Agrarian Justice

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Thomas Paine, 1792.

Agrarian Justice is the title of a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine and published in 1797, in which he suggested that people who own cultivated land owe the community a basic rent, which entitles an inheritance tax , through pensions for the elderly and disabled, as well as a fixed sum should be financed, which should be paid out to all persons when they come of age.

The text was written in the winter of 1795–96, but was not published until a year later, as Paine was unsure whether he should wait until the end of the ongoing war with France. But when he heard a sermon by the then Bishop of Landaff, Richard Watson , in which he discussed the “wisdom of God in the establishment of rich and poor”, he felt compelled to publish it. He wanted to show that "poor" and "rich" are accidental classifications, not God-given distinctions. He goes even further: "Poverty ... is a thing created by that which is called civilized life. It exists not in the natural state." But he also sees the disadvantages of the (assumed by him) natural state of humans: "On the other hand, the natural state is without those advantages which flow from agriculture, arts, science and manufactures".

Analysis and criticism

According to Paine, the process of civilization, whether inevitable or not, has resulted in an inequality of not only wealth but also the well-being of people; nevertheless no one within a civilized system can return to the natural state, which is probably more positive in the case of the poor. He explains this by the amount of land that is required to sustain a human being in a "natural" and a "civilized" world. A culture / population that has increased in number through civilization, science and the arts would therefore have to "starve" if it suddenly returned to its natural state. Paine argues that man in the "natural" state shares the land with the community of all men. In order to condition a better life and the possibility to feed more people, the reason must be worked on or cultivated. He attributes property to the fact that it is impossible to distinguish the improvement work done on the property (which is the property of the cultivator) from the property itself (which is common property). In order to take into account the fact that the land is generally owned, which is assumed to be natural, Paine argues that landowners (actually: land cultivators) pay rent to the general public for the land on which they carry out their improvement work and through which they make a profit ("ground-rent ") are guilty. Historically, he tries to show that neither the hunter-gatherer nor the shepherd knew property; According to Paine, no individual property was recognized or accepted in the Old Testament either. Paine calls the cultivation of the land, with which the development of the assumed individual landed property goes hand in hand, both the greatest blessing and the greatest scourge of mankind, since on the one hand it allows a life outside the natural misery and poverty, but at the same time very much many people are deprived of any (unconditional) livelihood. Here he argues that he is not concerned with welfare, but demands a right based on the original or natural general property of the land - hence the title of the pamphlet, "Agricultural Justice" instead of "Agricultural Law". Here he also explains that such a right only became possible or conceivable through certain revolutions in the system of government (and possibly in culture). Therefore, he first absolves the living beneficiaries of the property from any responsibility; They only incur guilt if they do not implement his proposed system (or a similar one).

Proposed system

With regard to the private sale of land owned by the Crown (or the general public), Paine proposed a detailed taxation plan for each generation of landowners to address the needs of those who do not own land. His thoughts can be seen as a forerunner of the modern approach of citizen benefits or unconditional basic income . This taxation should take place when ownership passes from one generation to the next, i.e. when the previous owner dies; this is the right moment, because, according to Paine, "the comfort gives nothing: the receiver pays nothing". He argues that there is no logically derived right to inheritance anyway. The money was to be raised through an inheritance tax of 10% on direct and a higher percentage on indirect (not closely related) inheritance. According to his estimates, this would have been £ 5,700,000 a year in England at the time.

Approximately two thirds of the fund should be used to make annuity payments of £ 10 / year to anyone over the age of 50; Paine assumed this age to be the usual life expectancy.

The majority of the remaining amount was to be used to make a fixed payment of £ 15 to all men and women when they reached the age of majority (21 at the time). “A one-time stipend of 15 pounds sterling would be paid to each citizen upon attaining age 21, to give them a start in life”.

The small remainder should be used for payments to the “lame and blind”.

To clarify: The weekly wage of a farm laborer at the time was about 9 shillings , which would mean an annual wage of £ 23 for a healthy man with permanent employment.

Philosophical background

The text is based on the assumption that "the land, in its natural, uncultivated state ... was common property of mankind". The concept of private property evolved inevitably from the development of agriculture , since it was impossible to distinguish ownership of the improvement of a land from ownership of the land itself. Accordingly, Paine saw private property as a necessity, while at the same time emphasizing that the basic needs of all had to be met by the landowners, who had taken their land from the original common property. This is, so to speak, a “payment” to those who have no reason for agreeing to the system of property ownership.

See also

literature

  • Thomas Paine: Common sense [with] Agrarian justice. Penguin Books, London 2004, ISBN 0-14-101890-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Agrarian Justice , Wikisource edition, paragraph 12.
  2. ^ Foreword by the author In: Common sense [with] Agrarian justice. Penguin, 2004, pp. 80-81.
  3. ↑ German: "The donor loses nothing, the recipient pays nothing."
  4. ↑ Common sense [with] Agrarian justice. Penguin, 2004, pp. 92-93.
  5. ^ Social Security History. In: Official Website of the US Social Security Administration. Retrieved June 3, 2013 .
  6. ↑ Common sense [with] Agrarian justice. Penguin, 2004, pp. 93-95.
  7. ↑ The figures correspond to the annual average for 1795, taken from tables on p. 706 In: AL Bowley: The Statistics of Wages in the United Kingdom During the Last Hundred Years. Part I: Agricultural Wages, In: Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Volume 61, No. 4, 1898, pp. 702-722. JSTOR 2979856

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