Erosion of Freedom

Richard Giles

[Reprinted from Good Government, April, 1983]

THE ONLY WAY TO FREEDOM

'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ...'

This is the sound of liberty. Did you recognise it amid the promises of the recent election? Where have you heard it in Australia? It is the purpose of this short article to place the disappearance of any lively appreciation of liberty in a Georgist perspective.

Complex signs on street corners warn of $1000 fines for trucks which use the street -- $2000 for a second offence; people at airports, hospitals, even libraries and in government offices wear identification badges and nameplates; at the entrance to supermarkets shopping bags are searched; and our police more and more take on the garb and attitudes of a paramilitary force. What is interesting is that no one cares.

How did this state of affairs come about? Let me briefly try to explain. At a certain stage in history, let us say about 1750, had appeared in England a new class which Karl Marx called the proletariat. This class had taken a long time to be sufficiently numerous and sufficiently without any status to be called a proletariat -- a dependent, land-less, and wage-earning class. (Some still clung to the remnants of independence as handloom-weavers until finally 'proletarianised' in the 1840s.) Quite simply this class had no status because it had no land.

FREEDOM AND THE PROLETARIAT

What effect did the existence of this large class have on the traditions of civil freedom which had been firmly established during the seventeenth century? First, let us identify these freedoms. Briefly, they include personal freedom (of thought, opinion, and movement), freedom from arrest except upon reasonable cause allowed by law, freedom from oppression after arrest, freedom to hold property, and freedom to enter into contracts. In all cases these freedoms were defended by common law. Yet, despite their brilliance and despite their uniqueness, these freedoms included a false freedom which in time has eroded all the others. This is the freedom to hold land as 'property'. Where only the few own land the free exercise of this 'right' is the right to deny the means of life itself. And, of course, contracts formed when one side has the right to deny the means of life to the other are nonsense. Such contracts only mean exploitation. To put this in another way, the English labourer paradoxically lived in the freest country on earth but he lacked the right to life and to a living wage.

This unfortunate inclusion in the common law of the right to 'property' soon brought confusion and the erosion of freedom. The proletariat brought into existence parties which told them: 'Your condition is clearly beyond you to do anything about; we shall legislate away your condition'. And by multiplying statutes and commissions they have been doing so ever since. Only the basic condition never appears to go away. What does go away is freedom. Since these parties were pursuing the most basic freedom of all, the right to life, it followed that no other right ought to be allowed to interfere with the policies they adopted. The rights of property and contract were particularly vulnerable (to some they only existed for the privileged); but other rights have become vulnerable too.

STATE VERSUS INDIVIDUAL

Let us take one simple example of an Act whose praiseworthy purpose is to guarantee a living wage: the Egg Stabilisation Act of 1971-- the ancestor of an Act first passed in the Depression. This Act confers on the Egg Board ownership of most eggs in New South Wales; that is, they are confiscated from the poultry farmers in a legal sense. This Act also confers on inspectors such rights as powers of entry and inspection, powers of search and confiscation of records, powers to overcome any obstruction by force (and fines). The overall policy behind this Act is to guarantee a livelihood to poultry farmers (and for this reason many poultry farmers have no objection to it) but in pursuing this. policy the government has been compelled to give its officers powers which make a mockery of freedom. But of course the policy is good and must be made to work.

What marks off this Act, as well as so many others for the protection of the proletariat, is that the sides to the conflicts which occur are not individuals but the individual on the one side and the State on the other -- a rather intimidating prospect. In any area when freedom of contract is replaced by government regulation what you have in that area is not any longer two individuals opposed to each other, for example, landlord and tenant, but an individual and the State, for example, the landlord and the Fair Rents Board. There is some cause for apprehension here. Careful reading of many Acts will show that the State (in the guise of tribunals and boards) has not placed upon itself the same duties as it imposes upon individuals in similar circumstances. For instance, if the State is the landlord or developer it does not place upon itself the same duties as are placed by common law upon private landlords and private developers. How responsible does the State make itself for mistakes, incompetence, and delays? Does it make itself as vulnerable to damages as it does a private individual? When such bodies as tribunals carry out policies which it is thought may be resisted will they allow these policies to be obstructed by allowing the same rights to be placed in the hands of defendants as the defendant would normally have against another private citizen? Say for example that it is thought that it would be a good thing if aborigines could own land of special significance to them, and the power to acquire such land is vested in a Board. Also, assume that this Board comes into conflict with an owner of such land, and that a tribunal is then given the task of settling the dispute. Will the Act which governs proceedings allow that owner the same rights to negotiate or refuse a sale as ordinary landowners possess in relation to ordinary buyers? If they did this would frustrate what is perceived to be the public good. Again, the policy is good and must be allowed to work.

Many now believe that there is nothing so necessary for the public good than that tax evasion be ended. It is true that the Companies (Unpaid Taxes) Assessment Act, 1982, is a retrospective tax. As such it denies a fundamental freedom: freedom from arrest except when guilty of breaking some law that existed at the time of the offence. Those who participated, knowing or unknowingly, in 'bottom of the harbour' schemes were acting within the law. But, the policy is good and not even the 'rule of law' ought to be allowed to stand in the way of catching up with the tax evader. In any case the only ones to suffer are the rich and powerful.

We are now a long way from the Declaration of Independence. We now have the permiss of the police state. This premiss is that nothing ought to be allowed to stand in the way of the public will. And of course it will be the leader who will say what that public will is. It is interesting that in the case of the retrospective tax bill that those who opposed it were merely seen to protect the rich and powerful from 'justice'.

HOW TO RESTORE FREEDOM

Among the freedoms of which Englishmen were so justly proud, and which have been passed on to Australia, was a false freedom. This was the freedom to own land in fee simple, without obligations. It was this 'freedom' which created the proletariat. It is this 'freedom' which will destroy all the others. The simple reason for this is that this so-called right to 'property' denies the most basic of rights: the right to life. In conjunction with freedom of contract it destroys the next most basic right: the right to the fruits of one's labour. When it becomes public policy to restore these two basic freedoms in the wrong way, by using every means but the right one, such public policy destroys our inherited freedom.

This is what is happening now. If we valued freedom we would recoil from these actions, and we would look for the right public policy: equal land riqhts. This would be a declaration of independence indeed.