Читать книгу Distributive Justice: The Right and Wrong of Our Present Distribution of Wealth - John A. Ryan - Страница 19

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Thinking that he has shattered the title of first occupancy, Henry George undertakes to set up in its place the title of labour. "There can be to the ownership of anything no rightful title which is not derived from the title of the producer, and does not rest on the natural right of the man to himself."[15] The only original title is man's right to the exercise of his own faculties; from this right follows his right to what he produces; now man does not produce land; therefore he cannot have rightful property in land. Of these four propositions the first is a pure assumption, the second is untrue, the third is a truism, and the fourth is as unfounded as the first. Dependently upon God, man has, indeed, a right to himself and to the exercise of his own faculties; but this is a right of action, not of property. By the exercise of this right alone man can never produce anything, never become the owner of anything. He can produce only by exerting his powers upon something outside of himself; that is, upon the goods of external nature. To become the producer and the owner of a product, he must first become the owner of materials. By what title is he to acquire these? In one passage[16] Henry George seems to think that no title is necessary, and refers to the raw material as an "accident," while the finished product is the "essence," declaring that "the right of private ownership attaches the accident to the essence, and gives the right of ownership to the natural material in which the labour of production is embodied." Now this solution of the difficulty is too simple and arbitrary. Its author would have shrunk from applying it universally; for example, to the case of the shoemaker who produces a pair of shoes out of stolen materials, or the burglar who makes an overcoat more useful (and therefore performs a task of production) by transferring it from a warehouse to his shivering back! Evidently Henry George has in mind only raw material in the strict sense, that which has not yet been separated from the storehouse of nature; for he declares in another place that "the right to the produce of labour cannot be enjoyed without the free use of the opportunities offered by nature."[17] In other words, man's title to the materials upon which he is to exercise his faculties, and of which he is to become the owner by right of production, is the title of gift conferred by nature, or nature's God.

Nevertheless this title is applicable only to those goods that exist in unlimited abundance, not to those parts of the natural bounty that are scarce and possess economic value. A general assumption by producers that they were entitled to take possession of the gifts of nature indiscriminately would mean industrial anarchy and civil war. Hence Henry George tells us that the individual should pay rent to "the community to satisfy the equal rights of all other members of the community."[18] Inasmuch as the individual must pay this price before he begins to produce, his right to the use of natural opportunities is not "free," nor does his labour alone constitute a title to that part of them that he utilises in production. Consequently labour does not create a right to the concrete product. It merely gives the producer a right to the value that he adds to the raw material. His right to the raw material itself, to the elements that he withdraws from the common store, and fashions into a product, say, wheat, lumber, or steel, does not originate in the title of labour but in the title of contract. This is the contract by which in exchange for rent paid to the community he is authorised to utilise these materials. Until he has made this contract he has manifestly no full right to the product into which natural forces as well as his own labour have entered. According to Henry George's own statements, therefore, the right to the product does not spring from labour alone, but from labour plus compensation to the community. Since the contract by which the prospective user agrees to pay this compensation or rent must precede his application of labour, it instead of labour is the original title. Since the contract is made with a particular community for the use of a particular piece of land, the title that it conveys must derive ultimately from the occupation of that land by that community,—or some previous community of which the present one is the legal heir. So far as economically valuable materials are concerned, therefore, the logic of Henry George's principles leads inevitably to the conclusion that the original title of ownership is first occupancy.

Even in the case of economically free goods, the original title of ownership is occupancy. Henry George declares that the traveller who has filled his vessels at a free-for-all spring owns the water when he has carried it into a desert, by the title of labour.[19] Nevertheless, in its original place this water belonged either to the community or to nobody. In the former supposition it can become the property of the traveller only through an explicit or implicit gift from the community; and it is this contract, not labour, that constitutes his title to the water. If we assume that the spring was ownerless, we see that the labour of carrying a portion of it into the desert still lacks the qualifications of a title; for the abstracted water must have belonged to him before he began the journey. It must have been his from the moment that he separated it from the spring. Otherwise he had no right to take it away. His labour of transporting it gave him a right to the utility thus added to the water, but not a right to the water when it first found a local habitation in his vessels. Nor was the labour of transferring it from the spring into his vessels the true title; for labour alone cannot create a right to the material upon which it is exerted, as we see in the case of stolen objects. If it be contended that labour together with the natural right to use the ownerless goods of nature have all the elements of a valid title, the assertion must be rejected as unprecise and inadequate. The right to use ownerless goods is a general and abstract right that requires to become specific and concrete through some title. In the case of water it is a right to water in general, to some water, but not a right to a definite portion of the water in this particular spring. The required and sufficient title here is that of apprehension, occupation, the act of separating a portion from the natural reservoir. Therefore, it is first occupancy as exemplified in mere seizure of an ownerless good, not labour in the sense of productive activity, nor labour in the sense of painful exertion, that constitutes the precise title whereby the man acquires a right to the water that he has put into his cup or barrel. Mere seizure is a sufficient title in all such cases as that which we are now considering, simply because it is a reasonable method of determining and specifying ownership. There is no need whatever of having recourse to the concept of labour to justify this kind of property right. In the present case, indeed, the acts of apprehension and of productive labour (the labour of dipping the water into a vessel is productive inasmuch as the water is more useful there than in the spring) are the same physically, but they are distinct logically and ethically. One is mere occupation, while the other is production; and ownership of a thing must precede, in morals if not in time, the expenditure upon it of productive labour.

"The theory which bases the right of property on labour really depends in the ultimate resort on the right of possession and the fact that it is socially expedient, and is therefore upheld by the laws of society. Grotius, discussing this in the old Roman days, pointed out that since nothing can be made except out of pre-existing matter, acquisition by means of labour depends, ultimately, on possession by means of occupation."[20]

Since man's right to his faculties does not of itself give him a right to exercise them upon material objects, productive labour cannot of itself give him a right to the product therefrom created, nor constitute the original title of ownership. Since labour is not the original title to property, it is not the only possible title to property in land. Hence the fact that labour does not produce land, has no bearing on the question of private landownership.

In passing it may be observed that Henry George implicitly admitted that the argument from the labour title was not of itself sufficient to disprove the right of private property in land. Considering the objection, "if private property in land be not just, then private property in the products of land is not just, as the material of these products is taken from the land," he replied that the latter form of ownership "is in reality a mere right of temporary possession," since the raw material in the products sooner or later returns to the "reservoirs provided for all ... and thus the ownership of them by one works no injury to others."[21] But private ownership of land, he continued, shuts out others from the very reservoirs. Here we have a complete abandonment of the principle which underlies the labour argument. Instead of trying to show from the nature of the situation that there is a logical difference between the two kinds of ownership, he shifts his ground to a consideration of consequences. He makes the title of social utility instead of the title of labour the distinguishing and decisive consideration. As we shall see later, he is wrong even on this ground; for the fundamental justification of private landownership is precisely the fact that it is the system of land tenure most conducive to human welfare. At present we merely call attention to the breakdown in his own hands of the labour argument.

To sum up the entire discussion on the original title of ownership: Henry George's attack upon first occupancy is futile because based upon an exaggerated conception of the scope of private landownership, and upon a false assumption concerning the responsibility of that title for the historical evils of the system. His attempt to substitute labour as the original title is likewise unsuccessful, since labour can give a right only to the utility added to natural materials, not to the materials themselves. Ownership of the latter reaches back finally to occupation. Whence it follows that the title to an artificial thing, such as a hat or coat, water taken from a spring, a fish drawn from the sea, is a joint or two-fold title; namely, occupation and labour. Where the product embodies scarce and economically valuable raw material, occupation is usually prior to labour in time; in all cases it is prior to labour logically and ethically. Since labour is not the original title, its absence in the case of land does not leave that form of property unjustified. The title of first occupancy remains. In a word, the one original title of all property, natural and artificial, is first occupancy.

The other arguments of Henry George against private landownership are based upon the assumed right of all mankind to land and land values, and on the contention that this right is violated by the present system of tenure.