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PROPOSITION

If the yield of the tax on rent is employed for the benefit of the cultivators of free land, for instance as a premium on imported grain or as a subsidy for the cultivation of waste land, the State, if it wishes, can confiscate rent completely. The burden of a tax on rent, when the yield of the tax is so employed, cannot be shifted.

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The ground-rent of cities, which in our industrial age very nearly equals the total rent on agricultural land, is determined on exactly the same principle, though in somewhat different circumstances.

The value of the land upon which Berlin is built was estimated in 1901 at 2911 million marks which, with interest at 4% corresponds to a rent of 116 millions. This sum alone, distributed over the 4 million hectares of the province of Brandenburg, is equal to a rent of 30 marks a hectare. With the ground-rent of the other towns of the province added, the urban rent may amount to about 40 marks a hectare, a sum which, considering the poverty of the soil and the large areas of water, swamp and forest, possibly exceeds the rent on agricultural land. The position of the province of Brandenburg, a region with poor soil yet containing the capital of the German Empire is, indeed, exceptional; nevertheless these figures show the great importance of urban ground-rent at the present day.

These figures are likely to surprise many readers; but, as someone has justly remarked: it is becoming doubtful whether, measured by the rental, our great landed estates are not to be looked for in Berlin rather than, as hitherto, in Silesia.

Ground-rents are thus determined by precisely the same law that governs the rents of agricultural land and raw materials. All the advantages of the city (among which we should mention the division of labour), are reaped by the ground-landlord. Just as German wheat is sold for the price it would have fetched if it had been grown in Siberia and taxed at the frontier, so the goods produced in a city must be exchanged at the prices they would have fetched if loaded with all the disadvantages of goods produced far away from industrial centres.

Agricultural rent captures all the advantages of situation and nature, leaving waste-land and wilderness for the cultivator; city ground-rent claims for itself all the advantages of society, of mutual aid, of organisation, of education, and reduces the proceeds of those engaged in city industry and commerce to the level of producers isolated in the country.

The Meaning of the Word Free-Land

1. Competition among men can be carried on equitably and in accordance with its high purpose only if all special private or public rights over land are abolished.

2. All men without exception have an equal right to the earth without distinction of race, religion, culture or bodily constitution. So everyone must be allowed to move wherever his heart, his will, his health prompt him to go, and there to enjoy the same right to the land as the natives. No private individual, no State, no society may retain any kind of privileges over the land. For we are all natives of the earth.

3. The idea of Free-Land admits of no qualification. It is absolute. In relation to the earth there are no rights of nations, no prerogatives of sovereignty, no rights of self-determination of States. Sovereignty over the earth rests with men, not with nations. For this reason no nation has the right to erect boundaries and to levy import-duties. Free-Land means that the earth is to be conceived as a globe on which there is no import or export of goods. Hence Free-Land also implies universal free-trade and complete elimination of all tariff boundaries. National boundaries must become simply administrative boundaries, such as, for instance, the boundaries between the separate cantons of Switzerland.

4. From this description of Free-Land it follows that such expressions as "English coal", "German potash", "American oil" and so forth can be understood only in a geographical sense. For everyone, no matter to what race he may belong, has the same right to English coal, German potash and American oil. The land is leased to the cultivators by way of public auction in which every inhabitant of the globe, without exception, can compete.

5. The rent so received goes to the public treasury and is distributed monthly in equal shares to mothers according to the number of their young children. No mother, no matter from where she comes, will be excluded from this distribution.

6. The parcelling of the land is governed entirely by the needs of the cultivators. That is, small lots for small families, large lots for large families. Also large tracts for communistic, anarchistic, social-democratic colonies, for co-operative societies, or religious communities.

7. Any nation, State, race, language-community, religious body or economic organisation seeking to restrict Free-Land in any way is to be outlawed.

8. The present landowners will receive full compensation, in the form of government securities, for the loss of their rents.