, indicates the “the survival of a primitive distinction between what was originally looked on as common property and what, from its nature, was always considered the exclusive property of the individual.” And, George recalls that the idea of common right attached itself to the concept of privately-owned land even in feudal times, as we saw in Linklater’s Owning the Earth.

More critically, George resists sentimentality by asking that readers not mistake ancient, foundational laws of contemporary civilizations for sacrosanct natural law. Private property in land exists not as a result of civilization, but as a result of chaos—“Private ownership of land has appeared only as the result of usurpation.” The analogy between land-owning and chattel slavery strengthens George’s point. Just as civilizations once thought nothing unjust about owning slaves, so too civilizations today see nothing unjust or unnatural in the private ownership of land. Yet, as with chattel slavery, custom or sentimentality toward custom does not necessarily make a practice just or even effective. Even with this extreme analogy, the chapter never assumes an overly moral slant. George does not criticize those who suggest land-owners should be compensated with the abolition of private property, and even concedes that discussions of compensation represent a positive step forward, as they did in the nineteenth-century with discussions of compensations for slave-owners. The question is not one of morality, but simply of one of justice. George merely restates that, “Inequality, once produced, alway tends toward greater inequality,” and, with yet another appeal to logic, refutes the suggestion. By the conclusion of the chapter, the restoration of the common right to land appeals to the reader principally because it appeals to her sense of logic.