Property Essay

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Syllabus for LS 140 Pride and Prejudice John Locke

Property in Eve Online Rousseau on Property and Inequality

Karl Marx - The Communist Manifesto J.S. Mill - Principles of Political Economy

George - Progress and Poverty George - Ode to Liberty Finkelman -Batter Up

Popov v. Hayashi Treaty of Waitangi Johnson v. McIntosh Dawes Act

Somerset v. Stewart Bryan v. Walton State v. Mann State v. Boyce

Rose - Property Law and the Rise, Life, and Demise of Racially Restrictive Covenants

Shelley v. Kraemer Bell v. Maryland

Sumner - W hat Social Classes Owe to Each Other Veblen - Theory of the Leisure Class

Roe - Backlash Cassidy review of Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-first Century

Ostrom - Sustainable Development Boomer v. Atlantic Cement

Dan Ariely Ted Talk Dan Pink Ted Talk Pennsylvania Coal v. Mahon

Just v. Marinette County Kelo v. New London

Reich - The New Property - Read pp 771-777 Goldberg v. Kelly

Lessig - Free Culture - Read Chap. 5 Lessig - Remix (Optional Source)

SF Homeless Project

O d e t o L i b e r t yO d e t o L i b e r t y

By Henry George

Delivered in San Francisco by Henry George as orator of the day July 4, 1877

Our primary social adjustment is a denial of justice. In allowing one man to own the land on which and from which other men must live,

we have made them his bondsmen in a degree which increases as material progress goes on.

WE HONOR LIBERTY in name and in form. We set up her statues and sound her praises. But we have not fully trusted her. And with our

growth so grow her demands. She will have no half service! Liberty! it is a word to conjure with, not to vex the ear in empty boastings. For

Liberty means Justice, and Justice is the natural law — the law of health and symmetry and strength, of fraternity and co-operation.

They who look upon Liberty as having accomplished her mission when she has abolished hereditary privileges and given men the ballot,

who think of her as having no further relations to the everyday affairs of life, have not seen her real grandeur — to them the poets who have

sung of her must seem rhapsodists, and her martyrs fools! As the sun is the lord of life, as well as of light; as his beams not merely pierce the

clouds, but support all growth, supply all motion, and call forth from what would otherwise be a cold and inert mass all the infinite

diversities of being and beauty, so is Liberty to mankind. It is not for an abstraction that men have toiled and died; that in every age the

witnesses of Liberty have stood forth, and the martyrs of Liberty have suffered.

We speak of Liberty as one thing, and of virtue, wealth, knowledge, invention, national strength and national independence as other things.

But, of all these, Liberty is the source, the mother, the necessary condition. She is to virtue what light is to color; to wealth what sunshine is to

grain; to knowledge what eyes are to sight. She is the genius of invention, the brawn of national strength, the spirit of national independence.

Where Liberty rises, there virtue grows, wealth increases, knowledge expands, invention multiplies human powers, and in strength and spirit

the freer nation rises among her neighbors as Saul amid his brethren — taller and fairer. Where Liberty sinks, there virtue fades, wealth

diminishes, knowledge is forgotten, invention ceases, and empires once mighty in arms and arts become a helpless prey to freer barbarians!

Only in broken gleams and partial light has the sun of Liberty yet beamed among men, but all progress hath she called forth.

Liberty came to a race of slaves crouching under Egyptian whips, and led them forth from the House of Bondage. She hardened them in the

desert and made of them a race of conquerors. The free spirit of the Mosaic law took their thinkers up to heights where they beheld the unity

of God, and inspired their poets with strains that yet phrase the highest exaltations of thought. Liberty dawned on the Phoenician coast, and

ships passed the Pillars of Hercules to plow the unknown sea. She shed a partial light on Greece, and marble grew to shapes of ideal beauty,

words became the instruments of subtlest thought, and against the scanty militia of free cities the countless hosts of the Great King broke like

surges against a rock. She cast her beams on the four-acre farms of Italian husbandmen, and born of her strength a power came forth that

conquered the world. They glinted from shields of German warriors, and Augustus wept his legions. Out of the night that followed her

eclipse, her slanting rays fell again on free cities, and a lost learning revived, modern civilization began, a new world was unveiled; and as

Liberty grew, so grew art, wealth, power, knowledge, and refinement. In the history of every nation we may read the same truth. It was the

strength born of Magna Carta that won Crecy and Agincourt. It was the revival of Liberty from the despotism of the Tudors that glorified the

Elizabethan age. It was the spirit that brought a crowned tyrant to the block that planted here the seed of a mighty tree. It was the energy of

ancient freedom that, the moment it had gained unity, made Spain the mightiest power of the world, only to fall to the lowest depth of

weakness when tyranny succeeded liberty. See, in France, all intellectual vigor dying under the tyranny of the Seventeenth Century to revive

in splendor as Liberty awoke in the Eighteenth, and on the enfranchisement of French peasants in the Great Revolution, basing the wonderful

strength that has in our time defied defeat.

Shall we not trust her?

In our time, as in times before, creep on the insidious forces that, producing inequality, destroy Liberty. On the horizon the clouds begin to

lower. Liberty calls to us again. We must follow her further; we must trust her fully. Either we must wholly accept her or she will not stay. It is

not enough that men should vote; it is not enough that they should be theoretically equal before the law. They must have liberty to avail

themselves of the opportunities and means of life; they must stand on equal terms with reference to the bounty of nature. Either this, or

Liberty withdraws her light! Either this, or darkness comes on, and the very forces that progress has evolved turn to powers that work

destruction. This is the universal law. This is the lesson of the centuries. Unless its foundations be laid in justice the social structure cannot

stand.

Our primary social adjustment is a denial of justice. In allowing one man to own the land on which and from which other men must live, we

have made them his bondsmen in a degree which increases as material progress goes on. This is the subtle alchemy that in ways they do not

realize is extracting from the masses in every civilized country the fruits of their weary toil; that is instituting a harder and more hopeless

slavery in place of that which has been destroyed; that is bringing political despotism out of political freedom, and must soon transmute

democratic institutions into anarchy.

It is this that turns the blessings of material progress into a curse. It is this that crowds human beings into noisome cellars and squalid

tenement houses; that fills prisons and brothels; that goads men with want and consumes them with greed; that robs women of the grace and

beauty of perfect womanhood; that takes from little children the joy and innocence of life’s morning.

Civilization so based cannot continue. The eternal laws of the universe forbid it. Ruins of dead empires testify, and the witness that is in every

soul answers, that it cannot be. It is something grander than Benevolence, something more august than Charity — it is Justice herself that

demands of us to right this wrong. Justice that will not be denied; that cannot be put off — Justice that with the scales carries the sword. Shall

we ward the stroke with liturgies and prayers? Shall we avert the decrees of immutable law by raising churches when hungry infants moan

and weary mothers weep?

Though it may take the language of prayer, it is blasphemy that attributes to the inscrutable decrees of Providence the suffering and

brutishness that come of poverty; that turns with folded hands to the All-Father and lays on Him the responsibility for the want and crime of

our great cities. We degrade the Everlasting. We slander the Just One. A merciful man would have better ordered the world; a just man would

crush with his foot such an ulcerous ant-hill! It is not the Almighty, but we who are responsible for the vice and misery that fester amid our

civilization. The Creator showers upon us his gifts — more than enough for all. But like swine scrambling for food, we tread them in the mire

— tread them in the mire, while we tear and rend each other!

In the very centers of our civilization today are want and suffering enough to make sick at heart whoever does not close his eyes and steel his

nerves. Dare we turn to the Creator and ask Him to relieve it? Supposing the prayer were heard, and at the behest with which the universe

sprang into being there should glow in the sun a greater power; new virtue fill the air; fresh vigor the soil; that for every blade of grass that

now grows two should spring up, and the seed that now increases fifty-fold should increase a hundredfold! Would poverty be abated or

want relieved? Manifestly no! Whatever benefit would accrue would be but temporary. The new powers streaming through the material

universe could be utilized only through land. And land, being private property, the classes that now monopolize the bounty of the Creator

would monopolize all the new bounty. Land owners would alone be benefited. Rents would increase, but wages would still tend to the

starvation point!

This is not merely a deduction of political economy; it is a fact of experience. We know it because we have seen it. Within our own times,

under our very eyes, that Power which is above all, and in all, and through all; that Power of which the whole universe is but the

manifestation; that Power which maketh all things, and without which is not anything made that is made, has increased the bounty which

men may enjoy, as truly as though the fertility of nature had been increased. Into the mind of one came the thought that harnessed steam for

the service of mankind. To the inner ear of another was whispered the secret that compels the lightning to bear a message around the globe.

In every direction have the laws of matter been revealed; in every department of industry have arisen arms of iron and fingers of steel,

whose effect upon the production of wealth has been precisely the same as an increase in the fertility of nature. What has been the result?

Simply that land owners get all the gain. The wonderful discoveries and inventions of our century have neither increased wages nor

lightened toil. The effect has simply been to make the few richer; the many more helpless! Can it be that the gifts of the Creator may be thus

misappropriated with impunity? Is it a light thing that labor should be robbed of its earnings while greed rolls in wealth — that the many

should want while the few are surfeited? Turn to history, and on every page may be read the lesson that such wrong never goes unpunished;

that the Nemesis that follows injustice never falters nor sleeps! Look around today. Can this state of things continue? May we even say, “After

us the deluge!” Nay; the pillars of the state are trembling even now, and the very foundations of society begin to quiver with pent-up forces

that glow underneath. The struggle that must either revivify, or convulse in ruin, is near at hand, if it be not already begun. The fiat has gone

forth! With steam and electricity, and the new powers born of progress, forces have entered the world that will either compel us to a higher

plane or overwhelm us, as nation after nation, as civilization after civilization, have been overwhelmed before. It is the delusion which

precedes destruction that sees in the popular unrest with which the civilized world is feverishly pulsing only the passing effect of ephemeral

causes. Between democratic ideas and the aristocratic adjustments of society there is an irreconcilable conflict. Here in the United States, as

there in Europe, it may be seen arising. We cannot go on permitting men to vote and forcing them to tramp. We cannot go on educating boys

and girls in our public schools and then refusing them the right to earn an honest living. We cannot go on prating of the inalienable rights of

man and then denying the inalienable right to the bounty of the Creator. Even now, in old bottles the new wine begins to ferment, and

elemental forces gather for the strife!

B u t i f , wh i l e t h e r e i s ye t t i m e , we t u r n t o Ju s t i c e a n d o b ey h e r, i f we t r u s t L i b e r t y a n d fo l l ow h e r, t h e d a n g e r s t h a t n owB u t i f , wh i l e t h e r e i s ye t t i m e , we t u r n t o Ju s t i c e a n d o b ey h e r, i f we t r u s t L i b e r t y a n d fo l l ow h e r, t h e d a n g e r s t h a t n ow

t h r e a t e n m u s t d i s a p p e a r, t h e fo r c e s t h a t n ow m e n a c e w i l l t u r n t o a g e n c i e s o f e l eva t i o n . t h r e a t e n m u s t d i s a p p e a r, t h e fo r c e s t h a t n ow m e n a c e w i l l t u r n t o a g e n c i e s o f e l eva t i o n . Think of the powers now wasted; of

the infinite fields of knowledge yet to be explored; of the possibilities of which the wondrous inventions of this century give us but a hint.

With want destroyed; with greed changed to noble passions; with the fraternity that is born of equality taking the place of the jealousy and

fear that now array men against each other; with mental power loosed by conditions that give to the humblest comfort and leisure; and who

shall measure the heights to which our civilization may soar? Words fail the thought! It is the Golden Age of which poets have sung and high-

raised seers have told in metaphor! It is the glorious vision which has always haunted man with gleams of fitful splendor. It is what he saw

whose eyes at Patmos were closed in a trance. It is the culmination of Christianity — the City of God on earth, with its walls of jasper and its

gates of pearl! It is the reign of the Prince of Peace!

James Madison

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