| Subject: | Fw: Fw: RE: [socialcredit] Questions for Ed Dodson -- Wally replies with critique of George by W.T. Symons | | Date: | Sunday, August 21, 2005 15:12:26 (-0600) | | From: | Martin Hattersley <hattersleyjm @.........com>
|
----- Original Message -----
From: Martin Hattersley
To: socialcredit@elistas.com
Sent: Saturday, August 20, 2005 3:37 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: RE: [socialcredit] Questions for Ed Dodson -- Wally replies
with critique of George by W.T. Symons
Wally -
Symons writes with great style - but I think he overstates his case.
I don't see the "single tax" as a solution to all problems, and it seems to me
it should be balanced by National Dividend, but just the same, the growing gap
that I see between rich and poor in the world is very much connected with who
pays rent for the ground they stand on, and who receives that rent (or
alternatively, owns their home and so doesn't have to pay it). Enclosures of
common land have in the past been a great source of poverty for the masses.
It's interesting that the Pentateuch devises a very elaborate system to give
every family an inalienable inheritance of land, and to return it to its owner in
the Year of Jubilee every fifty years. That may have been impractical also, but
it shows a concern that goes back to antiquity that everyone should have a
inalienable share in natural resources.
As to the complications of imposing such a tax - have you looked at the Income
Tax Act lately?
Martin Hattersley
1970-10123-99 St.,
EDMONTON AB CANADA
e-mail: hattersleyjm@interbaun.com
----- Original Message -----
From: Wallace M. Klinck
To: socialcredit@elistas.com
Sent: Saturday, August 20, 2005 12:39 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: RE: [socialcredit] Questions for Ed Dodson -- Wally replies
with critique of George by W.T. Symons
Re the ideas of Henry George, I have excerpted the following critique by the
British Social Credit writer, W. T. Symons from his book: (PDF attached)
The Coming of Community by W. T. Symons
(London: C. W. Daniel Company, 1931, pp. 150-61)
(B) SOCIOLOGICAL
THE TAXATION OF LAND VALUES
ARGUMENTATIVE NOTES
To describe private property in land as the root cause of human disabilities
to-day is to deny the element of Time and the stream of dynamic expansion from
the spirit in Man to the outer world. It is to ascribe to humanity the static
quality of the animal creation.
It is true that the power of the few over the many, the alienation of the many
from the common birthright of all men, was partly accomplished by means of
private ownership in natural resources, in the stuff of the earth; but with every
addition to man's conquest over natural forces, every step away from the pastoral
stage of human development, the centrality of that wrong has been shifted. The
discovery and application of electricity has removed a vast field of communal
right from the land altogether; the heaped inventions that supersede the personal
labour of man and counter the cycle of the seasons; the devices that hasten
maturity and arrest decay, by application of artificial heat to growth and of
artificial cold to perishable products of the earth; and above them all the
passing of power from ownership of the earth to creation and destruction of the
tokens by which its value is expressed. These have carried the 'root' back
through the material to the immaterial, and have presented this age with a new,
unprecedented and transcendent circumstance: Faith in man -Real Credit-is now the
focus of world power, and no longer ownership of the earth upon which man lives.
The root question of our day is: who shall exploit the faith of mankind in the
continuance of its own processes? Shall this total value-the modern equivalent of
the primitive value, the earth-be converted into financial credit and used by
mankind for mankind, or shall it continue to be exploited by the successors to
the owners of the earth, who, with masterly subtlety, have converted the earth
and the whole field of human endeavour into financial credit based upon Real
Credit, and by this device have reduced the world to a private preserve for the
sport of a giddy, fantastic control over the whole blossoming of man's
irresistible fertility; control but not ownership, for to them ownership is
anathema.
*****
Money is power over other men, because it has become essential to exchange of
commodities and property of all kinds, and because it can be created and
destroyed by the stroke of a pen, and is not a commodity. If money then is both
the means of exchange and the power to call or refrain from calling real wealth
into being, it contains the whole possibility of man's movement over the surface
of the earth, with all the development of human variety that has flowed from that
movement. Man by this device is relieved from the necessity of standing upon one
spot: his labour there may be converted into tokens exchangeable elsewhere. He
need not follow one avocation from birth to death. His labour is cumulative in
fact, and may be stored in tokens, and used at his leisure to explore not only
the earth but his own mind. The genius of civilisation consists in creation of
something that survives the day's toil or the season's produce, something that is
not the land, that is not his who labours. It is the common overflow of all
labour, not merely labour of the moment or labour measured by time, but labour in
that other dimension-intensity, whereof the fruit, in mechanical invention and in
the arts, accumulates and constitutes the cultural inheritance of mankind. The
alienation of the entire cultural inheritance, of which the land is only the
groundwork, is the root of modern distress. The manna from heaven which must be
consumed each day is now the psychic energy that each day produces, and the
thwarting of that energy is the evil that is breaking the world in pieces.
It is vain to object that any man reaps where he has not sown. All men so reap
and cannot do otherwise; their labour of to-day is but the finger-tip to the
energy of the whole body of the race. Privilege is universal. To curtail the
excesses of privilege-and that in one direction only-instead of expanding the
limitless possibilities won by the whole torrent of man's soul, is to deny the
conquest of the ages. In political terms it is to aid Conservatism in its rigid
terror of expansion, in its rejection of all human fulness by denial of human
achievement. In economic terms it is to foster the scarcity theory and bow to the
subjection of all the realities of life to the token (money) system. Every man is
the involuntary inheritor of the whole past, whatever the difference between men
in the degree of their enjoyment of that inheritance.
*****
It is necessary to abandon the conception of 'earning a living' as the test of
human virtue, and to accept the full implication of the fact that a 'living' has
been won-won with such overwhelming abundance that the evil forces of the world
are expended in preventing plenty from reaching and fulfilling the great
unsatisfied physical needs of mankind. The moral idea of service no longer
requires emphasis on the physical plane. 'Earning a living,' in the sense of
industrial employment, could easily become the privilege of a highly-skilled few,
leaving the majority free to engage in occupations of infinite variety, whereby
they might contribute vastly more to the unfolding of human destiny than could
conceivably be attained by limiting the idea of world service to participation in
the provision of its primitive necessities. The barrier laid across this human
progression is that of the Token erected supreme over the Substance. That barrier
needs the concentrated direction of the whole weight of the human tide to burst
it. But by its removal all communal values, including land, could be returned to
the community easily and continuously.
November 1926.
*****
The "Single Tax" (so called because it is presumed that the whole revenue
required by the State could be raised by the one levy) consists of the proposal
that all land should be taxed to the full amount of its "economic rent,"
exclusive of all improvements. The underlying idea that private ownership of land
has "no more foundation in morality or reason than ownership of air or sunlight"
(1. Encyclo. Britt: Article on Henry George) is common ground. To Henry George
falls the honour of having first worked out the proposal to give effect by this
method of taxation to the equal right of all men to the use of the earth. The
levy proposed by him was to be based upon the figure paid annually to the
existing owner as rent, and it was assumed that the rent paid represents at any
given time the highest price the land will fetch. "Nothing made by man would be
taxed at all." (2. Ibid.)
The theory is attractive in its ideal justice and in its simplicity. It has
drawn widespread attention from all over the world, especially amongst
English-speaking people. But even at the time it was promulgated, 1879, the
complication of modern mechanical invention, and the intensive exploitation of
the earth, made separation of 'improvements' from the land itself a matter of
extreme difficulty. Two critics in particular-one contemporary and one of the
present day-are worth quotation because neither can be supposed to be hostile to
the underlying intention. Taussig writes:
"One fundamental obstacle is, as regards agricultural land, the difficulty of
measuring the investment made in the soil and the normal return on it. Rent is
not earmarked as a separate return-is inextricably mixed with the complex
processes of tilling the soil and maintaining it." (3. F. W. Taussig, Ph.D.,
LL.D., Prof. Of Economics, Harvard University, in "Principles of Economics," Vol.
II, p.80.)
And again-
"The whole institution of private property would need to be overhauled-in
equity-if this sort of proposal were put through. Land at its existing value
cannot be treated on different principles from those applied to other kinds of
property." (4. Ibid., Vol. II, p. 107.)
Dr. Hugh Dalton, Labour M.P. for Camberwell and Reader in Commerce at the
London School of Economics, raises a series of practical points tha t have to be
faced.
He writes:
"-two grave objections to a single tax (on land). The first is that it would
not, in most modern communities, bring in enough revenue to balance the public
accounts. The second is that it would be a very bad distribution of the burden of
taxation. For a millionaire who owned no land would pay no taxes, while a poor
man who had invested all his savings in the purchase of his house would pay in
taxation a considerable portion of his income." (5. "Principles of Public
Finance," Hugh Dalton, M.A., D.Sc. Econ., p. 42)
"The argument that the incidence of a tax on the value of land, as distinct
from improvements, falls entirely on the landowners, assumes that the latter is
already securing the highest rent that he can from his land. Where he is not
doing so one of the effects of the imposition of a new tax, or the increase of an
existing tax, may be to make him 'look sharply to his rents and take in the
slack.' In this case part of the incidence will be upon the occupier.
" ... The practical valuation of land, as distinct from improvements, is often
very difficult ... "
"The occupier of a building, if engaged in trade, may be able to shift part of
the incidence ... on to the purchasers of his products." (6. Ibid., p. 61 and
62.)
These practical objections have been accentuated to an extreme degree as
'improvements,' in the widest sense, have rapidly outrun the value of the land,
under the stimulus of mechanical power; the whole balance of the argument has
been changed by the creation of entirely new communal values, those arising from
discoveries and inventions of all kinds that lessen the demand for direct labour
on 'land.' The value of all such 'improvements' should be credited to the
community as soon as the original inventors and makers have been rewarded. The
principle enunciated remains unassailable, but its application, literally, to
land would be conclusive and sufficient only in a primitive community; its
application to land alone, were it possible without a cataclysm of evil
consequences, would undoubtedly mitigate the pressure of poverty, even in a
modern community. But the unavoidable injustice of its incidence to those who
happen to be holders of such property to-day, and the immense disturbance of the
'collateral,' largely represented by deeds of land and buildings, held by Banks
as security for loans and overdrafts to social and industrial enterprises that
would result, compel a new analysis. Land in this country would be thrown
wholesale upon the State; and all who had power to do so would withdraw and
invest elsewhere, thus weakening the already diminished attractiveness of the
land and reducing the return from its taxation. To propose solution of the acute
modern social distress by this means, is to fail to observe that a considerable
part of agricultural land, in this country particularly, constitutes not an asset
to the owner but a liability, and that money obtained by investment or labour in
other fields has to be brought in to enable the owner to meet the barest charges
of up-keep. This is not natural or right, for ultimate value is truly said to be
in 'land,' but it indicates that the centre of gravity has shifted, that direct
attack upon ownership of land to-day would not only fail to achieve justice, it
would leave the greater part of the modern economic evil untouched.
The reason of this is not immediately apparent; it has to be sought in the
ascendency of the tokens of wealth over the realities of wealth. In addition to
the new orientation of the physical facts, this overwhelming circumstance has
arisen, through development, parallel with the creation of fabulous communal
values, of the modern money system. That system puts money into circulation at
the time of production, lends it for payment of wages and dividends to the
makers, but when the reclaimed land, the new machine, the new building, the new
process-whatever it may be-ceases to be itself the product of labour for which
remuneration is paid, and passes into the service of further production the
system fails to cancel the money debt by the new wealth created. (7. "The Banker
creates money for industrial purposes, or withdraws it, as he desires ... The
so-called captains of industry are more and more becoming puppets of the bankers.
No nation in its senses would continue in such harness."-Mr. John Wheatley in The
New Leader, December 31st, 1926.) The debt is carried forward into the new
period, and the landowner, the farmer, the manufacturer, the municipal or State
enterprise, is compelled, under threat of bankruptcy, to claim the costs of the
capital 'improvement' from the public in the prices of articles of consumption,
and , to maintain these increased prices long after the 'improvement' has in fact
been paid for by the community, and the money so paid has been spent upon the
bodily needs of those who created the addition to the community's wealth and
received it in exchange for their labour.
*****
The difficulty we have to meet is radical. The financial system ordains not
only that exchanges shall be effected by means of money, it also prescribes that
money shall not be put into circulation except in payment (through wages,
salaries or dividends) for some expenditure of effort upon production (in the
widest sense); and that every payment so made shall be included in prices,
through which it is collected back again, returned to its source (the banks) and
cancelled. In conformity with this principle, the money withdrawn from
land-owners by taxation of land values would in fact, be cancelled out of
circulation. This would be accomplished directly, by repayment of Government debt
to the banks or the banks' private borrowers, and consequent cancellation in bank
ledgers; and indirectly, by the resultant 'contraction of credit,' the effect of
which would be felt in lower remuneration to those engaged in the work of the
community upon a 'cost of living' basis. The lower remuneration would inevitably
reach a point of equality with the new (lower) level of prices that would result
from the smaller quantity of money in cilculation. Thus the advantages of lifting
the present claims of the landlord from production costs would be nullified by
the financial system.
*****
The system of thought and scale of values, which find expression in the
financial system, are so fundamental that no solution of this Age's great
material problems can lie in the realm of negation. A positive transcendence of
idea and of technique is essential. We cannot solve our problem by the
achievement of a reform which would-if completely successful-reestablish Arcadia.
There must indeed be Arcadia, if only for replenishment of the earth with virile
human beings-and for simple happiness. But the perilous achievement of men in
leaving the breast of mother earth and adventuring in realms of nervous
intensity, divorced from Arcadian existence, is not to be interpreted as
perversion. A primitive simplicity of life does not accord with the flowering of
the intellect. Variety of food, clothing, surroundings-is essential to the
sensitive modern, and with it a new order of simplicity, consisting in harmonious
complexity. Art affords guidance on the dangerous road from mere addition of
wants and powers to a poised mastery, in which form, colour, sound, texture, in
infinite variety, become at once expression of the new soul and solvent of the
inevitable stress accompanying her heightened sensibility.
This condition is the result, at its deepest, of the altogether new assertion
of human value, and of unmeasurable possibility in the individual, which is the
essence of Christianity. It constitutes a new world, with new centres of gravity.
It has necessitated the development of money, the token, to utmost
flexibility-that the exchange of goods should be facilitated to the utmost. But
men's powers have outrun their wisdom, and have called forth a subtle,
overwhelming resistance. The token has become the check upon man's genius,
irresistible in its perversion. But as the seed falls into the earth, and roots
strongly before ascending again into stem and flower at the call of the sun, so
it was necessary that the tremendous assertion of the individual will-to-power,
should work in the earth first to lift the 'curse' of Adam. The material fruits
of that intensification must be freely distributed amongst the generations that
have come to birth amidst its prodigality. Springing from the earth, based upon
the earth, but harnessing the lightning, precipitating from the atmosphere the
chemical replenishment of the earth's fertility; and releasing to his service the
imprisoned sun that shone in past aeons-man has given a new meaning to 'land.'
The lightening of toil, made possible by transformation of the very earth
itself into the marvels of mechanical contrivance-driven by solar energy to
produce the work of a thousand unaided men-must be made to serve the purposes of
all, inheritors as we all are of the prodigious labours and invention of the
human race. The service must be without discrimination, as the rain falls upon
the just and the unjust.
We live under a system which denies this, and works with superhuman cunning to
prevent that consummation not only by imprisoning the aspiring human soul in his
mere material achievement; but more, by pressing him back, in frustration and
denial even of his conquests on that plane. So successfully has this restraint
been imposed, that even now the call for 'economy,' the demand to 'work harder
and consume less,' the heartbreaking scarcity,-are believed to be expressions of
natural necessity, that may be alleviated here and there by philanthropic effort,
and borne, with gruesome suffering, by inculcation of 'morality' in the name of
'economic law.'
The characteristic is that of a total reversal not of a partial misdirection.
They shall not have "life more abundant." Nothing less than the antithesis of the
true values, and inversion of the essential instrument of man's florescence,
would serve to enthrone the power that arrests the world's progress and breaks
man's spirit. For this reason, nothing less than concentration of human energy
upon the establishment of true values in the new world, and the erection of the
material instrument right way up, will serve to provide the physical basis upon
which the freedom of man can be preserved. The greater includes the less. The
restoration of land values to the people will be achieved-and can only be
achieved-by restoration of power to the realities of world production, and
imposition of servitude upon the mere tokens of those realities. The matter is
spiritual and technical; not moral and political. It is for all to see and
demand, and for a skilled few to work out, in conformity with the common vision
and the universal desire, with no other criterion of success than fulfilment of
that vision and satisfaction of that demand. The next step will not be disclosed
until this one is taken.
November 1926, February and May 1927.
----- Original Message -----
From: Martin Hattersley
To: socialcredit@elistas.com
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2005 12:38 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: RE: [socialcredit] Questions for Ed Dodson
I was thinking rather of putting together a demonstration game that would
teach Georgists how important the monetary system is in influencing what happens
in the economy, and remind Social Crediters that, whether in rents and site
values, or in the issue of a monetary medium, "the private monopolization of
publicly created values" is an matter that needs to be controlled in the interest
of the community.
I once revised the rules of Monopoly so that the Banker was an actual
banker, charging interest on loans, and playing favorites among the players to
help one and hinder another, all with the idea of becoming the monopolist
himself. It was the most depressing game I have ever played, as the economy
spiralled into depression, with cut price property sales, and everything becoming
controlled by the bank.
What was most interesting, when I tried this on another occasion with a
group from Mensa, was the gleam of revelation that spread on people's faces when
they completed the accounting form that created a bank loan, and learned for the
first time how money came into being!
Martin Hattersley, 1970 10123 99St.,
EDMONTON AB Canada T5J 3H1
Phone (780)423-4081:Fax (780)425-5247
e-mail: jmartinh@shaw.ca
----- Original Mesnh@edmcsage -----
From: Adavans@aol.com
To: socialcredit@elistas.com
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2005 2:11 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: RE: [socialcredit] Questions for Ed Dodson
Martin Hattersley wrote
"George, of course, did not go into the money system in any depth at all.
But
the game of "Monopoly" (founded on an earlier "Landlord Game" designed to
illustrate Georgist principles), certainly illustrates the tendency of the
rental of sites to concentrate ownership and bankrupt the majority of
society. Varying the rules so that the Bank is paid rent by those who land
on mortgaged property might make the bridge we need between George and
Douglas."
Mr. Hattersley, I certainly have wanted to see a bridge between Social
Credit and Georgist thought, and I'm happy to see an advocate of Social Credit
suggest where that bridge may be situated. I wonder if you could clarify and
expand upon the underlined portion of your comments above. Are you possibly
suggesting some kind of cooperative land banking such as has been proposed by
Shann Turnbull at COG?
Regards
Alan Avans
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=martinh@ecn.ab.ca href="mailto:martinh@ecn.ab.ca">Martin Hattersley</A>
</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=socialcredit@elistas.com
href="mailto:socialcredit@elistas.com">socialcredit@elistas.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Saturday, August 20, 2005 3:37 PM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Re: Fw: RE: [socialcredit] Questions for Ed Dodson -- Wally
replies with critique of George by W.T. Symons</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman">Wally -</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman">Symons writes with great style - but I think
he overstates his case.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman">I don't see the "single tax" as a solution to
all problems, and it seems to me it should be balanced by National
Dividend, but just the same, the growing gap that I see between rich and poor in
the world is very much connected with who pays rent for the ground they stand
on, and who receives that rent (or alternatively, owns their home and so doesn't
have to pay it). Enclosures of common land have in the past been a great source
of poverty for the masses.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman">It's interesting that the Pentateuch devises a
very elaborate system to give every family an inalienable inheritance of land,
and to return it to its owner in the Year of Jubilee every fifty years. That may
have been impractical also, but it shows a concern that goes back to antiquity
that everyone should have a inalienable share in natural resources.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman">As to the complications of imposing such a tax
- have you looked at the Income Tax Act lately?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman">Martin Hattersley<BR>1970-10123-99 St.,
<BR>EDMONTON AB CANADA<BR>e-mail: <A
href="mailto:hattersleyjm@interbaun.com">hattersleyjm@interbaun.com</A></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=wmklinck@shaw.ca href="mailto:wmklinck@shaw.ca">Wallace M. Klinck</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=socialcredit@elistas.com
href="mailto:socialcredit@elistas.com">socialcredit@elistas.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Saturday, August 20, 2005 12:39
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: Fw: RE: [socialcredit]
Questions for Ed Dodson -- Wally replies with critique of George by W.T.
Symons</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>
<P>Re the ideas of Henry George, I have excerpted the following critique by
the British Social Credit writer, W. T. Symons from his book: (PDF
attached)</P>
<P>The Coming of Community by W. T. Symons </P>
<P>(London: C. W. Daniel Company, 1931, pp. 150-61)</P>
<P> </P>
<P>(B) SOCIOLOGICAL </P>
<P>THE TAXATION OF LAND VALUES </P>
<P>ARGUMENTATIVE NOTES </P>
<P>To describe private property in land as the root cause of human
disabilities to-day is to deny the element of Time and the stream of dynamic
expansion from the spirit in Man to the outer world. It is to ascribe to
humanity the static quality of the animal creation. </P>
<P>It is true that the power of the few over the many, the alienation of the
many from the common birthright of all men, was partly accomplished by means
of private ownership in natural resources, in the stuff of the earth; but with
every addition to man's conquest over natural forces, every step away from the
pastoral stage of human development, the centrality of that wrong has been
shifted. The discovery and application of electricity has removed a vast field
of communal right from the land altogether; the heaped inventions that
supersede the personal labour of man and counter the cycle of the seasons; the
devices that hasten maturity and arrest decay, by application of artificial
heat to growth and of artificial cold to perishable products of the earth; and
above them all the passing of power from <I>ownership </I>of the earth to
creation and destruction of the tokens by which its value is expressed. These
have carried the 'root' back through the material to the immaterial, and have
presented this age with a new, unprecedented and transcendent circumstance:
<I>Faith in man </I>–Real Credit–is now the focus of world power, and no
longer ownership of the earth upon which man lives. The root question of our
day is: who shall exploit the faith of mankind in the continuance of its own
processes? Shall this total value–the modern equivalent of the primitive
value, the earth–be converted into financial credit and used by mankind for
mankind, or shall it continue to be exploited by the successors to the owners
of the earth, who, with masterly subtlety, have converted the earth and the
whole field of human endeavour into <I>financial credit </I>based upon Real
Credit, and by this device have reduced the world to a private preserve for
the sport of a giddy, fantastic control over the whole blossoming of man's
irresistible fertility; control but not ownership, for to them ownership is
anathema. </P>
<P>*****</P>
<P>Money <I>is </I>power over other men, because it has become essential to
exchange of commodities and property of all kinds, and because it can be
created and destroyed by the stroke of a pen, and is <I>not </I>a commodity.
If money then is both the means of exchange and the power to call or refrain
from calling real wealth into being, it contains the whole possibility of
man's movement over the surface of the earth, with all the development of
human variety that has flowed from that movement. Man by this device is
relieved from the necessity of standing upon one spot: his labour there may be
converted into tokens exchangeable elsewhere. He need not follow one avocation
from birth to death. His labour is cumulative in fact, and may be stored in
tokens, and used at his leisure to explore not only the earth but his own
mind. The genius of civilisation consists in creation of something that
<I>survives </I>the day's toil or the season's produce, something that is
<I>not </I>the land, that is not his who labours. It is the common overflow of
all labour, not merely labour of the moment or labour measured by time, but
labour in that other dimension–intensity, whereof the fruit, in mechanical
invention and in the arts, accumulates and constitutes the cultural
inheritance of mankind. The alienation of the entire cultural inheritance, of
which the land is only the groundwork, is the root of modern distress. The
manna from heaven which must be consumed each day is now the psychic energy
that each day produces, and the thwarting of that energy is the evil that is
breaking the world in pieces. </P>
<P>It is vain to object that any man reaps where he has not sown. All men so
reap and cannot do otherwise; their labour of to-day is but the finger-tip to
the energy of the whole body of the race. Privilege is universal. To curtail
the excesses of privilege–and that in one direction only–instead of expanding
the limitless possibilities won by the whole torrent of man's soul, is to deny
the conquest of the ages. In political terms it is to aid Conservatism in its
rigid terror of expansion, in its rejection of all human fulness by denial of
human achievement. In economic terms it is to foster the scarcity theory and
bow to the subjection of all the realities of life to the token (money)
system. Every man is the involuntary inheritor of the whole past, whatever the
difference between men in the degree of their enjoyment of that
inheritance.</P>
<P>***** </P>
<P>It is necessary to abandon the conception of 'earning a living' as the test
of human virtue, and to accept the full implication of the fact that a
'living' has been won–won with such overwhelming abundance that the evil
forces of the world are expended in preventing plenty from reaching and
fulfilling the great unsatisfied physical needs of mankind. The moral idea of
service no longer requires emphasis on the physical plane. 'Earning a living,'
in the sense of industrial employment, could easily become the privilege of a
highly-skilled few, leaving the majority free to engage in <I>occupations
</I>of infinite variety, whereby they might contribute vastly more to the
unfolding of human destiny than could conceivably be attained by limiting the
idea of world service to participation in the provision of its primitive
necessities. The barrier laid across this human progression is that of the
Token erected supreme over the Substance. <I>That </I>barrier needs the
concentrated direction of the whole weight of the human tide to burst it. But
by its removal all communal values, including land, could be returned to the
community easily and continuously. </P><I>
<P>November </I>1926. </P>
<P>*****</P>
<P>The "Single Tax" (so called because it is presumed that the whole revenue
required by the State could be raised by the one levy) consists of the
proposal that all land should be taxed to the full amount of its "economic
rent," exclusive of all improvements. The underlying idea that private
ownership of land has "no more foundation in morality or reason than ownership
of air or sunlight" (1. <I>Encyclo. Britt</I>: Article on Henry George) is
common ground. To Henry George falls the honour of having first worked out the
proposal to give effect by this method of taxation to the equal right of all
men to the use of the earth. The levy proposed by him was to be based upon the
figure paid annually to the existing owner as rent, and it was assumed that
the rent paid represents at any given time the highest price the land will
fetch. "Nothing made by man would be taxed at all." (2. <I>Ibid</I>.) </P>
<P>The theory is attractive in its ideal justice and in its simplicity. It has
drawn widespread attention from all over the world, especially amongst
English-speaking people. But even at the time it was promulgated, 1879, the
complication of modern mechanical invention, and the intensive exploitation of
the earth, made separation of 'improvements' from the land itself a matter of
extreme difficulty. Two critics in particular–one contemporary and one of the
present day–are worth quotation because neither can be supposed to be hostile
to the underlying intention. Taussig writes: </P>
<P>"One fundamental obstacle is, as regards agricultural land, the difficulty
of measuring the investment made in the soil and the normal return on it. Rent
is not earmarked as a separate return–is inextricably mixed with the complex
processes of tilling the soil and maintaining it." (3. F. W. Taussig, Ph.D.,
LL.D., Prof. Of Economics, Harvard University, in "Principles of Economics,"
Vol. II, p.80.) </P>
<P>And again– </P>
<P>"The whole institution of private property would need to be overhauled–in
equity–if this sort of proposal were put through. Land at its existing value
cannot be treated on different principles from those applied to other kinds of
property." (4. <I>Ibid</I>., Vol. II, p. 107.) </P>
<P>Dr. Hugh Dalton, Labour M.P. for Camberwell and Reader in Commerce at the
London School of Economics, raises a series of practical points tha t have to
be faced. </P>
<P>He writes: </P>
<P>"–two grave objections to a single tax (on land). The first is that it
would not, in most modern communities, bring in enough revenue to balance the
public accounts. The second is that it would be a very bad distribution of the
burden of taxation. For a millionaire who owned no land would pay no taxes,
while a poor man who had invested all his savings in the purchase of his house
would pay in taxation a considerable portion of his income." (5. "Principles
of Public Finance," Hugh Dalton, M.A., D.Sc. Econ., p. 42) </P>
<P>"The argument that the incidence of a tax on the value of land, as distinct
from improvements, falls entirely on the landowners, assumes that the latter
is already securing the highest rent that he can from his land. Where he is
not doing so one of the effects of the imposition of a new tax, or the
increase of an existing tax, may be to make him 'look sharply to his rents and
take in the slack.' In this case part of the incidence will be upon the
occupier. </P>
<P>" ... The practical valuation of land, as distinct from improvements, is
often very difficult ... " </P>
<P>"The occupier of a building, if engaged in trade, may be able to shift part
of the incidence ... on to the purchasers of his products." (6. <I>Ibid</I>.,
p. 61 and 62.) </P>
<P></P>
<P>These practical objections have been accentuated to an extreme degree as
'improvements,' in the widest sense, have rapidly outrun the value of the
land, under the stimulus of mechanical power; the whole balance of the
argument has been changed by the creation of entirely new communal values,
those arising from discoveries and inventions of all kinds that lessen the
demand for direct labour on 'land.' The value of all such 'improvements'
should be credited to the community as soon as the original inventors and
makers have been rewarded. The <I>principle </I>enunciated remains
unassailable, but its application, literally, to land would be conclusive and
sufficient only in a primitive community; its application to land alone, were
it possible without a cataclysm of evil consequences, would undoubtedly
mitigate the pressure of poverty, even in a modern community. But the
unavoidable injustice of its incidence to those who happen to be holders of
such property to-day, and the immense disturbance of the 'collateral,' largely
represented by deeds of land and buildings, held by Banks as security for
loans and overdrafts to social and industrial enterprises that would result,
compel a new analysis. Land in this country would be thrown wholesale upon the
State; and all who had power to do so would withdraw and invest elsewhere,
thus weakening the already diminished attractiveness of the land and reducing
the return from its taxation. To propose solution of the acute modern social
distress by this means, is to fail to observe that a considerable part of
agricultural land, in this country particularly, constitutes not an asset to
the owner but a liability, and that money obtained by investment or labour in
other fields has to be brought in to enable the owner to meet the barest
charges of up-keep. This is not natural or right, for ultimate value is truly
said to be in 'land,' but it indicates that the centre of gravity has shifted,
that direct attack upon ownership of land to-day would not only fail to
achieve justice, it would leave the greater part of the modern economic evil
untouched. </P>
<P>The reason of this is not immediately apparent; it has to be sought in the
ascendency of the tokens of wealth over the realities of wealth. In addition
to the new orientation of the physical facts, this overwhelming circumstance
has arisen, through development, parallel with the creation of fabulous
communal values, of the modern money system. That system puts money into
circulation at the time of production, lends it for payment of wages and
dividends to the makers, but when the reclaimed land, the new machine, the new
building, the new process–whatever it may be–ceases to be itself the product
of labour for which remuneration is paid, and passes into the service of
further production the system fails to cancel the money debt by the new wealth
created. (7. "The Banker creates money for industrial purposes, or withdraws
it, as he desires ... The so-called captains of industry are more and more
becoming puppets of the bankers. No nation in its senses would continue in
such harness."–Mr. John Wheatley in <I>The New Leader</I>, December 31st,
1926.) The debt is carried forward into the new period, and the landowner, the
farmer, the manufacturer, the municipal or State enterprise, is compelled,
under threat of bankruptcy, to claim the costs of the capital 'improvement'
from the public in the prices of articles of consumption, and , to maintain
these increased prices long after the ‘improvement' has in fact been paid for
by the community, and the money so paid has been spent upon the bodily needs
of those who created the addition to the community's wealth and received it in
exchange for their labour. </P>
<P>*****</P>
<P>The difficulty we have to meet is radical. The financial system ordains not
only that exchanges shall be effected by means of money, it also prescribes
that money shall not be put into circulation except in payment (through wages,
salaries or dividends) for some expenditure of effort upon <I>production
</I>(in the widest sense); and that every payment so made shall be included in
<I>prices</I>, through which it is collected back again, returned to its
source (the banks) and cancelled. In conformity with this principle, the money
withdrawn from land-owners by taxation of land values would in fact, be
cancelled out of circulation. This would be accomplished directly, by
repayment of Government debt to the banks or the banks' private borrowers, and
consequent cancellation in bank ledgers; and indirectly, by the resultant
'contraction of credit,' the effect of which would be felt in lower
remuneration to those engaged in the work of the community upon a 'cost of
living' basis. The lower remuneration would inevitably reach a point of
equality with the new (lower) level of prices that would result from the
smaller quantity of money in cilculation. Thus the advantages of lifting the
present claims of the landlord from production costs would be nullified by the
financial system. </P>
<P>***** </P>
<P>The system of thought and scale of values, which find expression in the
financial system, are so fundamental that no solution of this Age's great
material problems can lie in the realm of negation. A positive transcendence
of idea and of technique is essential. We cannot solve our problem by the
achievement of a reform which would–if completely successful–reestablish
Arcadia. There must indeed be Arcadia, if only for replenishment of the earth
with virile human beings–and for simple happiness. But the perilous
achievement of men in leaving the breast of mother earth and adventuring in
realms of nervous intensity, divorced from Arcadian existence, is not to be
interpreted as perversion. A <I>primitive </I>simplicity of life does not
accord with the flowering of the intellect. Variety of food, clothing,
surroundings–is essential to the sensitive modern, and with it a <I>new order
</I>of simplicity, consisting in harmonious complexity. Art affords guidance
on the dangerous road from <I>mere </I>addition of wants and powers to a
poised mastery, in which form, colour, sound, texture, in infinite variety,
become at once expression of the new soul and solvent of the inevitable stress
accompanying her heightened sensibility.</P>
<P></P>
<P>This condition is the result, at its deepest, of the altogether new
assertion of human value, and of unmeasurable possibility in the individual,
which is the essence of Christianity. It constitutes a new world, with new
centres of gravity. It has necessitated the development of money, the token,
to utmost flexibility–that the exchange of goods should be facilitated to the
utmost. But men's powers have outrun their wisdom, and have called forth a
subtle, overwhelming resistance. The token has become the check upon man's
genius, irresistible in its perversion. But as the seed falls into the earth,
and roots strongly before ascending again into stem and flower at the call of
the sun, so it was necessary that the tremendous assertion of the individual
will-to-power, should work in the earth first to lift the 'curse' of Adam. The
material fruits of that intensification must be freely distributed amongst the
generations that have come to birth amidst its prodigality. Springing from the
earth, based upon the earth, but harnessing the lightning, precipitating from
the atmosphere the chemical replenishment of the earth's fertility; and
releasing to his service the imprisoned sun that shone in past aeons–man has
given a new meaning to 'land.' </P>
<P>The lightening of toil, made possible by transformation of the very earth
itself into the marvels of mechanical contrivance–driven by solar energy to
produce the work of a thousand unaided men–must be made to serve the purposes
of <I>all</I>, inheritors as we all are of the prodigious labours and
invention of the human race. The service must be without discrimination, as
the rain falls upon the just and the unjust. </P>
<P>We live under a system which denies this, and works with superhuman cunning
to prevent that consummation not only by imprisoning the aspiring human soul
in his mere material achievement; but more, by pressing him back, in
frustration and denial even of his conquests on <I>that </I>plane. So
successfully has this restraint been imposed, that even now the call for
'economy,' the demand to 'work harder and consume less,' the heartbreaking
scarcity,–are believed to be expressions of natural necessity, that may be
alleviated here and there by philanthropic effort, and borne, with gruesome
suffering, by inculcation of 'morality' in the name of 'economic law.' </P>
<P>The characteristic is that of a total reversal not of a partial
misdirection. They shall <I>not </I>have "life more abundant." Nothing less
than the antithesis of the true values, and inversion of the essential
instrument of man's florescence, would serve to enthrone the power that
arrests the world's progress and breaks man's spirit. For this reason, nothing
less than concentration of human energy upon the establishment of true values
in the new world, and the erection of the material instrument right way up,
will serve to provide the physical basis upon which the freedom of man can be
preserved. The greater includes the less. The restoration of land values to
the people will be achieved–and can only be achieved–by restoration of power
to the realities of world production, and imposition of servitude upon the
mere tokens of those realities. The matter is spiritual and technical; not
moral and political. It is for all to see and demand, and for a skilled few to
work out, in conformity with the common vision and the universal desire, with
no other criterion of success than fulfilment of that vision and satisfaction
of that demand. The next step will not be disclosed until this one is taken.
</P><I>
<P>November </I>1926, <I>February </I>and <I>May </I>1927. </P>
<P> </P></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT:
#000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color:
black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=hattersleyjm@interbaun.com
href="mailto:hattersleyjm@interbaun.com">Martin Hattersley</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=socialcredit@elistas.com
href="mailto:socialcredit@elistas.com">socialcredit@elistas.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Friday, August 19, 2005 12:38
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: Fw: RE: [socialcredit]
Questions for Ed Dodson</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>I was thinking rather of putting together a demonstration game that
would teach Georgists how important the monetary system is in influencing
what happens in the economy, and remind Social Crediters that, whether in
rents and site values, or in the issue of a monetary medium, "the private
monopolization of publicly created values" is an matter that needs to be
controlled in the interest of the community.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I once revised the rules of Monopoly so that the Banker was an actual
banker, charging interest on loans, and playing favorites among the players
to help one and hinder another, all with the idea of becoming the monopolist
himself. It was the most depressing game I have ever played, as the economy
spiralled into depression, with cut price property sales, and everything
becoming controlled by the bank.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>What was most interesting, when I tried this on another occasion with a
group from Mensa, was the gleam of revelation that spread on people's faces
when they completed the accounting form that created a bank loan, and
learned for the first time how money came into being!</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Martin Hattersley, 1970 10123 99St.,<BR>EDMONTON AB Canada
T5J 3H1<BR>Phone (780)423-4081:Fax (780)425-5247<BR>e-mail: <A
href="mailto:jmartinh@shaw.ca">jmartinh@shaw.ca</A><BR></DIV>
<DIV><A href="mailto:martinh@edmc.net">
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT:
#000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Mesnh@edmc</A>sage -----
</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT:
#000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color:
black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=Adavans@aol.com href="mailto:Adavans@aol.com">Adavans@aol.com</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=socialcredit@elistas.com
href="mailto:socialcredit@elistas.com">socialcredit@elistas.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Friday, August 19, 2005 2:11
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: Fw: RE: [socialcredit]
Questions for Ed Dodson</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><FONT id=role_document face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>
<DIV>Martin Hattersley wrote<BR><BR><STRONG>"George, of course, did not go
into the money system in any depth at all. But <BR>the game of "Monopoly"
(founded on an earlier "Landlord Game" designed to <BR>illustrate Georgist
principles), certainly illustrates the tendency of the <BR>rental of sites
to concentrate ownership and bankrupt the majority of <BR>society.
<U>Varying the rules so that the Bank is paid rent by those who land
<BR>on mortgaged property might make the bridge we need between George and
<BR>Douglas."</U></STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG></STRONG> </DIV>
<DIV>Mr. Hattersley, I certainly have wanted to see a bridge between
Social Credit and Georgist thought, and I'm happy to see an advocate of
Social Credit suggest where that bridge may be situated. I
wonder if you could clarify and expand upon the underlined portion of
your comments above. Are you possibly suggesting some kind of
cooperative land banking such as has been proposed by Shann Turnbull at
COG?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Regards</DIV>
<DIV>Alan Avans </DIV>
<DIV><STRONG></STRONG> </DIV>
<DIV><STRONG> </DIV>
<DIV><BR></STRONG><BR></DIV></FONT>
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