Citizenship Rights
Edward J. Dodson
[Reprinted from
Land & Liberty, November-December, 1988]
In the United States a large number of people do not enjoy rights of
citizenship, because the laws infringe true political liberty and
eliminate the potential for widespread economic well being.
Constitutional and legislative law suppresses the most fundamental
birthright we have as human beings, that of equal access to nature.[1]
This has been accomplished by force and fraud, in total disregard for
moral constraints.
Claims to exclusive ownership of nature cannot be justified when we
as individuals are beneficiaries of a bounty we had no part in
producing. Even the value-free analyses of the economist recognizes
that nature has a zero production cost, its economic price having
nothing to do with the expenditure of human labour. And yet. the law
sustains claims to nature, in effect allowing title holders to extract
wealth from others in return for access.[2]
Political power thus possessed translates into economic power, and
through some convoluted logic, titles to nature are grouped with the
fruits of productive labour as "private property". The end
result is a society in which citizenship based on equality of
opportunity is impossible and the creation of a large, impoverished
class of people is inevitable.
France in the 18th century, Ireland in the 19th and Russia in the
20th provide the historical experiences of upheaval against landed
aristocracies. Marx himself finally recognized that landed monopoly
power was at the root of monopoly capital; and, as one should expect.
it was the landless peasantry of Russia -- and not the worker
proletariat -- who brought Marxist-Leninism to that society.
Only when denied access to nature did the landless resort to
labouring, if they could, for money wages -- a narrowing of options
that increased their vulnerability to the peaks and troughs of the new
plague, "business cycles," as well as the oppression of "robber
baron" greed.
Framing this issue in terms modern Americans can appreciate has been
made very difficult because the concentrated control of nature has
been fused with a similar degree of control over industry and finance.
Despite this fact, the majority of Americans continue to believe there
is plenty of opportunity for almost anyone to rise to the top. Those
who have benefited do not understand what is, at bottom, the cause of
their advantage.
The wealthy, even those who have struggled from poverty to get there,
quickly forget their past and join those who herald the status quo. In
fighting off attempts at reform. they have used wealth to gain
political power and, when their interests are threatened, rally the
population to support anti-democratic and anti-republican policies in
both the domestic and international arenas.
Alongside "nationalism" we have as a consequence
experienced nativism, racisim knee-jerk anti-communism,
and, currently, protectionism. For both the privileged and
the politically powerful, the idea that the earth is the birthright of
all mankind is an extremely dangerous one. If accepted, one must also
conclude that the sovereign state itself has no moral basis for
legitimacy.
In terms related to immigration policy, for example, justice requires
that the very concept of immigration must be discarded. All
territorial movements by people must be recognized as mere migrations.
Thus, any restrictions imposed (other than for health or safety
reasons) infringe upon the fundamental right of access to nature.
Political citizenship under such circumstances is an empty promise.
And compared to the injustice of denying each his birthright, all
other obstacles to citizenship pale into insignificance.
Our economies have evolved through the use of force to
institutionalize monopolistic and morally-bankrupt claims to the
earth's natural bounty. A good deal of political theory in support of
this arrangement has been little more than a rationalization of
privilege.
Justice requires that an equitable system be implemented to share out
the value of nature.
Sovereign states must end privilege and protect the right of all
people to freely interact. This would be achieved by using the
competitive bidding processes of the market to determine which
individuals are granted access. Governments would act as agents to
collect the revenue for deposit into a global fund, earmarked for
periodic, equal distribution to all.[3]
The present system penalises people for being born to the wrong
parents in the wrong places. This raises the parallel issue of our
responsibilities toward one another in society, and in the larger
community of mankind.
Here again, justice must be the objective. My actions must not
infringe upon the liberty of others. Taking legitimately acquired
property from others obviously exceeds the moral bounds of my liberty.
And yet this moral prohibition is inconsistently reinforced by our
laws.
Liberalism has, in fact. taken us beyond the primary role of
government to prevent criminal infringements on liberty; the Liberal
agenda has included a wide range of policy initiatives that
specifically create privilege by licensing what can be done and by
whom.
It should be self-evident that such licenses are inherently
monopolistic; and, as day follows night, command prices in the market
place because of their monopolistic character. In the same fashion,
titles to nature are inherently monopolistic and titleholders benefit
in the same way. No individual can create these economic values;
aggregate needs generate an economic price in licenses just as they do
for nature.
We see this most clearly when artificial limits are pieced on the
number of licenses issueel (as for taxi medallions or liquor stores),
so that those who have political influence or, more rarely, get there
first, secure a tremendous advantage in the marketplace -- an
advantage the quality of their labour did nothing to create. If
justice is to be served, then, my responsibility to others in society
must be not to infringe upon their liberty and to compensate them for
any privileges or licenses by which I benefit.
Extending these principles of citizenship to the family requires a
gentle hand on the pert of government, for the family is a less
resilient microcosm of larger social, political and economic units.
The state must take a very cautious approach in its intrusion on
family life or risk further damaging a survival-directed equilibrium
that injustice has already nearly destroyed.
The appropriate level of government responsibility is most difficult
to establish where the interests of children (and other "incompetents")
are involved. I would suggest that those unable to provide for
themselves through no fault of their own must receive greater
protection under law than is necessary for normal, healthy adults.
Acknowledging the need fore "normal" degree of disciplining
of children by parents, for example, adults (and to a somewhat lesser
extent, incompetents) must be held accountable for physical and mental
abuse of others. In saying this, I also suggest that our experience
demonstrates that centrally-planned and administered programs infringe
on liberty.
A reasoned response is to establish a needs-based voucher system
(funded by revenues from the above-mentioned "global fund"
but carried out to the greatest extent possible by private agencies).
In my view, this would be the most efficient and most equitable method
of providing societal support to people in need.
We are also struggling to deal with the problem of children having
children. There has been almost no attempt made to reconcile teenage
pregnancies with the moral, legal and financial responsibilities
logically attached to fathering a child.
We are in the midst of a human tragedy. not only for the individuals
directly involved but because our humanness is at risk It has been our
concern with the future, our attention to planning and contemplation
of that which is beyond our grasp that contributed most to human
progress.
Not only are fewer cultural and intellectual skills being passed to
the newest generation, the sense of responsibility people have had
toward one another through family association and the community is
disappearing. The social costs associated with these and other
financially-dictated changes in family life have not been fully
assessed.
I see a strong connection between the rising incidences of crime,
drug abuse, alcoholism, and violence and the concurrent breakdown of
family and community.
In terms of what can be done, we must concentrate on the structural
injustice I have identified. The societally-produced value of nature
must be collected and distributed in equal shares to each citizen
(directly to competents, and in trust for incompetents).
This would provide considerable additional family income to help
parents devote more time to the nurturing of family and participate in
community, while eliminating the advantages long enjoyed by the
privileged who have by their control over nature -- stolen the heart
and soul of citizenship from most people.
REFERENCES
[1] A May 1983 report by Town &
Country (p.176) indicates: "About 3 percent of the
population, or 7 to 8 million people, own 55 percent of the total
land, and a full 95 percent of the 1.3 billion acres of privately
owned land in this country. Our reaction to similar statistics in
third world societies is to call for land reform, while most of us are
unable to see any connection between the concentrated control over
nature and the large numbers of unemployed in the
industrially-advanced countries.
[2] the cost of acquisition of territory has come with a tremendous
cost in human lives and the destruction of produced property. History
is a story of land grabbing through three primary means - force, fraud
and theft. By what right did the monarchies of Spain, France and
England issue grants of land occupied for thousands of years by
another race of people? The aboriginal tribes for their part, had no
concept of selling titles in the earth; theirs was a collective (if
exclusive) form of control at lest with equal access provided to all
tribal members.
[3] The right of all people to share in the bounty of the earth is
the basis for the so-called "Law of the Sea" developed to
harvest the sea bottoms. The United States has thus far refused to
sign the treaty because private interests are opposed to passing
leasing fees on to the United Nations (which would then be distributed
internationally on the basis of population, according to one section
of the treaty).
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