Читать книгу Distributive Justice: The Right and Wrong of Our Present Distribution of Wealth - John A. Ryan - Страница 21

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In the foregoing pages we have confined our attention to the Georgean principle which bases men's common right to land and rent upon their common nature, and their common claims to the material gifts of the Creator. Another argument against private ownership takes this form: "Consider what rent is. It does not arise spontaneously from the soil; it is due to nothing that the landowners have done. It represents a value created by the whole community.... But rent, the creation of the whole community, necessarily belongs to the whole community."[26]

Before taking up the main contention in this passage, let us notice two incidental points. If all rent be due to the community by the title of social production, why does Henry George defend at such length the title of birthright? If the latter title does not extend to rent it is restricted to land which is so plentiful as to yield no rent. Since the owners or holders of such land rarely take the trouble to exclude any one from it, the right in question, the inborn right, has not much practical value. Probably, however, the words quoted above ought not to be interpreted as excluding the title of birthright. In that case, the meaning would be that rent belongs to the community by the title of production, as well as by the congenital title.

The second preliminary consideration is that the community does not create all land values nor all rent. These things are as certainly due to nature as to social action. In no case can they be attributed exclusively to one factor. Land that has no natural qualities or capacities suitable for the satisfaction of human wants will never have value or yield rent, no matter what society does in connection with it: the richest land in the world will likewise remain valueless, until it is brought into relation with society, with at least two human beings. If Henry George merely means to say that, without the presence of the community, land will not produce rent, he is stating something that is perfectly obvious, but it is not peculiar to land. Manufactured products would have no value outside of society, yet no one maintains that their value is all created by social action. Although the value of land is always due to both nature and society, for practical purposes we may correctly attribute the value of a particular piece of land predominantly to nature, or predominantly to society. When three tracts, equally distant from a city, and equally affected by society and its activities, have different values because one is fit only for grazing, while the second produces large crops of wheat, and the third contains a rich coal mine, their relative values are evidently due to nature rather than to society. On the other hand, the varying values of two equally fertile pieces of land unequally distant from a city, must be ascribed primarily to social action. In general, it is probably safe to say that almost all the value of land in cities, and the greater part of the value of land in thickly settled districts, is specifically due to social action rather than to differences in fertility. Nevertheless, it remains true that the value of every piece of land arises partly from nature, and partly from society; but it is impossible to say in what proportion.

Our present concern is with those values and rents which are to be attributed to social action. These cannot be claimed by any person, nor by any community, in virtue of the individual's natural right to the bounty of nature. Since they are not included among the ready made gifts of God, they are no part of man's birthright. If they belong to all the people the title to them must be sought in some historical fact, some fact of experience, some social fact. According to Henry George, the required title is found in the fact of production. Socially created land values and rents belong to the community because the community, not the private proprietor, has produced them. Let us see in what sense the community produces the social value of land.

In the first place, this value is produced by the community in two different senses of the word community, namely, as a civil, corporate entity, and as a group of individuals who do not form a moral unit. Under the first head must be placed a great deal of the value of land in cities; for example, that which arises from municipal institutions and improvements, such as, fire and police protection, water works, sewers, paved streets, and parks. On the other hand, a considerable part of land values both within and without cities is due, not to the community as a civil body, but to the community as a collection of individuals and groups of individuals. Thus, the erection and maintenance of buildings, the various economic exchanges of goods and labour, the superior opportunities for social intercourse and amusement which characterise a city, make the land of the city and its environs more valuable than land at a distance. While the activities involved in these economic and "social" facts and relations are, indeed, a social not an individual product, they are the product of small, temporary, and shifting groups within the community. They are not the activities of the community as a moral whole. For example, the maintenance of a grocery business implies a series of social relations and agreements between the grocer and his customers; but none of these transactions is participated in by the community acting as a community. Consequently such actions and relations, and the land values to which they give rise are not due to, are not the products of the community as a unit, as a moral body, as an organic entity. What is true of the land values created by the grocery business applies to the values which are due to other economic institutions and relations, as well as to those values which arise out of the purely "social" activities and advantages. If these values are to go to their producers they must be taken, in various proportions, by the different small groups and the various individuals whose actions and transactions have been directly responsible.

To distribute these values among the producers thereof in proportion to the productive contribution of each person is obviously impossible. How can it be known, for example, what portion of the increase in the value of a city's real estate during a given year is due to the merchants, the manufacturers, the railroads, the labourers, the professional classes, or the city as a corporation? The only practical method is for the city or other political unit to act as the representative of all its members, appropriate the increase in value, and distribute it among the citizens in the form of public services, institutions, and improvements. Assuming that the socially produced value of land ought to go to its social producer rather than to the individual proprietor, this method of public appropriation and disbursement would seem to be the nearest approximation to practical justice that is available.

Is the assumption correct? Do the socially produced land values necessarily belong to the producer, society? Does not the assumption rest upon a misconception of the moral validity of production as a canon of distribution? Let us examine some of the ways in which values are produced.

The man who converts leather and other suitable raw materials into a pair of shoes, increases the utility of these materials, and in normal market conditions increases their value. In a certain sense he has created value, and he is universally acknowledged to have a right to this product. Similarly the man who increases the utility and value of land by fertilising, irrigating, or draining it, is conceded the benefit of these improvements by the title of production.

But value may be increased by mere restriction of supply, and by mere increase in demand. If a group of men get control of the existing supply of wheat or cotton, they can artificially raise the price, thereby producing value as effectively as the shoemaker or the farmer. If a syndicate of speculators gets possession of all the land of a certain quality in a community, they can likewise increase its value, produce new value. If a few powerful leaders of fashion decide to adopt a certain style of millinery, their action and example will effect an increase in the demand for and the value of that kind of goods. Yet none of these producers of value are regarded as having a moral right to their product.

When we turn to what is called the social creation of land values, we find that it takes two forms. It always implies increase of social demand; but the latter may be either purely subjective, reflecting merely the desires and power of the demanders themselves, or it may have an objective basis connected with the land. In the first case it may be due solely to an increase of population. Within the last few years, agricultural land which is no more fertile nor any better situated with regard to markets or other social advantages than it was thirty years ago, has risen in value because its products have risen in value. Its products have become dearer because population, and therefore demand, have grown faster than agricultural production. Merely by increasing its wants the population has produced land values; but it has obviously no more right to them than have the leaders of fashion to the enhanced value which they have given to feminine headgear. On the other hand, the increased demand for land, and the consequent increase in its value, are frequently attributable specifically to changes connected with the land itself. They are changes which affect its utility rather than its scarcity. The farmer who irrigates desert land increases its utility, as it were, intrinsically. The community that establishes a city increases the utility of the land therein and thereabout extrinsically. New relations are introduced between that land and certain desirable social institutions. Land that was formerly useful only for agriculture becomes profitable for a factory or a store. Through its new external relations, the land acquires new utility; or better, its latent and potential uses have become actual. Now these new relations, these utility-creating and value-creating relations, have been established by society, in its corporate capacity through civil institutions and activities, and in its non-corporate capacity through the economic and "social" (in the narrower "society" sense) activities of groups and individuals. In this sense, then, the community has created the increased land values. Has it a strict right to them? a right so rigorous and exact that private appropriation of them is unjust?

As we have just seen, men do not admit that mere production of value constitutes a title of ownership. Neither the monopolist who increases value by restricting supply, nor the pace-makers of fashion, who increase value by merely increasing demand, are regarded as possessing a moral right to the value that they have "created." It is increase of utility, and not either actual or virtual increase of scarcity to which men attribute a moral claim. Why do men assign these different ethical qualities to the production of value? Why has the shoemaker a right to the value that he adds to the raw material in making a pair of shoes? What is the precise basis of his right? It cannot be labour merely; for the cotton monopolist has laboured in getting his corner on cotton. It cannot be the fact that the shoemaker's labour is socially useful; for a chemist might spend laborious days and nights producing water from its component elements, and find his product a drug on the market. Yet he would have no reasonable ground of complaint. Why, then, is it reasonable for the shoemaker to require, why has he a right to require payment for the utilities that he produces? Because men want to use his products, and because they have no right to require him to serve them without compensation. He is morally and juridically their equal, and has the same right as they to have access on reasonable terms to the earth and the earth's possibilities of a livelihood. Being thus equal to his fellows, he is under no obligation to subordinate himself to them by becoming a mere instrument for their welfare. To assume that he is obliged to produce socially useful things without remuneration, is to assume that all these propositions are false; it is to assume that his life and personality and personal development are of no intrinsic importance, and that his pursuit of the essential ends of life has no meaning except in so far as may be conducive to his function as an instrument of production. In a word, the ultimate basis of the producer's right to his product, or its value, is the fact that this is the only way in which he can get his just share of the earth's goods, and of the means of life and personal development. His right to compensation does not rest on the mere fact of value-production.