Economic Justice and Religion
A Coming Cataclysmic Schism

Thomas E. McMillan

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, January-February 1939]

Justice is the one word in the English language which is in itself sufficient to connote all that is worthy and desirable in human relationships. In what I prefer to call the natural justice movement, the word freedom is often given an equal status with justice, but freedom is essentially a child of justice. Everywhere, despite unflagging energy and abiding loyalty to the ideal, justice appears to be fighting a losing battle. Why?

In New Zealand we have for over half a century had partial applications of natural justice, inasmuch as varying amounts of the natural social salary (commonly called "economic rent of land") have been publicly collected, and used for social services. Such partial applications have for a time shown good results, having forced into more intensive use large areas of land, both urban and rural. It cannot, however, be gainsaid that after a time the effect is to increase the number of persons who are seeking to gain by landlord parasitism: the hundreds of "small men" who had taken up the land thus released by the few large landlords soon wanted to speculate with the still increasing social values of the environment, increases due to the closer settlement, in both town and country, and thus where formerly the enemies of justice could be numbered in hundreds, their numbers increased by thousands! The partial measures acted like the sowing of dragon's teeth, by a modern political Cadmus, which grew up into fierce parasites maintaining the old system from which men formerly suffered.

Once sufficient justice was meted out to take them off the labor market and put them on the land, they greedily and selfishly turned out the Liberal government under which the closer settlement was effected, and put in a reactionary party that had promised and kept its promise to allow them to speculate with the added social values. Had the full annual value been annually collected by the State, there would then have been no speculative value to gamble with, but there is no known case in human history where any major reform of a century's old evil has been swept away all at once, unless by bloodshed, and there is no more likelihood now of any overnight full reform. In these circumstances, what must be done to ensure that the movement will be pushed on to complete fulfillment, instead of taking one step forward and two backward?

SPIRITUAL AND MATERIAL

Thorold Rogers, in his Economic Interpretation of History, states that the drive, the moral fervor that imbued the armies of Oliver Cromwell with the invincible spirit of victory, was due to the teachings of the Lollards of the 14th century. These Wicliff "poor priests" went about the country teaching the people not only their particular religious views, but also instructing them as to their natural rights in the soil. It was this force, coming down through the centuries, that provided the dynamic quality of the men and women who fought for religious and political freedom in the 16th century. There were men who saw that the fundamental basis of freedom, the equal rights in the soil, must be secured if the masses of the people were to be emancipated from economic slavery, and this was the aim of the Digger movement and of the Levellers. But what happened there? Exactly the same thing as happened in New Zealand three centuries later: a partial improvement in conditions took all the fine fervor out of social reform, the old religious drive having spent itself, leaving reform based mostly on material welfare. This point is well brought out in a paragraph in "1649. A Novel of a Year," by Jack Lindsay. Some restrictions lifted off trade, and other secondary measures eased the general lot somewhat, and the reform that men like Winstanley and John Lilburne were after petered out. To the present writer's mind, only a great spiritual revival can provide the driving force necessary to imbue men and women with the enduring, self-sacrificing moral fervor without which justice must everywhere become submerged in a tide of collectivist slavery, and freedom trampled in the dust.

AN EFFECTIVE APPEAL

Thorold Rogers also tells us how, in the fight for justice and freedom, the hierarchies of the churches worked hand in glove with the plutocratic and parasitic exploiters, while the common clergy battled for the "common people," for God's justice to the masses. It will be so again, and the religious world is in for the greatest schism of all time. It must come. Those who are not for God's justice are against it. Let them choose their respective grounds. I will conclude with a letter from my pen which appeared in the October, 1938, issue of The New Age, organ of The New Church (Swedenborgian) Australian section. ( I do not happen to belong to this Church, as I am just plain kitchen garden Presbyterian, which allows enough scope for my rights of private judgment.) The facts are that the Editor of The New Age, Rev. Richard H. Teed, had an article in the August issue, the tenor of which may be gleaned from the following opening sentences: "Every morning when one opens one's newspaper nowadays one does so in a certain spirit of trepidation, lest one should find some frightful horror awaiting one there." The horror he had in mind was an outbreak of war between the leading nations. It seemed to me that the author was really sincere, and not merely indulging in the usual clerical, pseudo-religious window-dressing, so I sent him the following letter, which he published in full. I may add that one of the members of his church (Mr. A. H. Noar) and others had some two years ago got a motion in favor of restoration of the people's rights in the land value passed at a conference, but the minister himself had not, as far as I could gather, committed himself to the policy until the November issue of 1938, the one following the October number with the subjoined letter in:

DIVINE GOVERNMENT VERSUS FACTITIOUS FAILURES

To the Editor:

Dear Sir, Powerful in their appeal to all practical idealists to be up and doing, your Notes in the August issue of The New Age trenchantly observe that this age is already one of barbarism, each nation watching the other, looking for a chance to pounce! Why have we reached this pass?

You, Sir, touch upon various matters in the field of economics, a science which deals solely with the equitable distribution of wealth and not with its production. I suggest that a proper understanding of the economics of Scripture will provide us with all the keys to economic problems, and that the first thing to understand is the full implication of the first verse in the Bible. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." It follows from this that the earth is the Lord's, and not the property of any earthly landlords! The only true light of "ownership" is that the owner has produced the things said to be owned. In the economic sense, this covers all things bought under free conditions and honestly, provided that the seller had a clear and moral title to the thing sold. Well, as Necker reminded the French nobles, there were no deeds and parchments in heaven conveying to them, or to anyone else on earth, the Earth. Land cannot really be "owned," either individually or by the State. Ownership, then, resolves itself into this:

1. The individual rightly owns those things he has, under free and honest conditions, produced, either by making them himself, or fairly purchasing them from another who had a clear title to them. This is the true right of private property, and applies to labor products only, and not to the earth, the air, the sea, the sunlight, which are the common possession (not in "ownership") of "the children of men" of all of them, otherwise some must be economic slaves.
2. The social values of environment, which we misleadingly call "land values," naturally accrue, by laws of nature, irrespective of whether a given section of land in a progressing community is "owned" or not; or whether the said "owner" is asleep or awake, sane or insane. This is the fund which accrues, under God's laws, as society develops, and may fairly be said to be the divine provision for all necessary social expenditure in the social state above the jungle.
3. By the natural law of property, the Earth belongs to the Divine Producer thereof, and to none other. The Earth is the Lord's.

Now look at what happens because we do not abide by the divine economics. Britain and France parceled up Morocco (non-Spanish area) between them, keeping the Germans out by threats of force backed by warship movements. Italy was given Tripoli to keep her "sweet." This was the grievance the then Kaiser Wilhelm kept harping on, and is what he meant by the famous phrase, "A place in the sun." Baffled, he set to work to build up the German navy, and the final act was the World War. Not until the Natural Justice policy is adopted, bringing in free access to the raw materials of the globe, to the Earth, with no monopolies, national or international will the spectre of war recede. The Natural Justice policy consists of socializing the social value of environment ("land values," including the market economic rent of the raw material areas, such as for oil, coal, minerals) using that Natural Social Salary for all public revenue, and abolishing all taxation. "Tax gatherers" and "sinners" rightly appear in the Bible as synonymous terms. Matthew was a tax gatherer (falsely and willfully translated as "publican," to oblige King James when he had the Bible translated), and Matthew had to give up tax gathering before he could become a follower of the Christ: it was impossible for him to be both a tax gatherer and a Christian!

You mention "great landowners," and this is the real foundation of the matter, for international financiers would be helpless were Natural Justice adopted. Their money is valuable only because it is backed by the raw materials, the great deposits of oil, iron, ore, fertile land, and other natural resources that are fought for. Likewise, were that monopoly of the earth broken, bringing in with it world free trade, then there would be nothing left for which war would or could profitably be waged, and thus the armaments industry would fade out. (See "Chain the War God," by Victor A. Rule, D.D.)

You also mention the Transvaal, Ireland, India, Abyssinia, Japan, China. In every case the bedrock cause of the troubles was, and is, land rent monopoly, the denial of the fundamental truth in the first verse of the Bible. As the Rev. Conrad Noel says in his fine, scholarly recent work, "Life of Jesus," all the social ills of the early Hebrews were due to violation of the Deuteronomic laws against land values monopoly and usury, and the consequent oppression of the people by mortgaging and taxation. Unfortunately as Noel caustically observes what we now call Social Justice was of old called Holy Justice, but if we want to hear about Holy Justice, we must go, not where there are pulpits, but to secular platforms! Well, what are we going to do about it?

NATURAL GOVERNMENT

As one who has put in ten or more years of hard and enthusiastic work in behalf of social justice, holy justice, honest government, an equitable distribution of wealth, aiming to relieve man of the fierce, tigerish struggle for mere material sustenance, the conviction slowly dawned upon me that we shall never get this vision realized until we adopt the form of government fashioned for us by the Creator.

In the above heading the word "factitious" appears, and it was put there with thoughtful deliberation. Its definition (Universal English Dictionary) is: "Artificial, as contrasted with natural; sham, unreal, spurious." That is a good description of our forms of government in the world today, and while we have them it will be useless to adopt the suggestion in the article for the world's statesmen to "reason together," for such conference could only be like the last one: a modern Tower of Babel. Let us, in chastened mood, observe Nature's method of government, that is, the divine way.

We see, right throughout Nature, that organization is strictly according to occupational activities, all in groups. Thus we have shoals of different kinds of fish, various flights of birds, herds of cattle, swarms of bees, and so on. Human beings, when they are free to do so, also organize according to occupations: Farmers, commercials, clergy, journalists, carpenters, masons, doctors, lawyers, and all others organize in occupational groups, according to their interests in life. Under this system, the ablest individuals rise to the top, and thus each species has the greatest possible survival value in its leadership.

We must adopt this natural, God-ordained way for our national and international government. Each group, as above illustrated, should be able to send its delegates to Parliament, just as they now do to a national or international conference, and there legislate on all matters affecting them in common, purely sectional things being left severely to the internal group organizations. Even animals will act in common, one species warning the other of a common danger, but each retaining its group government intact. This divine method would abolish our present silly and suicidal party politics, and give us a democratic aristocracy; that is to say, a government composed of the best and ablest persons in all major walks of life. All women's organizations, once they reached the quota in numbers, would automatically be able to send their delegates to Parliament, with no need to face the stupid hurly-burly of an election. It would provide, in a much simpler and more satisfactory way, all the advantages claimed for such factitious systems as proportional representation and automatically provide for referenda, recall, elective executive, and other advantages.

We actually did adopt God's form of government when we first came out of the jungle into the clearing, but we have, in the complexity of progress, got right away from our natural social foundations. So we are back in the jungle. When we adopt the system God made for us, we shall have the master key to the solution of the social problems that now baffle and break the hearts of high-minded men and women. The Natural Laws are all simple, direct, infallible, unchangeable. By obeying them we shall come to the Kingdom on Earth, and by no other way. They are of the Kingdom. "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness" (that is, rightness, justice), "and all these things" (material well-being) "shall be added unto you."

Yours faithfully, Hohaia Street, Matamata, N. Z. T.E. McMlLLAN.