LAWS CONCERNING TAXES, LAND AND PROPERTY
THE German Socialists have termed the combination of conditions which put the worker in subjection to the capitalists the iron law of wages, implying by the word "iron'' that this law is immutable.But in these conditions there is nothing immutable.These conditions merely result from human laws concerning taxes, land, and, above all, concerning things which satisfy our requirements-that is, concerning property.Laws are framed and repealed by human beings.So that it is not some sociological "iron law," but ordinary, man-made law that produces slavery.In the case in hand the slavery of our times is very clearly and definitely produced not by some "iron" elemental law, but by human enactments about land, about taxes, and about property.
There is one set of laws by which any quantity of land may belong to private people, and may pass from one to another by inheritance, or by will, or may be sold;there is another set of laws by which every one must pay the taxes demanded of him unquestioningly; and there is a third set of laws to the effect that any quantity of articles, by whatever means acquired, may become the absolute property of the people who hold them.And in consequence of these laws slavery exists.
We are so accustomed to all these laws that they seem to us just as necessary and natural to human life as the laws maintaining serfdom and slavery seemed in former times; no doubt about their necessity and justice seems possible, and no one notices anything wrong in them.But Just as a time came when people, having seen the ruinous consequences of serfdom, questioned the justice and necessity of the laws which maintained it, so now, when the pernicious consequences of the present economic order have become evident, one involuntarily questions the justice and inevitability of the legislation about land, taxes and property which produces these results.
As people formerly asked, Is it right that some people should bejong to others, and that the former should have nothing of their own, but should give all the produce of their labor to their owners? so now we must ask ourselves, Is it right that people must not use land accounted the property of other people; is it right that people should hand over to others, in the form of taxes, whatever part of their labor is demanded of them? Is it right that people may not make use of articles considered to be the property of other people?
Is it right that people should not have the use of land when it is considered to belong to others who are not cultivating it?
It is said that this legislation is instituted because landed property is an essential condition if agriculture is to flourish, and if there were no private property passing by inheritance people would drive one another from the land they occupy, and no one would work or improve the land on which he is settled.Is this true? The answer is to be found in history and in the facts of to-day.History shows that property in land did not arise from any wish to make the cultivator's tenure more secure, but resulted from the seizure of communal lands by conquerors and its distribution to those who served the conqueror.So that property in land was not established with the object of stimulating the agriculturalists.Present-day facts show the fallacy of the assertion that landed property enables those who work the land to be sure that they will not be deprived of the land they cultivate.In reality, just the contrary has everywhere happened and is happening.The right of landed property, by which the great proprietors have profited and are profiting most, has produced the result that all, or most-that is, the immense majority of the agriculturalists-are now in the position of people who cultivate other people's land, from which they may be driven at the whim of men who do not cultivate it.So that the existing right of landed property certainly does not defend the rights of the agriculturalists to enjoy the fruits of the labor he puts into the land, but, on the contrary, it is a way of depriving the agriculturalists of the land on which they work and handing it over to those who have not worked it; and, therefore, it is certainly not a means for the improvement of agriculture, but, on the contrary, a means of deteriorating it.
About taxes it is said that people ought to pay them because they are instituted with the general, even though silent, consent of all, and are used for public needs to the advantage of all.Is this true?
The answers to this question is given in history and in present-day facts.History shows that taxes never were instituted by common consent, but, on the contrary always only in consequence of the fact that some people having obtained power by conquest, or by other means over other people, imposed tribute not for public needs, but for themselves.And the same thing is still going on.
