How Papal Writings Worried HenryGeorge

David Redfearn

[Reprinted from Land & Liberty, July-August 1991]

1991 is a significant year in the history of the Roman Catholic church; for it is the centenary of the Papal Encyclical Rerum Novarum, which marks the beginning of the Church's concern, charity aside, with social problems and possible solutions to them.

It is also the centenary of Henry George's The Condition Of Labour: An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII, which is a detailed commentary on the Encyclical and an appeal to the Church to recognise the correspondence between true economics and true religion.

This was soon translated into Italian and passed to the Vatican as a sumptuous leather-bound special edition, which, it is to be hoped, is still to be found in the Vatican Library; for more recent evidence of catholic thought suggests that very little notice has been taken of it hitherto.

We are indebted for an account of this to John Jukes, a Franciscan Friar, Bishop of Strathearn and Auxiliary in Southwark, who presented a paper last year to a conference on "Christianity And Capitalism", held under the auspices of the Health and Welfare Unit of the Institute of Economic Affairs.

The title of his paper is Christianity And Capitalism: A Catholic View; and it is encouraging to see that, at the very outset, he makes it clear that he understands the distinctions between the three factors of production, land, labour and capital, as conceived by the classical economists.

"Capital," he justly observes, is "a product in itself which can be employed for the further production of goods and services". He has forgotten goods in the process of exchange; but no matter, the main point is that he understands the difference between capital and land.

Unfortunately, this mental clarity of his makes it all the harder for us to understand why he has failed to see, or at any rate to comment on, the mental confusion evident in both the original Rerum Novarum and subsequent catholic pronouncements. Leo XIII's principal aim was to defend private property against the attacks of socialists and communists; but it was his failure to distribute the term "property" between the more precise ones of "land" and "wealth" -- a part of which is set aside to constitute "capital" -- and his tendency to use the Tightness of the private ownership of wealth to justify also the private ownership of land, that excited the. interest of Henry George.

Subsequent publications of the Church did nothing to improve matters. Popes Pius XI's and XII's main concern was that fascism, nazism and communism should not cause a total submergence of the rights of the individual; and Pope John XXIII, in his Encyclical Mater Et Magistra (15th May 1961), re-affirmed Rerum Novarum's teaching on the subject of the justice of private property, including the "means of production," and therefore asserted, by implication, the justice of private property in land.

Abuses were to be controlled, if necessary, by public authorities, who would impose limitations on individual ownership. The machinery for achieving such limitations baffles the imagination.

MORE IMPORTANT, however, according to Fr. Jukes, is the teaching of John Paul II in his Encyclical Laborem Exercens (14th September 1981) on the subject of the relationship of "labour" and "capital". It is to be noted that this document is marred, like the previous ones, by an inadequate grasp of the true extension of the term "capital".

Sometimes it is said to consist of "the whole collection of the means of production" and therefore to include "land". On another occasion, however, it is "the vast collection of resources" that "has come into existence only as a result of man's labour....", a definition from which "land" is excluded. The quotations are from Fr. Jukes, who appears to be paraphrasing the original.

After all this, it is hardly surprising to learn that "in all the teaching of the official magisterium of the catholic church there is no intention of canonising a particular political solution or economic theory". One may even be thankful that, having chosen such an inadequate basis for fruitful deliberation, it has refrained from doing any such thing.

The pity of it is that it has neglected the means at hand, in the shape of the sumptuous leather-bound special edition of Henry George's The Condition of Labour, for clarifying its vision and proving to the world that a practical solution based on Christian principles can still be its salvation.

As we have seen, the main thrust of Rerum Novarum was against socialism and communism, and in favour of private property. The type of private property was not always defined; but the context was often sufficient to give Henry George the impression that private property in land was what Leo XIII had chiefly in mind, and that he himself was also under attack.

He had all the more reason for believing this in that a friend of his, the Rev. Edward McGlyn, the Irish/American parish priest of St. Stephen's, New York, had, nine years before the issue of the Encyclical, brought upon himself suspension and excommunication for preaching the Georgist doctrine that all existing forms of taxation should be replaced by a single tax on the value of land.

As a result of this, many parishes throughout the United States and Ireland withheld their dues from the Catholic Church, thereby causing it severe financial embarrassment. In the following year, 1892, Father McGlynn was requested to draw up a summary of what he had been preaching, which was declared by a Committee of four of the professors of the Catholic University of Washington to "contain nothing contrary to Catholic teachings". He was reinstated in all his functions.

HENRY GEORGE, however, delighted though he was at the Committee's findings, had intended all along to prove much more. It was, of course, necessary that he should devote considerable space in his The Condition Of Labour to refuting Leo XIII's arguments in favour of private property in land, and, by implication, against the single tax.

That he had no difficulty in doing so may be shown by the example of how he dealt with the Papal assertion 'that what is bought with rightful property is rightful property'. After pointing out that sale cannot create rights, but only transfer them, he demonstrates, by substituting the word 'slave' for the word 'land' in a quotation from the Pope's own text, that his contention would be equally valid if used in justification of slavery:

"Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money, and invests his savings for greater security in a slave, the slave, in such a case, is only his wages in another form; and consequently a working man's slave thus purchased should be as completely at his own disposal as the wages he receives for his labour."[1]

In Progress And Poverty[2], George's main arguments had been couched in economic terms that could be understood by the enquiring agnostic. Here, in The Condition Of Labour, he shows that the same conclusion may be reached by theological arguments addressed to those who believe, as he did, that God is the creator and subsequent governor of the universe. Here is the core of his exegesis:

"No sooner does the State arise than, as we all know, it needs revenues. This need for revenues is small at first, while population is sparse, industry rude, and the functions of the State few and simple. But, with growth of population and advance of civilization, the functions of the State increase, and larger and larger revenues are needed.

"Now, He made the world and placed man in it, He that preordained civilization as the means whereby man might rise to higher powers and become more and more conscious of the works of his Creator, must have foreseen this increasing need for State revenues, and have made provision for it.

"That is to say: The increasing need for public revenues with social advance, being a natural, God-ordained need, there must be a right way of raising them - some way that we can truly say is the way intended by God. It is clear that this right way must accord with the moral law".[3]

EXISTING methods of taxation, he goes on to explain, do not so accord. They take from individuals what is rightly theirs; they give some an advantage over others, as for example by interfering with prices; they create crimes that are not sins (e.g. smuggling); they lead men into temptation by giving them a motive to make false statements; and they punish God-ordained labour.

George's single tax would be in quite a different category. The unimproved value of land owes nothing to the efforts of any individual, but arises with the beginnings of civilisation, and increases as civilisation develops. At present the rent, or income that arises from this value, is appropriated by those who claim to own the land. Now rightful ownership is conferred by labour, and labour alone, and cannot be taken as applying to the land, which was provided by God for the use of all mankind.

Subsequent purchases, as we have seen, have no effect on an original wrongful title. The inference from all this, that rent belongs to us all, is reinforced by a further consideration. As the need for revenue grows, it is the value of land, and the value of land alone, that grows with it. Have we not therefore sufficient reason to believe that the value of land is the source of revenue that God intended for us? If this were not enough, is it not evident that our attempts to derive revenue from elsewhere have brought upon us the social evils from which we suffer?

It is time for the Catholic Church, and others too that express concern for our social problems, to consider carefully what Henry George had to say to Pope Leo XIII, and to realise that here at last is a practical solution that they can advocate in the sure knowledge that they can do so without straying from their proper province.

REFERENCES

1. Henry George, The Condition of Labour, London: Land & Liberty Press, 1947, p.22.
2. Henry George (1879) Progress and Poverty, New York, Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, 1979.
3. Henry George, The Condition of Labor, pp. 7 & 8.