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A Symposium on the Land Question
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
98 pages, Paperback
First published February 19, 2013
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About the author
Joseph Hiam Levy
19 books1 followerJoseph Hiam Levy was an English author and economist.
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December 18, 2020
What a fascinating little book!
This is a collection of short essays, published in 1890, in which a group of (mostly) late 19th century British libertarians (or "Individualists," as they style themselves) debate the moral legitimacy of private property in land. For readers like us, living in an era where libertarianism is largely defined by the writings of people like Robert Nozick, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard, none of whom really questioned that legitimacy in any serious way, this is a surprising and refreshing conversation.
The lead essay of the book is written by Auberon Herbert, the British MP and "Voluntaryist," who sets forth the most "orthodox" libertarian position in the collection. According to Herbert, individuals own themselves and their faculties, and they own what they produce with their faculties. Thus individuals can come to legitimately own the land on which they have worked, and the products they produce with that land. Any other system - such as socialist land nationalization or a Georgist Single Tax - is both immoral and impractical.
The remainder of the essays are all responses to Herbert. They're mostly by relatively unknown authors, and they're a mixed bag in terms of their quality. Sidney Olivier's essay is written from a socialist perspective, and questions Herbert's move from each person's ownership of his or her *self* to ownership of external goods. Henry Ley, late secretary of the Land Nationalization Society, makes a fascinating and thorough case that each individual has a right to "a place to be on," and winds up endorsing a somewhat bizarre scheme under which everyone would have the right to choose *once in his life* a plot of ground for personal occupation, so long as he pays fair compensation to the previous owner. Wordsworth Donisthorpe's essay is a gem. Not because of its positive philosophical content - Donisthorpe's Hobbesian positivism will strike few readers as plausible. But it's terribly clever and funny, and devastating in its critical capacity. Spence's essay provides a trenchant critique of Donisthorpe's positivism, and Flürscheim pens a terribly long-winded rant in defense of what seems to be a somewhat heterodox version of Georgism.
The collection also contains a really fascinating piece by Herbert Spencer - actually a reprint of a letter he wrote to The Times on Nov 7, 1889, in which he revisits the position on land ownership he set forth in 1850 in Social Statics. Spencer stresses that his views in that book have been misunderstood, and misused by land nationalizers. Social Statics, he stresses, is a work of "absolute political ethics," or what we would now call ideal theory. To derive from it conclusions about what ought to be done *now* would be a mistake. And while it may be in principle true that land nationalization would be justifiable in a perfectly just society, "with a humanity anything like that we now know, the implied re-organization would be disastrous."
Lawrence's essay presents the view to which the editor of the volume - J.H. Levy, the "head" of the Individualist movement in Britain - also subscribes. Namely, that "As a matter of natural right, all persons are equally entitled to the use of the land, and, therefore, no person should be conceded any proprietary rights in the soil which are inconsistent with the exercise of equal rights by his fellows." This principle is compatible, he notes, with a farmer using a plot of land, so long as he has not used more than his fair share of it, or that he has compensated the community for his use (where community is to be understood broadly to include not just those persons alive today, but posterity as well).
The book concludes with a response essay by Auberon Herbert which, in this reader's view, largely misses the boat. A big problem with this debate is that the term "land" is being used in different senses by different parties. Herbert seems to understand "land" in a narrow sense - to refer simply to the ground we walk on. And on this understanding, he rightly questions why everyone thinks land is so special. Why hold that we can own the wheat that grows in the soil, but not the soil itself? Other, more sophisticated contributors to the volume, note that land "in the economic sense" refers not just to the ground but to *any* natural resource. And so they argue that the wheat *isn't* really that different from the land - the value of the wheat, like the value of tilled soil, is partly a product of human labor, and partly a product of nature's bounty. Laborers are entitled to the former, but not the latter. Because the interlocutors largely talk past each other on the issue, a lot of opportunities for fruitful engagement are missed, and missed in a way that will be painfully obvious to readers who are familiar with the more sophisticated discussions of these issues that would take place among 20th century philosophers.
Still, it's a fun collection, not least because it's a fascinating view into just how *differently* libertarians thought about these issues at the end of the 19th century. Well worth reading.
This is a collection of short essays, published in 1890, in which a group of (mostly) late 19th century British libertarians (or "Individualists," as they style themselves) debate the moral legitimacy of private property in land. For readers like us, living in an era where libertarianism is largely defined by the writings of people like Robert Nozick, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard, none of whom really questioned that legitimacy in any serious way, this is a surprising and refreshing conversation.
The lead essay of the book is written by Auberon Herbert, the British MP and "Voluntaryist," who sets forth the most "orthodox" libertarian position in the collection. According to Herbert, individuals own themselves and their faculties, and they own what they produce with their faculties. Thus individuals can come to legitimately own the land on which they have worked, and the products they produce with that land. Any other system - such as socialist land nationalization or a Georgist Single Tax - is both immoral and impractical.
The remainder of the essays are all responses to Herbert. They're mostly by relatively unknown authors, and they're a mixed bag in terms of their quality. Sidney Olivier's essay is written from a socialist perspective, and questions Herbert's move from each person's ownership of his or her *self* to ownership of external goods. Henry Ley, late secretary of the Land Nationalization Society, makes a fascinating and thorough case that each individual has a right to "a place to be on," and winds up endorsing a somewhat bizarre scheme under which everyone would have the right to choose *once in his life* a plot of ground for personal occupation, so long as he pays fair compensation to the previous owner. Wordsworth Donisthorpe's essay is a gem. Not because of its positive philosophical content - Donisthorpe's Hobbesian positivism will strike few readers as plausible. But it's terribly clever and funny, and devastating in its critical capacity. Spence's essay provides a trenchant critique of Donisthorpe's positivism, and Flürscheim pens a terribly long-winded rant in defense of what seems to be a somewhat heterodox version of Georgism.
The collection also contains a really fascinating piece by Herbert Spencer - actually a reprint of a letter he wrote to The Times on Nov 7, 1889, in which he revisits the position on land ownership he set forth in 1850 in Social Statics. Spencer stresses that his views in that book have been misunderstood, and misused by land nationalizers. Social Statics, he stresses, is a work of "absolute political ethics," or what we would now call ideal theory. To derive from it conclusions about what ought to be done *now* would be a mistake. And while it may be in principle true that land nationalization would be justifiable in a perfectly just society, "with a humanity anything like that we now know, the implied re-organization would be disastrous."
Lawrence's essay presents the view to which the editor of the volume - J.H. Levy, the "head" of the Individualist movement in Britain - also subscribes. Namely, that "As a matter of natural right, all persons are equally entitled to the use of the land, and, therefore, no person should be conceded any proprietary rights in the soil which are inconsistent with the exercise of equal rights by his fellows." This principle is compatible, he notes, with a farmer using a plot of land, so long as he has not used more than his fair share of it, or that he has compensated the community for his use (where community is to be understood broadly to include not just those persons alive today, but posterity as well).
The book concludes with a response essay by Auberon Herbert which, in this reader's view, largely misses the boat. A big problem with this debate is that the term "land" is being used in different senses by different parties. Herbert seems to understand "land" in a narrow sense - to refer simply to the ground we walk on. And on this understanding, he rightly questions why everyone thinks land is so special. Why hold that we can own the wheat that grows in the soil, but not the soil itself? Other, more sophisticated contributors to the volume, note that land "in the economic sense" refers not just to the ground but to *any* natural resource. And so they argue that the wheat *isn't* really that different from the land - the value of the wheat, like the value of tilled soil, is partly a product of human labor, and partly a product of nature's bounty. Laborers are entitled to the former, but not the latter. Because the interlocutors largely talk past each other on the issue, a lot of opportunities for fruitful engagement are missed, and missed in a way that will be painfully obvious to readers who are familiar with the more sophisticated discussions of these issues that would take place among 20th century philosophers.
Still, it's a fun collection, not least because it's a fascinating view into just how *differently* libertarians thought about these issues at the end of the 19th century. Well worth reading.
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