Selected Quotes
from the Writings of Francis Neilson
Compiled by Edward J. Dodson
[I to O]
ILLITERACY
There is an illiteracy of the educated today that is far more
dangerous than the illiteracy of the illiterate. ...teachers ... are
not qualified (no matter how well organized they are) for the work
they have undertaken at the taxpayers' expense. ["Education and
Modern Man,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.46]
IMMIGRATION / AND "AMERICANISM"
We are scarcely affiliated in any way with the times of our fathers.
Every tradition has been broken. Every bond, which united us to the
men who threw off the shackles of George III and North, is severed.
There are substantial reasons for this: one is that the stock which
held to the tradition, and was all for tightening the bonds of our
union, is in the minority. And the reasons why the northern stocks
have suffered numerically is to be attributed to indiscriminate
immigration. The result is that there have been raised, in the past
fifty years, stocks which can never become American in the way that
northern stocks became American and, therefore, these peoples are
without a tradition of almost any kind, and fail utterly to appreciate
the origin of the United States, and the causes which set the American
Revolution in motion. [
Man at The Crossroads, pp.173-174]
In a decade [beginning with the McKinley Presidency] the face of the
country was changed. The migrations from the East to the West had been
taking place for some time and, as the population increased, other
peoples crowded into the cities and strange name sreplaced those of
the older stocks - people from eastern Europe and the Mediterranean
seemed, in numbers of congested districts, to be crowding out the folk
of the more stable nations of western civilization. [Man at The
Crossroads, p.197]
Nothing of practical value was done to help the newcomers to
understand the traditions of the country, and enter into the spirit of
its genius. [Man at The Crossroads, p.198]
IMMIGRATION / FUNDAMENTAL REASON FOR
The great emigrations were misery movements; flood, climate, hunger
driving men hither and thither, like hordes of wolves, like locusts,
consuming all in the tragic struggle of finding a settlement. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.56]
IMPERIALISM
Imperialism stripped of the purple, shown in all its nakedness,is out
for booty. Its aim is exploitation, no matter how well disposed the
administrators may be towards the exploited. The central government
can subsist only on tribute, and its wealthy supporters can subsist
only on slave labour. Wanting a slice of a neighbour's land was the
real desire of the Roman imperialist, and pretexts of any and every
plausible kind were easily found, once the objective was left to
military authorities; for their job was patriotic, and their glory in
arms covered the dreadful policies of the politicians with the garish
flags of imperial loyalty and military courage. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.87]
Imperialism of the old order is done. The days of the flag following
trade are gone. Economic imperialism may be useful, but not yet.
Tariffs must go before economic imperialism can be fruitful. Labour in
remote lands does not want labour from home lands. Immigration quotas
are narrowed where immigrants are tolerated. Even if far-off countries
were open for exploitation, the city-bred youth is in no mind to try
the forets, mines, or prairies of sparsely settled lands. The
pioneering spirit which peopled the Americas and Canada faded away
generations ago. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.119]
With the extension of the orbits of the imperialists came the growth
of expenditure upon armies and navies. Lands taken into the imperial
maw had to be protected; also the maritime trade routes requried
watchful navies. ["Political Movements, "Modern Man and
the Liberal Arts, p.231]
The advent of Neo-Imperialism marks the date when real economic
reforms met their doom. Since then, we have had wars in nearly all
parts of the world, with the result that the masses have been reduced
to wage slavery. And, yet, we refuse to believe that political
democracy is a delusion when it is not a wicked snare to catch the too
trustful fellow with a vote. ["Political Movements,"Modern
Man and the Liberal Arts, pp.232-233]
INDIVIDUALISM / ORIGINS OF
there is no good reason why we should not imagine, in lieu of
tangible evidence, that early man was placed here to work out his own
destiny - not as a group, but as an individual. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.24]
INFLATION / MONETARY
as the cost of government increases, the purchasing power of
money declines, and as purchasing power falls in value, fewer products
are demanded from labor and from this follows a lessening of demand
for workers. [
Man at The Crossroads, p. 264]
INJUSTICE / ASSOCIATED WITH TREATING LAND AS
PROPERTY
many brilliant men who have gained the world's ear have fallen
victim to this extraordinary misconception. They have never considered
what property is, but rather the use to which it is put by certain
sections of the community. [
Man at The Crossroads, p.63]
INJUSTICE / ENTRENCHED NATURE OF
... plain man seldom thinks it necessary to learn the essential
lesson of life itself: how to be fed, warmed, clothed, and housed with
comfort and security. When he was at work he insured against accident
and death, but he took no steps to assure himself abundance. That is
why injustice is of so long life. The system depends upon plain man's
economic ignorance forits maintenance.
The Eleventh Commandment, p.186]
INTELLECT
... only men possessed of a great desire for knowledge can study many
questions and problems at the same time. ["Science and the
Liberal Arts," "Science and the Liberal Arts,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.11]
"It is only the few who have the capacity and inclination to
continue their studies beyond the high school period. And education,
as it is understood in the intellectual sense, is very different from
the schooling that is considered sufficient for the boy or girl who
has to earn a living. ["Education and Modern Man," Modern
Man and the Liberal Arts,/i>, p.44]
INVESTMENT STRATEGY
My object was always that of a long-term investment, backed up by
sound capitalization. Never did I take any interest in the speculative
side of the stock market. [
My Life in Two Worlds, p.134]
ISAIAH / BIBLICAL BOOKS OF
It is possible now to get an idea of the environment of Nazareth
after the death of Herod. And these chapters, the last eight of the
book of Isaiah, the import and significance of which have been
neglected by critic and preacher, may have been the manifestoes of
hope which inspired the Zealots and their followers. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.35]
These poems, calling for justice, the restoration of God's justice,
have never been understood; their place in old Hebrew hope and
aspiration is unknown, because prophets, the authors and speakers of
the poems, were not priests in authority, the most unlikely people to
stamp with approval texts revealing their own imperfections. [The
Eleventh Commandment, p.36]
The climax of promise reached in these economic poems exceeds in
beauty anything in the realms of utopia-building. It is the most
perfect specimen of economic peace and fullness to be found in the
poetry of any people. How it has been missed by critics and preachers
cannot be explained; why it has been neglected by the labour
propagandists is a mystery. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.37]
JEFFERSON, THOMAS
Jefferson realized that it was not difficult to set up despotic
government in a democracy, and in Notes on the State of Virginia,
written in 1782, there is to be found a whole series of fears which
perplexed him, regarding the future of democracy. [
Man at The Crossroads, pp. 170-171]
He realized that the franchise was of little use if it were possible
for the holders of office to legislate in their own interest. [Man
at The Crossroads, p.171]
Every important defect that Jefferson foresaw in the operation of the
administrative branches of the government is now practiced with
impunity. [Man at The Crossroads, p.172]
A Thomas Jefferson in this year of grace, if he were to state in
public the views he repeatedly gave to the people of his time, would
be denounced as a disturber of the peace, and, in all probability,
condemned on the charge of lese majeste. ["A Revival of
Political Radicalism," Modern Man and the Liberal Arts,
pp.179-180]
JESUS / DISCIPLES MISREPRESENTATION OF
The probabilities are that Jesus did not desire to be identified with
the Jewish hope of a Messiah; it was the disciples themselves who
invented the idea and clothed Jesus with the Messiahship. ...There was
no room for a Messiah in his system. It is quite plain that in the
minds of his disciples miracles made the Messiah, but it is shown how
little Jesus regarded the matter of miracles; he did not want them
mentioned. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.236]
To some students the early Christian editors and councils, by
concentrating on the Messiah idea to the complete exclusion of the
wisest counsellor mankind has had, have caused nothing but the strife
which has pushed the coming of the kingdom on earth farther and
farther away from man. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.237]
Unfortunately, disciples are prone to accept the superficial objects
of a crusade and completely miss the subtleties of the essential
purpose. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.254]
JESUS / EDUCATION OF
The question of who educated Jesus was a problem which engaged the
minds of many of the students of the last century. ...In the first
place, Torah lays it down strictly that children should be taught to
read and write, that they should know the laws, be told the deeds of
their forefathers, so that "they might follow in their ways and,
having been brought up on the laws, become accustomed to observing
them and have no excuse for now knowing them." These injunctions
were traditional and hark back to the time of Moses, when it was
commanded that the children should be taught first of all the laws,
the most seemly knowledge, and the source of happiness.
The Eleventh Commandment, p.213]
There is no valid reason for thinking Jesus had not great mentors. It
is quite possible his father was an unusual man, perhaps a seer. ...In
any sense, even today it is not always the man who has had the
advantages of a university educaiton who succeeds in intellectual
endeavour, who achieves distinction in the world of thought. [The
Eleventh Commandment, p.214]
JESUS / MISSION OF
Jesus was not a Messiah of despair. He was not a religious pessimist,
believing there was no hope for man on earth, and that God had left
his creatures helpless. Jesus was the one supreme optimist that has
ever walked the earth. He discovered the one perfect system, and it
was his thorough knowledge of the law which enabled him to divine the
secret of the first covenant, the purpose and aim of the Mosaic code.
When he said, "I come to fulfil the law, not to destroy it,"
he surely meant that he came to fulfil the law of the first covenant
that had been destroyed by the priests. When he said, "My kingdom
is not of this world," he surely meant, "My kingdom is not
of this
Roman world." His mission was to destroy the Roman world
and re-establish God's world. [The Eleventh Commandment,
p.219]
There is nothing in the whole range of interpretation so far from the
true point as the theory that Jesus held out no earthly hope of
material amelioration. One of a race nurtured in the philosophy of
Deuteronomy and Leviticus could not have drawn the poor, the helpless,
to him, if he offered a stone when he knew they were anxious for
bread. He would not have drawn a platoon to hear him had he been
silent on this question. In thought he hailed from Ezra, from Isaiah.
[The Eleventh Commandment, p.232]
It must be remembered in considering the mission of Jesus that its
aim and purpose was to establish the kingdom of God on earth. If this
idea is not kept uppermost in the mind, all effort to understand him
will be as naught. First and last the great injunction was: "Seek
ye first the kingdom and its justice and all these things shall be
added unto you," and: "Your heavenly Father knoweth ye have
need of all these things." [The Eleventh Commandment,
pp.233-234]
Ever since his day, because men have opposed the establishment of the
kingdom of God on earth, there has been no peace, and there will be no
peace until men decide to put away the sword and accept the will of
God. He knew the dangers, he knew the consequences of preaching such a
doctrine; his prophecy has been fulfilled to the letter. ...That the
secret of his mission was not understood by his disciples is plain
when the passages which refer to their demand for a sign to be given
are closely examined. Leaving the obvious introductions by Christian
editors aside, and the laboured insertions of those who desired to
show how the prophecies were fulfilled,it is clear that no sign was to
be given. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.235]
Jesus realized that he had failed to make his mission clear to his
disciples. They had understood the economic revelation contained in
the Sermon on the Mount. That was natural, for some of them were
undoubtedly Zealots ... But they had fialed utterly to grasp the
secret which lay in the non-resistance idea, as the only logical way
of bringing about the kingdom of God on earth. [The Eleventh
Commandment, p.239]
Jesus knew perfectly well (had he not the whole history of the Jews
behind him in this?) that financial reform, social reform, political
reform, were utterly futile ways of attempting to bring the kingdom of
God on earth. ...There had been strife and violence for centuries.
Reformers had come and gone; prophets had come and gone; ...but no
advance was made. ...Tax, tribute, and subjection; yes, Jesus was wise
(and so, indeed, for a time, were his followers). They must have known
tht violence would beget violence, and Jesus from the first had taught
them not to resist evil. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.270]
The mission was, to bring the kingdom of God on earth; the time was
ripe for a change, indeed, many thought the time was at hand. All that
was required was for people to want it, for the idea to spread like
lightning, to be grasped by everybody overnight, and the thing would
be done. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.275]
JESUS / SPIRITUALITY OF
The very essence of mysticism, and that was the secret of Jesus. He
so loved God, and so surely found God's kingdom within him, that he
transformed himself into God. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.246]
JESUS / TEACHINGS OF
It would be surprising if the speeches and parables of Jesus
contained no sayings familiar to the people. There is a language of
the folk who live laways near to the soil or to primitive occupations,
such as hunting, fishing, an shepherding, and in it are found sayings
current at all times and with all races.
The Eleventh Commandment, p.223]
The Sermon on the Mount is not a mere string of familiar sayings
strung together with no definite idea or purpose in view. ...These
sermons seem to be designed for a very definite purpose. They are not
specimens of spontaneous eloquence; nowhere is the impression given
that any section came to him on the spur of the moment. These sermons
were deliberately planned, thought out, perhaps, over a period of many
years; they were prepared for the Galilean audience he addressed. They
could have been thought out and spoken only by one thoroughly familiar
with the conditiosn of the meek andthe poor. No one but Jesus at that
time could have put these three sermons together. [The Eleventh
Commandment, p.223]
Jesus was speaking to people who were the victims of the
tax-gatherer, poor people who had had their goods stolen, distracted
folk who had tried to serve God and Caesar. To tell such a body of
folk not to be anxious about the necessaries of life seems absurd,
andit is not to be wondered at that men who have heard such
explanations are leving the churches and have been leaving the
churches now for more than half a century. [The Eleventh
Commandment, p.231]
There is nothing in this sermon which suggests any form of political
government; there is nothing in it which even approximates systems of
socialism or communism; it contians not one sentence indicating
ocmmunal ownership of land or produce, implements or dwelling; in it
there is nothing which sanctions the abrogration of natural rights.
Therefore,it is theocratic in the old Mosaic sense. [The Eleventh
Commandment, p.233]
The gospel of Jesus ... was for all men, women, and children, of all
races, and anyone was eligible for the kingdom of God at any time and
place, by seeking the kingdom and its justice. [The Eleventh
Commandment, p.233]
... Jesus never once held out the faintest hope of social
amelioration under the system. Never once did he make a political
appeal. The test lies here: what government, what body of politicians
could attempt to introduce measures designed to further the kingdom of
God on earth? [The Eleventh Commandment, p.245]
When Jesus realized that everything in nature shows that God's
intention was for man to be happy, and that his material happiness
depended upon the economic conditions affecting his daily life, he saw
in every direction man-made laws thwarting the will of God. [The
Eleventh Commandment, p.276]
JESUS / TRIBUTE MONEY ISSUE RAISED BY HERODIANS
There is no incident in the life of Jesus which has caused so much
confused and loose thinking as that of the trap laid by the Herodians
when Jesus was asked the question about the tribute money. This has
been the stumbling-block of the church for centuries; it is one of the
most amazing things in the life of Jesus, that it has been left in the
gospels just as it must have happened; and this can only be explained
by assuming that the early Christian editors had not the faintest
conception of what was meant by it. Few have realized its importance.
...If ... commentators had kept in mind the Sermon on the Mount and
its exposition of the theory of non-resistance, the difficulties
concerning what Jesus meant by his reply to the Herodians would never
have arisen. it is the non-resistance theory, and its logical outcome,
that bothers them. ...Non-resistance is the only logical reply to
violence. [
The Eleventh Commandment, pp.258,263]
JEWS / HISTORY OF
The history of the Jews is the history of a folk suffering the
penalties of violating fundamental laws. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.5]
JUSTICE / ARISTOTLE ON
Aristotle is nowhere clear as to what justice is. In
Politics, he lays it down that "justice is a political
virtue, by the rules of it the state is regulated," but it may be
cliamed that justice is not necessarily a political virtue because the
rules of it regulate the state. If the rules of justice as a political
virtue are the criterion, as Aristotle says, of what is right, how can
the slave basis of the state he reconciled with such rules? ...The
principle he grants one moment is abolished the next by a political
expedient. "Since, then, some men are slaves by nature, and
others are freemen, it is clear that where slavery is advantageous to
anyone, then it is just to make him a slave." Evidently, justice
concerns not slaves; it is a virtue allotted politcally to freeman. So
far away is Aristotle from Socrates in this respect, that the former
does not hesitate to lay the foundations of a state historically
unstable, while the latter made sure to build his idea of the simple
state on a firm economic basis. [The Eleventh Commandment,
pp.63-64]
JUSTICE / AS BASIS FOR CLAIMS TO PROPERTY
For justice is before and above judgment and piety; it is a system
fundamental to the relationship between man and his Maker. It is
antecedent to all positive law. It is the basis of title to own
produce. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.29]
JUSTICE / DEFINITION OF
And what is justice? Justice is the opportunity to build and inhabit,
to plant and to eat, to enjoy the work of one's hands. It is equailty
of opportunity to use the earth provided by God for his creatures,
whose sustenance is drawn from it, from it and no other source.
Justice is the basis of man's right to life, and also the basis of
ownership of the wealth he produces. ...Without it man is lost -- as
in every civilization of which there is record, lost as he is today,
as he was in Babylon, in India, in Greece, in Rome, all fearful
examples of the curse which followed the removal of a neighbour's
landmark. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.39]
Justice is the institution of a natural order in which a man can
produce food, buildings, and clothing for himself, removing not a
neighbor's landmark, practising one thing only, the thing to which his
nature is best adapted, doing his own business, not being a busybody,
not taking what is another's nor being deprived of what is his own,
having what is his own, and belongs to him, interfering not with
another, so that he may set in order his own inner life, and be his
own master, his own law, and at peace with himself. [The Eleventh
Commandment, p.82]
JUSTICE / GOSPELS ON
Take the words as they are given in the three gospels: "Render
unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that
are God's." The statements are clear, there is no reservation, no
modification, no proviso; ...It is the basis of justice, the point
from which the ownership of the thing produced can be determined.
Without it, there can be no law of ownership but a political or legal
one for the determination of the courts. Jesus says: "Give to
Caesar what is his," not "what is legally his." Well,
what is Caesar's? Only that which he produces. Here lies the very
heart of the whole question. Jesus preached non-resistance: lay not up
treasures, food enough only for the day, non-cooperation, abandonment
of homes, of fields, flight into the mountains, the wilderness,
anywhere away from the curse, Caesar,the heathen ruler who robbed,
jailed, and murdered God's chosen people. Tribute was a thing
unlawful, unholy, a thing accursed and abhorred form old time. Had not
all the true prophets shown how tribute arose out of the removal of
the landmarks? ...Jesus knew his history and he must have known the
difference between that of the old law and that of the priests' law.
The prophets knew, and, as Jesus knew the prophets, there is no sound
reason for thinking Jesus did not know. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.274]
The second part of the injunction, "render unto God the things
which be God's," is the most consistent piece of economic
reasoning which Jesus, the perfect example of a wise man, gave to
mankind. This means, give to God all things he has created. Why?
Because it is impossible for the kingdom to come, so long as men own
parts of God's kingdom. There can be no private ownership of land in
the kingdom of God, because land is created, and man can own nothing
but what he produces. The law is very simple and very clear, once it
is interpreted by Jesus. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.275]
JUSTICE / MEANS OF ACHIEVING
What, then, must be done? Liberate all those who are concerned in
production, in industry. But how is this to be done? There is only one
way, and that is to take those values that are created by the
community for the use of government and abolish all taxes that fall
upon wealth. The justice of this proposal should be patent to all
thinking people, for it is recognized that land value is created by
the community. Therefore, each and every one is heir to that vast
estate. Here, we ground such a proposal on the broad base of economic
justice, and lay a system in which every man, woman and child has an
equal interest. [
Man at The Crossroads, pp. 271-272]
KANT, EMMANUEL
Kant said he would not be understood for another hundred years; the
hundred years are long up. How little Kant was understood can be
judged by the fact that his crowning work, the
Rechtslehre, was not translated into English until 1887, and
only in this generation have the Germans themselves learned to
appreciate something of the greatness of Kant. [The Eleventh
Commandment, p.105]
... in the Philosophy of Law, to give the Rechtslehre
is English title, according to Hastie, Kant lays down the fundamentals
of life and conduct, the essentials given and found in the natural
state by every newcomer. Here he posits that each and every child born
into this world is co-heir to the opportunities and forces which are
indispensible to its well-being. This co-heirship of the human family,
as tool-using, food-producing animals, is a link which binds man to
the earth. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.106]
...in laying the fundamentals of a "Philosophy of Law,"
Kant has done something not only for the jurist, but for the
economist, also. The basis is an economic one, and that is where he
triumphs. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.107]
KANT / ON PROPERTY
... throughout the whole of the work the suggestion is there, that
primarily ownership springs from the labourer's right to what he
produces from the earth. In the section on "The Principles of
Public Right," Kant says: "Whatever one has
made substantially for himself, he holds as his incontestable
property." But what more can be required thatn the following
statement of the relationship of men to the earth: "All men are
originally and before any juridical act of Will in rightful possession
of the Soil; that is, they have a right to be wherever Nature or
Chance has placed them without their will. The Eleventh
Commandment, p.108]
KEYNES, JOHN MAYNARD
[Keynes] was the official representative of the British Treasury at
the Paris Peace Conference u to June 7, 1919, and he also sat as
deputy for the Chancellor of the exchequer on the Supreme Economic
Council. After resigning, he published a book called
The Economic Consequences of the Peace, and in it he stated:
... Nations are real
things, of whom you love one and feel for the rest indifference --
or hatred. The glory of the nation you love is a desirable end, --
but generally to be obtained at your neighbor's expense. The
politics of power are inevitable, and there is nothing very new to
learn about this war or the end it was fought for; ...
... Have we any reason to think that they [the leaders of the
movements today] are better informed than the men of 1919? Have any of
them the slightest conception of the enormous problems that fact them
-- problems which, in magnitude, far overshadow those dealt with by
Keynes in his book? ["Political Movements,"Modern Man
and the Liberal Arts, pp.240-241]
LABOR / DEFINITION OF, IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
Labour mean[s] ... all human exertion; and service mean[s] ...
rendering service to labour, and being paid for by labour, as labour
enjoys, gains, benefits, or profits. The services indispensable to men
were then what they are now: the priest's, the poet's, the
physician's, the musician's. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.16]
LABOR / LEVEL OF WAGES PAID
high wages, in general were paid by none but unprotected
industries. [
Man at The Crossroads, p.84]
LABOR UNIONS / RIGHT TO STRIKE
If there be a "right to strike," it must arise out of the
individual's true right to himself and his labor. Short of the
conditions of a slave, there is no power to make one man work for
another when he does not desire to do so. When a minority, or a
majority, of men band themselves together to strike and cease working,
this action must in no way infringe the equal right of those who do
not want to strike, to labor as they desire. [
Man at The Crossroads, pp.120-121]
LAND / AS SOURCE OF ALL HUMAN MATERIAL NEEDS
No matter how complicated the commercial and financial systems may
be, man remains a land animal, and cannot get his raw-material form
any other source than the earth. So, with regard to fundamental
economics, man fundamentally remains where he was. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.92.]
LAND / NOT WEALTH AND NOT PROPERTY
The land on which his house is built is not produced by him.
Therefore,
tracts of bare land cannot be property, for they are
not wealth, and were not produced by labor. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.63]
LAND / MONOPOLY OF
The true economic royalists of this country are the land monopolists,
[
Man at The Crossroads, p.218]
There is no economic royalist in industry that is at all comparable
to the one who holds land and does not use it himself. [Man at The
Crossroads, p.219]
Land is scarce, because it has been pre-empted, and the owners can
afford to withhold it from use, little tax falling upon it. ...Relieve
the burdens which cripple effort and thrift; encourage men to improve
without fear of penalty, and break the monopoly of land-holding. [The
Eleventh Commandment, p.146]
... all states suffer in the same way, once the landmarks are
removed, and the history of the removal of landmarks in England from
Henry the Seventh all the way down to the beginning of the nineteenth
century can be read in numbers of works devoted to the crime of
enclosure without economic return. The enrichment of the landlords at
the expense of the tillers of the soil marks always the beginning of
the decline of civilization. The Eleventh Commandment, pp.
209-210]
LAND / MONOPOLY OF / ANCIENT GALILEE
If there were large estates in Galilee, and there seems to be much
evidence of this, the old system of not parting with the land outright
must have long been disregarded. This would account for the extremely
hard conditions of the smallholder, who probably was left with the
poorest land, and explain the richness of yield of the big estate that
could be tilled with slave labour. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.206]
LAND / REDISTRIBUTION OF
Buying [land] under government schemes of land purchase cannot be
considered for a moment; no one will listen to schemese that will add
another million to the debt. ...Therefore, land value must fall lower
than it is today, and owners must be forced through taxation either to
put land to better use or to let it go. [
The Eleventh Commandment, pp. 146-147]
LAND REFORM / HISTORICAL EXAMPLES
Of the many reforms attributed to Lycurgus those of land
redistribution and the the currency are of especial interest here. The
inequalities of land-holding were dreadful; "the city was heavily
burdened with indigent and helpless people, and wealth was wholly
concentrated in the hands of the few." This description of Sparta
fits England, America, France; indeed, it might be taken from the
speech of a modern liberal legislator. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.60]
LAND VALUE / TAXATION OF AND JUSTICE
...land value must be taken, because it belongs to the community and
is created by the community. It must be taken, because it is just to
take it. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.149]
LANDLESSNESS
It is of no use for labor to talk about the "right to work"
so long as it is landless, and the only way that it can have this
right restored is by recapturing the alternative to entering a
congested labor market. [
Man at The Crossroads, p.131]
The question is, how can the unemployed be set to work without
charity? There is only one certain way. No one can work without using
land. No matter what the job may be, all a man's food, fuel, clothing,
and shelter must be produced by labour from land. [The Eleventh
Commandment, p.145]
LANDLESSNESS / EQUIVALENT TO CHATTEL SLAVERY
A chattel slave know he was a slave; he knew he was bought to labor
and he knew the indentures of his servitude. He endured conditions
every day which reminded him of his status. In a democracy such as
this, the landless laborer is given what is called the freeman's
certificate, a vote, but he is nevertheless a slave under a system of
private ownership of the rent of land. He has to pay a fellow mortal
for the right to use the earth, the only source from which he can draw
his sustenance. [
Man at The Crossroads, p.219]
LANDLORDS / ABSENTEE
The improvements in agriculture affected only the few, and at the
same time provided cheap labor for the farmers. The landlords
themselves were not farmers, for most of the land of England is
cultivated by tenants. As for the agricultural laborer, who hired
himself out to a farmer, he not only lost, through the enclosure, the
land which gave him an alternative to entering the labor market, but
by taking a job on the farm he became a victim of the system of the
tied cottage. This he could inhabit only so long as he remained a
servant of the farmer. All the benefits brought about by the
improvement in agriculture accrued to those who had enclosed the land.
["The Conspiracy Against the English Peasantry,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.99]
LANDLORDS / ENGLISH
Side by side with the conspiracy to reduce the peasantry to the most
iniquitous form of slavery, the landlords of England relieved
themselves of the burdens of taxation which their land had formerly
borne. ["The Conspiracy Against the English Peasantry,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.112]
There were periods in the history of all the classical empires when
the subjugated people enjoyed some respite form the havoc of war. But
the landlords' war in England was prosecuted century after century,
generation after generation. There was no let-up to it. And it
terminated in scenes of crowning horror and shame. ["The
Conspiracy Against the English Peasantry," Modern Man and the
Liberal Arts, p.113]
LANGE, FREDERICK
It may be urged that the Messiahship conferred on Jesus by the
disciples was necessary for the purposes of the crucifixion and
resurrection, and that to question the wisdom of the Christian editors
... must strike a blow at the foundations of the church. That notion
opens up a very big question ... and oneof the best presentments of
the case is to be found in "The Standpoint of the Ideal," in
Frederick Lange's
History of Materialism. [The Eleventh Commandment,
p.237]
LATIMER, HUGH
Latimer is ... an authority who has been overlooked. Of him and his
work it is well said that from his sermons more can be learned
regarding the social and the political condition of the period than
perhaps from any other source. ["The Conspiracy Against the
English Peasantry,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.93]
LAW / FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE, TO BE JUST
The most important economic law is that against land encroachment,
laying field to field, and reducing the dispossessed to slave
conditions. "Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour's landmark."
This is the fundamental law, which establishes firmly man's
relationship to God, and the violation of this ordinance was always
the cause of disasters which fell upon Israel, the woe of the tribes,
and the sin which stirred the prophets to utter their deepest
condemnations, whether the landmarks were removed by Jew or Gentile. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.14]
LAW / MOSAIC FOUNDATIONS OF
All legislation was decreed before all the people, and the acceptance
of the laws was unanimous. Moses took the book of the covenant and
read in the audience of the peole, and they said: "All that the
Lord hath said will we do and be obedient." [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.7]
The justice laid down by Moses had become so confounded with positive
law and priestly regulations that it ceased to have any value, and it
is obvious that the priests and the kings no longer feared the
command: "Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour's landmark." [The
Eleventh Commandment, p.193]
If the restoration of the old law, which the prophets demand, is
enough to cure the ills of the people, why is a "new"
covenant necessary? If a return to the laws of the old covenant will
bind the Hebrews to the God of Moses, why is it necessary to introduce
a Messiah? This question is of importance here, because there hangs on
it the greater question of what Jesus meant when he said: "I come
not to destroy thelaw, but to fulfill it." Theologians cannot
have it both ways; either the old law of redemption was sufficient or
not sufficient. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.194]
LAW / NATURAL / RICHARD HOOKER ON
[Richard Hooker] states the case for natural law, and claimed for
human reason the province of determining the laws of divine order. But
the result of his labours,
Ecclesiastical Polity, made little or no impression on
Protestant England of his time. Probably he was thought to be medieval
and not progressive. If ever there was a case of a man ignored by his
contemporaries because he restated the broad principles underlying
government in any shape or form or at any time, it was his. [The
Eleventh Commandment, p.95]
Hooker knew ... that the prime difficulty of making any positive
advance in knowledge of the evils which afflict society lies in false
definition of terms. He says" "The mixture of those things
by speech which are by nature divided is the mother of all error."
[The Eleventh Commandment, p.96]
LAW / RELIGIOUS FOUNDATIONS OF, TO BE JUST
Before occupying the promised land all must know the conditions of
re-inheritance. The law and testimony were the foundation-stones of
settlement; no reconstruction of an enduring nature was possible
without them. ...There was to be no tribute, no debt through usury and
spoliation, and no slavery. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.4]
LAW / NATURAL
The law of liberty of production is perhaps the oldest of fundamental
laws. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.44]
Most of those who object to natural rights and natural law never seem
to come to grips with the essentials of the matter. Nearly all the
opponents are satisfied by rejecting them with a flat denial. [Man
at The Crossroads, p.123]
LAW / UNJUST
Taking what does not belong to one is a crime, no matter whether
there is a tax law to protect the collector or not. [
Man at The Crossroads, p.223]
How decent folk can worship God and support laws which deny his
bounty and his trust in his creatures, is one of the preposterous
conundrums posited by civilization. [The Eleventh Commandment,
p.98]
LAWS / OF THE COVENANT
The great cry of God's prophets for justice rises like the roar of a
mighty storm and fills the skies with forbidding thunder. Execute
justice! Do this and all will be well. If you do not this, desolation
will fall upon you. ...To the labourer the fruit of his toil. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.27]
The old covenant read distinctly to all the people would certainly
help the nobles to lay all doubts as to the enormity of their
iniquities. The third curse, read with sense and understanding, would
powerfully affect those who had despoiled the people by removing the
landmarks. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.33]
LAWYERS
lawyers as a class have never mastered the rudiments of precise
speech and clear writing. The reason for this is twofold: the first
is, modern legalistic expression is a hindrance to clear thinking; the
second is, that practicing lawyers have never been known to waste much
time on the study of the fundamentals of law. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.108]
The appalling ignorance of history, revealed in the writings of young
men who have come from the law schools of the United States in the
past fifteen years or twenty years is equaled only by the ignorance of
economics on the part of our modern sociologists. [Man At The
Crossroads, p.114]
The intellectual difference between the lawyers who lived in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the lawyers of classical times
seems to be that the former were merely legalists without historical
knowledge, and the latter were jurists who recognized the fundamental
difference between natural rights and law. [Man at The Crossroads,
p.124]
LIBERALISM / SHORTCOMINGS OF
The great trouble which afflicted liberalism in all countries for two
decades before the war was a peculiar kind of sentimentality
engendered by loose thinking; and this book,
Property, Its Duties and Rights, ... is about the best example
the student can find of this loose thinking. The Eleventh
Commandment, pp. 169-170]
LIBERTY / MEANING OF
It may be that the day is coming when we shall know what the word
liberty really means, and it is possible that if we do get a clear
definition of the term liberty, we shall have it clearly understood
what is property and what is not property. [
Man at The Crossroads, p.68]
LOCKE, JOHN / ON FIXED NATURE OF PRINCIPLES
That principles do not alter, no matter how complex a civilization
may become, nor, indeed, how privilege may overgrow all vestige of
right, is clearly shown by Locke. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.]
LOCKE, JOHN / ON LAND OWNERSHIP
What though he bungled the matter of occupation and ownership of
land, he made no mistake in his statement of natural rights, and his
decision, that the right of property springs from man's right to
himself, stands. He saw clearly that man must use the earth or die,
that the Creator provided for his needs. [
The Eleventh Commandment, pp. 98-99]
MacLEOD, HENRY / ON THE PHYSIOCRATIC PRINCIPLES
It was Henry Macleod, the Scottish economist, ...who, in his
Elements of Political Economy, gave the clearest rendering of
the physiocratic theory of natural rights. [The Eleventh
Commandment, p.151]
MacNEIL, NEIL
Neil MacNeil, in his excellent work,
An American Peace, informs us: "One year after our entry
into the war more than 1000 organizations in the United States were
planning for thepost-war world." ...for those who think that
blueprint organizations can deal with the political difficulties
arising from war I would advise reading Mr. MacNeil's profound study,
which deals with the essentials of peace as no other work has
attempted. It is the only one I have seen of all those produced during
the strife that treats understandingly of the economic basis of
freedom. ["The Silence of the Opposition," Modern Man
and the Liberal Arts, p.221]
MARX, KARL / ON LANDLESSNESS
Because [colonists to Australia] landed on a shore where landlords
were unknown,
they had only to step ashore to have all their
natural rights restored. Is is any wonder that Marx was forced to the
conclusion that "the expropriation of the mass of the people from
the soil forms the basis of the capitalist mode of production." [
Man at The Crossroads, p.132]
MARRIAGE
All my shackles were of my own making. It is not given to us to
foretell the consequences of our acts. Two people may unite, with
every hope of a happy future, and little dream of the impediments that
will arise in the days to come. There are always insistent obligations
to be considered, but in the fervor of the union they are not
envisioned by the mind. [
My Life in Two Worlds, p.190]
Marriage leads so frequently to a blind alley, a cul-de-sac, that few
would seek it, if it were possible to look into the future. The ties
of one or the other may create conditions that will endanger the
intimacy and loyalty of both. [My Life in Two Worlds, p.192]
MACAULAY, THOMAS
Historians from the time of Hume and Smollett, down to the period
which ended with Macaulay, wrote of an England that concerned
comparatively few people. The great mass of the inhabitants received
scarcely any notice. ...What better proof of this charge is at hand
than Macaulay's description of England? He says:
... a fourth part of
England has been, in the course of a little more than a century,
turned from a wild into a garden.
This statement ignores every fact that bears upon the effect and
consequences of enclosure. It produces an utterly false impression of
the economic condition of the country, and there can be no excuse for
his failure to deal with problems so momentous as expropriation of the
peasantry and depopulation of the villages. His history was written
about the middle of the last century, and he could then have obtained
fairly full knowledge of the subject, if he had desired to use it. ["The
Conspiracy Against the English Peasantry," Modern Man and the
Liberal Arts, pp.106-107]
MAINE, HENRY
The findings of Sir Henry Maine ... give us a fairly clear idea that
before the days of conquest and exploitation, communities lived in
political and industrial peace and tilled the earth. Hence, the reason
for establishing conditions of economic justice upon which early
societies existed before the conqueror imposed his system of political
and wage slavery. ["Toynbee's Study of History,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.284]
MASS MEDIA
...I have reached the conclusion that the radio and the
knowledge-in-a-nutshell publications have destroyed the desire of the
inquiring mind for reasoned argument concerning the important matters
that affect the everyday life of individuals. It is all too easy now
to get bits of information on almost any subject, and this goes a long
way toward explaining why the sciolist succeeds so well in impressing
our people with his sketchy erudition. ["The Silence of the
Opposition,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.197]
The day is gone when men and women would spend hours upon such
questions as foreign policy, the condition of labor, taxation, and
trade development or depression. When the mind was not abused by the
domestic telephone, the radio, and the snippet press, people had
leisure to reflect upon the concerns that affected them as citizens
and taxpayers. ["The Silence of the Opposition," Modern
Man and the Liberal Arts, p.199]
MOSES / AS ECONOMIST
Moses was more than a great law-giver; he was an all-seeing economist
whose system still inheres in the fairest constitutions down to this
day, no matter how overgrown they be by injustice, folly, and greed.
Somewhere -- sometimes dormant, sometimes forgotten -- the principles
of his system are discovered in the early customs of a people;
sometimes in charters, never really abrograted. [
The Eleventh Commandment, pp. 12-13]
...he knew the danger of borrowing, how the system of mortgage,
unchecked, tends to lay the borrower under the burdens approximating
bondage. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.13]
MOSES / ON SLAVERY
Moses knew what slavery was. In his system it was to have no part.
After four hundred years of bondage in Egypt it was to be avoided at
the cost of the severest penalties; a thing abhorred, a thing
accursed. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.163]
MOSES / TREATMENT OF IN THE BIBLE
Disentangling the main story of Moses and the Israelits from the
first five books of the Bible is not a simple task. No serious attempt
has been made to present the story of Moses stripped of all priestly
accretions, mostly of a very late period, which clog and cloak the
real object and purpose in leaving Egypt for Canaan. The priests after
Ezra almost succeeded in removing the original Moses from the record.
[
The Eleventh Commandment, p.8]
There is little to show Moses was a ritualist. The decalogue itself
requires no priest to interpret it. Indeed, it is quite clearly shown
that the duties of the early priests were concerned with religious,
social, and hygienic observances only, and that the fundamental
conditions of the settlement, save that of tithe, escpaed their
notice. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.9]
ONE-WORLD PROPONENTS
... the "one-worlders" who never yet have been able to
govern a large town as a decent, habitable place imagine they are
endowed with a genius for running the globe as a going concern for
democracy on a level that no medieval saint thought possible for the
circumscribed plot in which he had, day in an day out, to combat sin,
succor the distressed, feed the hungry, and educate the ignorant. ["Political
Movements,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.243]
OPPENHEIMER, FRANZ
"It is refreshing in a book which pretends to inform us as to
the origin and the nature of the State, to find a writer wedding a
theory of economics to a philosophy of history. The union, however, in
Oppenheimer's case did not bring forth a perfect offspring.
I
know of no work in short compass that treats the development of the
State historically with a grasp of data so thorough, and with a force
so clear and arresting. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.51]
OPPENHEIMER, FRANZ / SHORTCOMINGS ON POLITICAL
ECONOMY
Not much fault can be found with the historical material from the
primitive to the feudal development given in
The State; generally it is sound. ...It is when Oppenheimer
reaches the constitutional state, that he stumbles into an economic
morass. As a sociologist, in the first part, he is interesting; in the
latter, as an economist, he is obscure. [The Eleventh Commandment,
p.131]
This floundering in the Marxian morass is not quite the thing for a
man of Oppenheimer's reputation. More is expected of a Privat-Dozent
of Political Sciences in the University of Berlin. ...But the colossal
error in his economics lies in his misunderstanding of the nature of
rent. To him rent seems to be merely an agricultural matter. He makes
no distinction between farm and land, between garden and land; all is
lumped together in one parcel ocvered by the undefined term "ground
rent." ...The great landed estates of cities concern him not at
all. Moreover, he ignores the rent of mines, quarries, ore fields, oil
fields, etc. [The Eleventh Commandment, pp. 134-135]
OPPENHEIMER, FRANZ / ON LAND SCARCITY
"Since I have shown that, even, at the present time, all the
ground is not occupied economically, this must mean that it has been
pre-empted politically. Since land could not have acquired 'natural
scarcity,' the scarcity must have been legal. This means that the land
has been pre-empted by a ruling class against its subject class and
settlement prevented. Therefore, the state as a class state can have
originated in no other way than through conquest and subjugation."
[
The Eleventh Commandment, p.129]
OPPENHEIMER, FRANZ / ON EXPLOITATION
"At first," says Oppenheimer, "its method is by
exacting a ground rent so long as there exists no trade activity the
products of which can be appropriated. Its form in every case is that
of dominion, whereby exploitation is regarded as 'justice,' maintained
as a 'constitution,' insisted on strictly, and in case of need
enforced with cruelty." ...He calls the ownership of large
estates "the first creation and the last stronghold of the
political means." [
The Eleventh Commandment, pp. 130-131]
OUTHWAITE, ROBERT LEONARD
When I became acquainted with Robert Leonard Outhwaite, who fought
Joseph Chamberlain in West Birmingham in the General Election in 1906,
I found a man who was fully qualified to assist me in looking deeply
into the problem of how Fabianism (or Socialism) would affect a
revival of Liberalism. Outhwaite had just returned from South Africa,
after the Boer War, and he had brought with him an abundance of
literary by-products of Max Hirsch. He and Hirsch had worked together
in Australia. ["The Decay of Liberalism,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.157]
... Outhwaite and I came to the conclusion that Marx, when he set to
work on Das Kapital, did not know his subject. He certainly
knew what was wrong, but he did not have the faintest conception of
why it was wrong until he reached the chapter on "The Modern
Theory of Colonization." Even then -- after 841 pages -- he did
not realize that his first findings were false and that the early
chapters were only worth burning. When he discovered that "the
expropriation of the mass of the people from the soil forms the basis
of the capitalist mode of proudciton," he destroyed at a blow the
fallacious theories with which he began his work. Moreover, Marx
learned as he proceeded with his task, and in the third volume there
are many references to the land question and the necessity for taking
what he calls ground rent. ["The Decay of Liberalism," Modern
Man and the Liberal Arts, p.158]
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