Why Henry George Charged Herbert Spencer
With Abandoning Moral Principles
Dan Sullivan
[Reprinted from a Land-Theory online
discussion, November 2000]
In Social Statics (1851) Herbert Spencer made the case,
purely from libertarian principles, that each person has an
inalienable right of access to the earth. Later on, he fell into
confusion and referred to this as a joint right.
Henry George, in A Perplexed Philosopher (1892), praised
Spencer's initial arguments, but criticized his confusion between
joint rights and individual rights. He makes it clear that Georgism is
based entirely on individual rights, not joint rights. Here is
George's reply, in A Perplexed Philosopher, chapter 4, "Mr.
Spencer's Confusion As to Rights":
The fact is, that without
noticing the change, Mr. Spencer has dropped the idea of equal
rights to land, and taken up in its stead a different idea -- that
of joint rights to land. That there is a difference may be seen at
once. For joint rights may be and often are unequal rights.
The matter is an important one, as it is the source of a great deal
of popular confusion. Let me, therefore, explain it fully.
When men have equal rights to a thing, as for instance, to the
rooms and appurtenances of a club of which they are members, each
has a right to use all or any part of the thing that no other one of
them is using. It is only where there is use or some indication of
use by one of the others that even politeness dictates such a phrase
as, "Allow me!" or "If you please."
But where all men have joint rights to a thing, as for instance, a
sum of money held to their joint credit, then the consent of all the
others is required for the use of the thing or any part of it, by
any one of them.
Now, the rights of men to the use of land are not joint rights:
they are equal rights.
Were there only one man on the earth, he would have a right to use
the whole earth or any part of it.
When there is more than one man on earth, the right to the use of
land that any one of them would have, were he alone, is not
abrogated: it is only limited. The right of each to the use of land
is still a direct, original right, which he holds of himself, and
not by the gift or consent of the others; but it has become limited
by the similar rights of the others, and is therefore an equal
right. His right to use the earth still continues; but it has
become, by reason of this limitation, not an absolute right to use
any part of the earth, but (1) an absolute right to use any part of
the earth that as to which he not conflict with the equal rights of
others (i.e., which no one else wants to use at the same time), and
(2) a coequal right to the use of any part of the earth which he and
others may want to use at the same time.
It is, thus, only where two or more men want to use the same land
at the same time that equal rights to the use of land come in
conflict, and the adjustment of society becomes necessary.
If we keep the idea of equal rights in mind -- the idea, namely,
that the rights are the first thing, and the equality merely their
limitation -- we shall have no difficulty. It is through forgetting
this that Mr. Spencer has been led into confusion.
In Chapter IX., "The Right to the Use of the Earth," he
correctly apprehends and states the right to the use of land as an
equal right. He says:
Each of them is free to use the
earth for the satisfaction of his wants,
Provided he allows others the same liberty.
Here, in the first clause, is the primary right; in the second
clause, the proviso or limitation. But in the next chapter, "The
Right of Property," he has, seemingly without noticing it
himself, substituted for the idea of equal rights to land, the idea of
joint rights to land. He says (Section 1):
No amount of labor, bestowed by
an individual upon a part of the earth's surface, can nullify the
title of society to that part, ... no one can, by the mere act of
appropriating to himself any unclaimed animal or fruit, supersede
the joint claims of other men to it. It may be quite true that the
labor a man expends in catching or gathering, gives him a better
right to the thing caught than any *one* other man; but the question
at issue is, whether by labor so expended, he has mad his right to
the thing caught or gathered, greater than the pre-existing rights
of all other men put together. And unless he can prove he
has done this, his title to possession cannot be admitted as a
matter of right, but can be conceded only on the ground of
convenience.
Here the primary right -- the right by which "each of them is
free to use the earth to the satisfaction of his wants" -- has
been dropped out of sight, and the mere proviso has swelled into the
importance of the primary right, and has taken its place.
What Mr. Spencer here asserts, without noticing his change of
position, is not that the rights of men to the use of land are equal
rights, but that they are joint rights. And from this careless
shifting of ground, he is led, not only into hypercritical
questioning of Locke's derivation of the right of property, but into
the assumption that a man can have no right to the wild
berries he has gathered on an untrodden prairie, unless he can prove
the consent of all other men to his taking them. This *reductio ad
adsurdum* is a deduction from the idea of joint rights to land,
whereas the deduction from the equality of rights to land would be
that under such circumstances a man would have a right to take all
the berries he wanted, and that all other men together would
have no right to forbid him. Indeed, so great is Mr. Spencer's
confusion, and so utterly unable does he become to assume a clear
and indisputable right of property, that he has to cut the knot into
which he has tangled the subject, and finds no escape but in the
preposterous declaration that the dictates of ethics have no
application to, and do not exist in, any social state except that of
the highest civilization.
Locke was not in error. The right of property in the things produced
by labor -- and this is the only true right of property -- springs
directly from the right of the individual to himself, or as Locke
expresses it, from his "property in his own person." It is
as clear and has fully the same sanction of equity in any savage state
as in the most elaborate civilization. Labor can, of course, produce
nothing without land; but the right to the use of land is a primary
individual right, not springing from society, or depending on the
consent of society, either expressed or implied, but inhering in the
individual, and resulting from his presence in the world. Men must
have rights before they can have equal rights. Each man has a right to
use the world because he is here and wants to use the world. The
equality of this right is merely a limitation arising from the
presence of others with like rights. Society, in other words, does not
grant, and cannot equitably withhold from any individual, the right to
the use of land. That right exists before society and independently of
society, belonging at birth to each individual, and ceasing only with
his death. Society itself has no original right to the use of land.
What right it has with regard to the use of land is simply that which
is derived from and is necessary to the determination of the rights of
the individuals who compose it. That is to say, the function of
society with regard to the use of land only begins where individual
rights clash, and is to secure equality between these clashing rights
of individuals.
What Locke meant, or at least the expression that will give full and
practical form to his idea, is simply this: that the equal right to
life involves the equal right to the use of natural materials; that,
consequently, any one ahs a right to the use of such natural
opportunities as may not be wanted by anyone else; and that the result
of his labor, so expended, does of right become his individual
property against all the world. for, where one man wants to use a
natural opportunity that no one else want to use, he has a right
to do so, which springs from and is attested to by the fact of his
existence. This is an absolute, unlimited right, so long and so far as
no one else wants to use the same natural opportunity. Then, but not
till then, it becomes limited by the similar rights of others. Thus no
question of the right of any one to use any natural opportunity can
arise until more than one man wants to use the same opportunity. It is
only then that any question of this right, any need for the action of
society in the adjustment of equal rights to land, can come up.
Thus, instead of there being no right of property until society has
so far developed that all land has been properly appraised and rented
for terms of years, an absolute right of property in the things
produced by labor exists from the beginning -- is coeval with the
existence of man.
In the right of each man to himself, and his right to use the world,
lies the sure basis of the right of property. This Locke saw -- just
as the first man must have seen it. But Mr. Spencer, confused by a
careless substitution of terms, has lost his grasp on the right of
property and has never since recovered it.
Getting rid of the idea of joint rights we see that the task of
securing, in an advanced and complex civilization, the equal rights of
all to the use of land is much simpler and easier than Mr. Spencer and
the land nationalists suppose; that it is not necessary for society to
take land and rent it out. For so long as only one man wants to use a
natural opportunity it has no value; but as soon as two or more want
to use the same natural opportunity, value arises. Hence, any question
as to the adjustment of equal rights to the use of land occurs only as
to valuable land; that is to say, land that has a value irrespective
of the improvements in or on it. As to land that has no value, or, to
use the economic phrase, bears no rent, whoever may choose to use it
has not only an equitable title to all that his labor may produce from
it, but society cannot justly call on him for any payment for the use
of it. As to land that has a value, or, to use the economic phrase in
the economic meaning, bears rent, the principles of equal freedom
requires that only this value, or economic rent, be turned over to the
community. Hence the formal appropriation and renting out of land by
the community is not necessary: it is only necessary that the holder
of valuable land should pay to the community an equivalent of the
ground value, or economic rent; and this can be assured by the simple
means of collecting an assessment in the form of a tax on the value of
land, irrespective of improvements in or on it.
In this way all members of the community are placed on equal terms
with regard to the natural opportunities that offer greater advantages
than those of any one member of the community is free to use, and are
consequently sought by more than one of those having equal rights to
use of land. And, since the value of land arises from competition and
is constantly fixed by competition, the question of who shall use the
superior land desired by more than one is virtually decided by
competition, which settles clashing individual desires by determining
at once both who shall be accorded the use of the superior land, and
who will make the most productive use of it. In this way all,
including the user of the superior opportunity, obtain their equal
shares of the superiority, by the taking of its value for common uses;
while all the difficulties of state rental of land and of determining
and settling for the value of improvements are avoided. This is the
single-tax system.
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