Fundamental Laws Affecting Human Society

Madelline Swarte

[A radio address delivered over station WOR. Reprinted from Land and Freedom, November-December 1936]

There are fundamental economic laws affecting human society just as there are fundamental physical laws by which the universe is governed. Newton's apple did not fall by chance, neither does dire poverty exist in the midst of plenty by mere chance.

One fundamental economic law is that gregarious man can exist only by applying his labor to the raw materials of this earth and he can live in society only by the cooperation of others of his kind. He cannot live on what nature provides, like the beasts of the field or the birds of the air. Since the earth is the sole source of the raw materials necessary for man's existence, it follows that to live man must have access to the land. This was true of Robinson Crusoe; it is true of the United States of America. Any human law denying the right in access to the land to any human being perpetrates and perpetuates an injustice against a portion of mankind.

A second fundamental economic law is that there are primarily but two elements in production land, the source of everything, and human labor, the activating agent. The two basic factors in the production of wealth therefore are land and labor. Capital is that part of wealth that is used for the production of more wealth. But capital is relatively unimportant. So long as there is labor to be applied to land there will always be capital. To confuse capital with land, or to say that land value is capital or that it is sound economics to permit capital to be invested in land values, indicates ignorance of true economic principles.

An individual can, by himself, make a house; but he cannot, by himself, make land valuable. Land values only appear with population; and they rise as the population grows and fall as it diminishes. It follows inexorably then that land values fundamentally and right- fully belong, not to any individuals of a community, but to the whole community by which they are created. The community should therefore collect the full rental value of its land areas year by year and use this revenue to exercise the functions of government.

Students of the problem hold that this sum would be sufficient for all the legitimate expenses of government and there would be no need to tax industry and the products of labor to support the machinery of modern society.

This is the meat of the philosophy of Henry George, outlined over 50 years ago in his world-famous book, Progress and Poverty. The principles there laid down, more generally understood and properly applied, would be the first and greatest step toward wiping poverty from the face of the earth and equalizing opportunity for all men so that none need want in the midst of the greatest abundance the world has ever known.

And just as for the mother to withhold the provision that fills her breast with the birth of the child is to endanger physical health, so for society to refuse to take for social uses the provision intended for it is to breed social disease. THE CONDITION OF LABOR.

It is related that when Michael Faraday explained the electric current to William E. Gladstone, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, the statesman asked, "What is it good for?" Faraday's reply was, "Well, maybe some day you can tax it."