Declaration of Principles

Argentine Georgist Confederation

[Adopted at a convention held at the Assembly Hall of the Faculity of Economic Science, University of Buenos Aires, 25-27 May 1929]

1. All men are endowed by natural law with the right to the use of the earth and its natural resources, neither of which can in justice be made the subject of private ownership.

2. Social life and activities produce from the land a rent, which belongs integrally to the community and which constitutes its legitimate revenue for the maintenance of public services.

3. Only the product of labor, whether it be labor itself or capital, accumulated labor, can legitimately be private property. It must not be burdened by any fiscal tax. Free trade is, therefore, in international relationships the application of this principle.

4. Industries which are a public utility and by nature intrinsically a monopoly, must be socialized.

5. The political administrative methods and procedure which tend to fix the amount of the tax or contribution, the juridical position of the land as a consequence of the absorption of the rent, the amount of same, the evaluation and adjudication of the land to private individuals, the distribution of the rent amongst the various fiscal departments, the periodicity of rent determination, the transformation of the state mechanism and the methods of absorbing the rent, .... are questions already studied and determined by Georgists, but which, since they are matters of practical politics, must be considered at the opportune moment by those who are to carry out the Georgist reforms in a fiscal and social field.