Land Not Property

Charles F. Hunt

[Reprinted from the Single Tax Review, 1915]

Do Single Taxers ignore a truth that would be useful? John Stuart Mill said:

"No belief that is contrary to truth can be really useful."

Neither can any truth be entirely useless. In Progress and Poverty a truth is ignored. Henry George, however, quotes this truth from Herbert Spencer on page 75 of A Perplexed Philosopher, without attempting to dispute it:

"In law every land owner is held to be a tenant of the crown -- that is, of the community."

Henry George condemned private property in land as worse than chattel slavery; and concluded: We must make land common Henry George condemned private property in land as worse than chattel slavery; and concluded: We must make land common property. According to his definition of property, land can be neither.

"The real basis of property is the natural law that gives the product to the producer." (Pol. Ec. p. 461.)

"That which a man make or produces is his own as against all the world." (p. 332.)

"There can be to the ownership of anything no rightful title which is not derived from the title of the producer. This excludes the possibility of any other right of ownership." (p. 333-4.)

"That which may be had without the toil and trouble of exertion has no value." (Pol. Ec. p. 246.)

"Land of itself has no value. Value arises only from human labor." (Pro. and Free Trade, p. 272.)

The above clearly excludes land from the category of property.

A possession subject to a yearly lien cannot be classed with the product held by the producer "as against the world."

"We already take some rent in taxation. We have only to make some changes in our modes of taxation to take it all." (P. & P., p. 403.)

"Some rent" proves the rent payer a tenant; more rent cannot prove him more or less than a tenant. Although Henry George held or assumed that present possessors are private owners even while paying small rent, he did not say, nor can anyone say, at what point in the increase in rent private ownership ceases and common ownership begins.

Perhaps if we tell the farmer the whole truth, that he is in reality a tenant of the State, he will consent to a reduction of his taxes -- paying an increase on his small land tax and doing away with his large tax on tools, buildings, stock, crops, etc.

At a later time Mr. George wrote:

"The value of land itself represents merely the value of the expectation that the State will continue to permit the holder to appropriate a value belonging to all." (Perplexed Philos., p. 223.)

This destroys the whole superstition of value and property in land. The Private Owner here becomes "Holder," whose only possession is the Right to Exploit Land, aided by the State. The title holder gets the right to exploit at a low rent, and sublets for all he can get. Land appears as opportunity only, not wealth nor property, but the source of these.