R.W.[the friend]--"1. The rights of all in respect of all the gifts of nature are initially equal. Hence no dealing with the soil on the part of any person can be initially justifiable if it places any other person, who may wish hereafter to deal with it, at a disadvantage. By 'initially' is here meant 'in default of any arrangement for redressing the balance of advantage.'"
Auberon Herbert: "The rights of all in respect of all the gifts of nature are initially equal." I think this means either nothing, or everything that the Socialist asks for. Initially we are all equal in the sense that every man, who can get there, may go to the Klondike, or may search for and occupy uninhabited islands, or look for the diamond on the shore. 'Initially' where property is not yet appropriated or owned we are all equal in our rights; but when property is already owned, then equal rights to all gifts of nature no longer exist, unless you accept the Socialist doctrine that property cannot by some mysterious and as yet unexplained law belong to the individual but only to the mass of individuals--a sheer contradiction in thought, since what John Smith cannot do, a thousand John Smiths cannot do. My friend seems to halt between the two opinions. It must be one or either. Either the individual can own the gifts of nature, or he cannot. If he can, then we have only to discover the system under which all individuals can most rightly--without force and without fraud--own these gifts (which is, as we contend, the system of universal free trade); or the individual cannot own the gifts of nature, and then we ought to be Socialists.
I am sure my friend wishes to be consistent. He must remember that everything is in part a gift of nature. If his proposition is true about gifts of nature, why should one gift of nature belong to everybody. and another gift belong to the individual? The soil belongs to everybody, says my friend, because it is the gift of nature. But so also the apple tree at the bottom of my garden is in part (the largest part) a gift of nature. "Oh, but you have mixed your labour with it" he may reply. True. But then, as he has just shewn us very clearly mixing what is your own with what is not, you cannot enlarge your rights. The apple tree then clearly cannot be wholly mine--being in part a gift of nature; and if I wholly appropriate it without allowing any passers-by to pluck two-thirds of its fruits, I am nothing but a robber stealing from the public. So it is with every single thing you can name. If we cannot rightly appropriate gifts of nature, my friend is a robber as regard the coat he wears, the the loaf he eats. At every moment of his life he is defrauding the public. And here I should ask all readers to consider the awful, indescribable complications arising out of my friend's dogma. Every article grown in every part of the world ought to be divided in parts between the grower and the rest of the world.
"Oh!" probably exclaims my friend, "we put a tax upon the land and that makes it all right; that is to cover everybody's share in the gifts of nature." Yes but unfortunately it doesn't. It breaks down, as all these artificial arrangements break down, that are employed to give practical effect to an untrue dogma. You tax land at say $1 an acre. One man grows an oak tree or a furze bush on it; and another man gets a present (in part) from nature of $200 worth of strawberries. But you don't propose to tax--you know very well you dare not do it--in proportion to nature's gifts. You dare not really tax a man for the better use he makes of land, and for nature's share in all that she gives him. If you did, you would stop production and make a revolution. What then is the moral worth of a theory that you cannot honestly and straightforwardly carry out?
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R.W.--"2. Though perfect realisation of the principle of equality may be unattainable, there must be some practicable arrangement more nearly conformable to it than any other, and it is the duty of every one who proposes to meddle with the soil to discover that best arrangement if he can, to recommend it to his fellowmen and to do his best to arrive at a common understanding with them on the subject."
Auberon Herbert: That will hardly do. My friend lays down a principle, which he sees it is impossible to apply--a principle, which cannot be put into any practical form that does not violate the principle itself-- and then he calmly suggest that we should all go fishing for some arrangement that will have some sort of relationship to the principle. No. If a principle is discovered to be practically impossible, the true moral is to reconsider your principle. There are no real chasms existing between what is morally true and what is possible in practice.
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R.W.--"3. In determining the arrangement which ought to be made, the guiding maxim should be, not the identity of user but equality of benefit, and the greatest total benefit consistent with equality."
Auberon Herbert: Dogma begets dogma. My friend will find that dogmas are a most prolific race. On what grounds does he justify his new dogma? If a thing really belongs to everybody, the use of it is everybody's right, not some suppositious advantage, which is put in its place. If nature's gifts belong in part (labour etc. deducted) to everybody, then everybody ought to be free to pluck say two thirds of the apples on my tree; but my friend is afraid of the natural and direct consequences that result from his first dogma, so he is trying to find a way of escape by placing a second dogma by the side of his first dogma. His first dogma results in such hopelessly unpractical consequences that he is obliged to invent a new dogma--which amounts to this, that instead of giving 'everybody' what they have a right to claim, we are to give them something, which is quite different, and which they may or may not want to have. My friend does not dare to give 'everybody' two thirds of my apples but he will give them instead a new policeman, or a new inspector, or a bath-house, or a library--in short anything but the one thing which he declares they have a right to possess.
The Economics and Political Science Room
Originally Posted by Alyosha
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