On Land Titles, Property and the State

From: What is Political Economy

Trace the origin of land titles back through the centuries and you will invariably find them based upon force or fraud. While not able to articulate ground rent or the law of rent, sovereigns and would-be rulers recognized ownership of land as the source of wealth and power. As the German sociologist, Franz Oppenheimer, put it so well in his opus THE STATE, they were engaged in the political means for obtaining wealth rather than the economic means.

John Locke recognized the distinction between property in land and property in the product of labor. In the Second Treatise on Civil Government he wrote;

Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has property in his own person; this nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hands we may say are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something which is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature placed it in, it hath by this labor something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. For this labor being the unquestionable property of the laborer, 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.

Locke was correct in recognizing a natural right of property in the product of labor but fell into confusion because he did not understand the genesis of ground rent.

The institution of private property in land (which includes land beneath improvements as well as unused land) differs essentially from private property in labor and capital. Or, in terms of the yield, private property in ground rent as distinguished from private property in wages or interest. The sovereign or ruler must provide some sort of title deed or recognition of ownership for the former. No such state authorization is needed for recognition that the fruits of production belong to the producers. To the extent that the state levies or taxes labor or capital or the wealth produced, to that extent it is stealing just as surely as any private thief. Yes-TAXATION IS THEFT. Community collection of ground rent, on the other hand, is merely a collection of that value which is created by the community. It is just as well as expedient.

The desire for any particular item of wealth is generally motivated by wanting to possess and use that item. (a possible trivial exception being collectables such as rare paintings, coins, antiques, etc.) The desire for land has a two-fold motivation. First is possession and use. This security of tenure is necessary so that producers can enjoy the fruits of their production. Second is the potential gain from merely holding title to land. Land speculation may not always be profitable to the individual but the net effects are always harmful to the society.

In Chapter 2, Book VI of Progress and Poverty, following an exhaustive analysis of the production and distribution of wealth, Henry George spelled out the true remedy;

This, then, is the remedy for the unjust and unequal distribution of wealth apparent in modern civilization, and for all the evils which flow from it:

We must make land common property.

We have reached this conclusion by an examination in which every step has been proved and secured. In the chain of reasoning no link is wanting and no link is weak. Deduction and induction have brought us to the same truth-that the unequal ownership of land necessitates the unequal distribution of wealth. And as in the nature of things unequal ownership of land is inseparable from the recognition of individual property in land, it necessarily follows that the only remedy for the unjust distribution of wealth is in making land common property.