CHAPTER XXII.
Socialism and Agriculture.
1.—Abolition of the Private Ownership of Land.
Land, being the prime raw material for all human labor and the basis of human existence, must be made the property of society, together with the means of production and distribution. At an advanced stage of development society will again take possession of what it owned in primeval days. At a certain stage of development all human races had common ownership of land. Common property is the foundation of every primitive social organization; it is essential to its existence. Only by the rise and development of private property and the forms of rulership connected with it, has common property been abolished and usurped as private property, as we have seen, not without severe struggles. The robbery of the land and its transformation into private property formed the first cause of oppression. This oppression has passed through all stages, from slavery to “free” wage-labor of the twentieth century, until, after a development of thousands of years, the oppressed again convert the soil into common property.
The great importance of the soil to human existence was the reason why the ownership of the soil constituted the chief cause of conflict in all social struggles of the world—in India, China, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Christian middle ages, the realms of the Aztecs and Incas, and in the social struggles of modern times. Even at the present day men like Adolf Samter, Adolf Wagner, Dr. Schaeffle, Henry George, and others, who do not believe in other forms of common property, favor the common ownership of land.[236]
The welfare of a population depends primarily upon the cultivation of the soil. To develop this cultivation to the highest degree is eminently to the interest of all. That this highest degree of development cannot be attained under the rule of private property, has been shown. To obtain the greatest possible advantage from the soil, not its cultivation alone must be taken into consideration. Other factors must be considered to which neither the largest private owner nor the most powerful association is equal, factors that may exceed even the jurisdiction of the state and require international consideration.
[236] During the centuries when common ownership of land still predominated, but the robbery of land assumed ever greater portions, fathers of the church, popes and bishops have also preached communistic doctrines. Of course, the syllabus and the encyclical letters of the nineteenth century no longer contain references of this sort, and the popes too have become subservient to bourgeois society and rise to defend it against the Socialists. Bishop Clemens I (died 102 A. D.) said: “The use of all worldly things should be common to all. It is wrong to say: This is mine, this belongs to me, and that to someone else. It is this which has caused dissention among men.” Bishop Ambrosius of Milan, who lived around 374, exclaimed: “Nature gives all blessings to all men in common; for God has created all things for the common enjoyment of all, that the earth should be common property. Nature accordingly has created the right of common ownership, and only unfair usurpation creates the right of private property.” In his Book of Homilies directed against the wickedness and depravity of the people of Constantinople, St. John Chrysostomus (died 408) wrote: “Let no one call anything his own. From God have we received everything for common enjoyment, and mine and thine are words of falsehood!” St. Augustin (died 430) said: “Because we have private property, we also have law suits, hostility, dissention, wars, rebellion, sin, injustice, murder. Whence come all these scourges? Only from property. So, my brethren, let us refrain from owning things, or let us, at least, refrain from loving what we own.” Pope Gregory the Great (about 600) exclaimed: “Let them know that the earth whence they come and of which they are made is common to all men, and that the fruits which the earth brings forth should therefore belong to all without distinction.” Bossuet, the famous bishop of Meaux (died 1704), says in his “Politics of the Holy Scripture:” “Without the governments the earth and its products would belong to all men in common, just as air and light. According to the prime right of nature, no one may lay claim to anything. All things belong to all. From bourgeois government property derives its origin.” The last sentence might be more clearly expressed in the following manner: because common property became private property, we have obtained bourgeois governments that must protect it. One of the moderns, Zachariae, says in his “Forty Books on the States:” “All sufferings of civilized nations may be traced to the private ownership of land.” All the men quoted above have more or less correctly recognized the nature of private property. As St. Augustin says: Since its existence it has brought into the world law suits, hostility, dissention, war, rebellion, sin, injustice, murder,—evils that will disappear again by its abolition.