PART 5: On Thinking and Living in an Imperfect World
"Should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West, such as it is today, as a model for my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. . . . [I]ts present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive."
Alexander
Solzhenitsyn, Address to the
Harvard
University graduating class, 1978
Chapter 15:
Beyond Utopia--
Thinking about What Ought to Be
Chapter Objectives
After studying this chapter you should understand:
1. The differences between "what ought to be?" and "what ought to be done?" and why answering one question does not automatically give us the answer to the other.
2. Why systematic thinking about human nature is an important part of political analysis.
3. The dangers of utopianism, and why, in spite of these, thinking about an ideal society can be very profitable.
4. The differences between a metaconstitution and a utopia.
5. Three basic Metaconstitutional propositions.
6. The basic institutions and rules laid down in the proposed Metaconstitution.
7. Why Henry George argued that poverty is a problem created by progress, and how his basic diagnosis of the cause of this problem supports the Metaconstitution's proposed solution to the problem of property.
8. How George's proposed single tax rests on questionable assumptions about proper levels of government expenditure.
9. How our proposed social dividend system separates the issues of net rents and government expenditures while still remaining faithful to the spirit of George's analysis.
Key Terms
Assembly
net
rents
Board of Trustees
political investment
Contractor
general
single tax
improvements
utopia
metaconstitution
There is on earth no power which can rightfully make a grant of exclusive ownership in land. If all existing men were to unite to grant away their equal rights, they could not grant away the right of those who follow them. For what are we but tenants for a day? Have we made the earth, that we should determine the rights of those who after us shall tenant it in their turn?*
THREE QUESTIONS OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
American government has many environments. It has a geographical environment--here, plains; there, forests; mountains in one area, valleys in another. It has a geopolitical environment--weak, reasonably friendly countries or oceans on its borders, stronger and less friendly powers only 30 minutes away by intercontinental ballistic missile. It has an historical environment--the British colonial experience, the Revolution, nation building tested by the Civil War, the Reconstruction, and so on. And American government has a philosophical environment, opinions held and expressed by various Americans which have been reflected in their actions.
All environments limit actions. Not least is this so with our philosophical environment, consisting of our own ideas as well as those of the people with whom we must deal. It is appropriate, therefore, to conclude our discussion of thinking about politics by turning our attention away from American institutions and toward ideas. Present American institutions are only part of a larger picture in both space and time, and we must see them in context in order to appreciate their full significance.
All
political philosophizing appears to deal with three kinds of
questions:
1. What ought to be?
2. What ought to be done?
3.
What is the nature of man?
What Ought to Be?
Which is the better way to arrange a legislature, unicameral or bicameral? Should there be an Eminent Domain Clause in the Constitution? Is poverty bad? Should the U.S. be in the United Nations? These are all questions about what ought to be. It is also, of course, possible to classify statements in terms of the type of question to which they give answers. "There should be no income tax" is a statement about what ought to be. So is "The U.S. should not have abandoned South Vietnam to the Communists." While this latter assertion sounds as if it might refer to what ought to be done, its reference to the past converts it automatically into a proposition about what ought to be. Our present actions cannot affect the past.
What Ought to Be Done?
"What ought to be done" can refer only to present or future actions, not to actions already taken in the past. Should we try to send another man to the moon? Should we convict the defendant? For whom should I vote in the presidential election? Should the Supreme Court strike down the graduated income tax as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause? Answers to such questions appear in propositions such as: "We should impeach the whole Supreme Court for abuse of powers." "Universities should sell all stock in corporations doing business with South Africa (or the U.S.S.R.)." Or more indirectly, "Anybody who votes for candidate so-and-so next week is an idiot."
What is the Nature of Man?
This refers, not to human actions directly, but to the qualities that all human beings have in common. Are people naturally good but made bad by their environment, an unhappy childhood, etc.? Or are they naturally bad and forced to adopt at least a thin veneer of civilization by their environment?
Answers to the three kinds of questions are separate but strongly related. Our concept of what ought to be may rest on our perceptions of the nature of man. Our decisions about what ought to be done will be a function of our beliefs about what ought to be, in the same sense that the area of a rectangle is a function of its length. That is, there is a relationship between the two ideas, but we cannot decide what to do merely on the basis of what we think ought to be, any more than we can calculate the rectangle's area merely by knowing its length. Area is also a function of width; likewise, what ought to be done is also a function of what is, of current circumstances that both limit our available actions and affect the consequences that different possible actions may produce.
A Hypothetical Example of the Differences Between What Ought to Be and What Ought to Be Done
For example, imagine that you have been shipwrecked on a small island. The island is one on which you can survive, but by no means as comfortably as Robinson Crusoe did during his fictional exile. Not far away, however, is another island. Studying it with binoculars, you conclude that it would be a far better place to live. Therefore: "I ought to be on the other island." What ought to be done? Consider the following possible facts: First, you cannot swim. Second, there is nothing on your present island with which to construct a boat. Third, the waters between the islands are filled with sharks. Under these circumstances it is quite reasonable to say both:
1. What ought to be? I ought to be on the other island.
2. What ought to be done? I ought to stay right where I am.
In terms of A ---> X + Y, the only immediate actions that could deliver the goal X (being on the other island) are either unavailable or are likely to produce side effects Y so nasty as to make getting to the other island either impossible or too costly. You would rather be on your present island and in good health than to drown, be devoured or maimed trying to get over to the other one. And this is in spite of the fact that, abstractly, the other island is a much better place to be. Although the two questions appear very similar, deciding what ought to be does not tell us what ought to be done.
Examples from the Past
Not all political philosophers deal with all three basic questions to the same extent, or in the same way. Machiavelli's Prince, for example, focuses on what ought to be done to a much greater extent than earlier classics. But Machiavelli's analysis certainly rested on some conceptions of human nature ("men in general . . . are ungrateful, fickle, and deceitful. . . ." [Footnote 1]) And he was not unconcerned with what ought to be, voicing a strong desire in his conclusion that Italy should be united into one country and foreign rulers driven out.[Footnote 2] Plato's Republic, on the other hand, appears to focus much more on what ought to be in its description of an ideal society.
Political Analysis
The three questions provide convenient points of departure for certain kinds of political analysis. In the context of decision theory, for example, what ought to be? focuses our attention on the evaluation of X and Y. X stands for things that we think ought to be, and Y tends to stand for things that we think ought not to be. (It is, of course, possible for desired side effects of an action in pursuit of goal X, an "extra dividend," to exist. But this could just as well be considered additional elements of X.) What ought to be done, in its turn, focuses attention on the left hand side of the A -- X + Y formulation, on the actions that we are considering taking and on the circumstances within which we will be acting.
Our answers to both of these questions are in turn connected with our position on the nature of man. As indicated earlier, every political theory contains assumptions, conclusions, or implications about human nature. How could it be otherwise when politics is simply the actions and interactions of human beings on a large scale? There are two ways that the propositions about human nature connected with a philosophical position can be tested and, perhaps, challenged. First, we can compare them with our observations of others and introspection (or observation) of ourselves. If a theory implies or derives from statements about human nature that are incompatible with our experience, so much the worse for the theory. True, we must be very careful to distinguish between experience and the conclusions that we draw from it. General conclusions about Italians, or Republicans, or blacks, or bureaucrats based on one encounter with one individual who falls into that category will undoubtedly be wrong.
Another way that claims about human nature can be tested is to see whether they are logically consistent. Experience may be compatible with a whole range of propositions about human nature, but not all of these propositions can be true at the same time.
We should be especially cautious in accepting claims that human nature can change. We must try to distinguish human nature in its fundamental sense from particular manifestations of that basic nature. Capacity to learn a language seems to be an element of human nature; the language that is actually learned--French, English, Swahili, or Chinese--is a manifestation of that nature. Government appears to be required by human nature; the various governments that have existed are manifestations of that nature. Of course, any political theory that assumes more than one kind of basic human nature (as distinguished from manifestations) must be given our undivided suspicion. Utopias and grand "crank" solutions to all human problems all too often incorporate incompatible or patently unrealistic views of human nature.
UTOPIAS AND METACONSTITUTIONS
Utopias-visions of the general contours of a perfect society- -lie in the dimension of what ought to be. Plato's Republic, as we previously noted, is a leading example of a work that is utopian, at least in form. It proposes to solve the problem of ruler greed by forbidding the guardians from owning any property or having any money at all in their personal capacities. Their basic requirements would be filled, at a rather spartan level, by the state. Nor would they be allowed to form normal marriages or have children identifiable as their own, or to do anything else that might develop loyalties or affections tempting them to act contrary to the welfare of their subjects. Other leading utopias have been written by Sir Thomas More, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and many less well known figures.
Dangers of Utopias
The dangers of utopias have become well appreciated in modern times. As Friedrich Hayek correctly notes, "Utopia, like ideology, is a bad word today." [Footnote 3] When different conceptions of utopia are compared, we find striking differences in values and prescriptions. One person's utopia may be another's hell.
If proposed utopias have any common denominator, it is probably egalitarianism. But there is more consensus that equality is good than about the meaning of equality. Since equality can refer to natural endowments (brains, beauty), to distribution of production, to contributions to production, to treatment by government, agreement that equality is good need not constitute any agreement at all. The key question, according to John Hospers, is "equality of what?":
Would it be desirable if everyone in the world had an equal supply of insulin, an equal number of electric fans, an equal number of potatoes, and equal number of books? Such equality would be about as absurd as anything could be . . . . Footnote 4
Among socialist images of utopia, the dominant kind today, the drive towards equality of consumption--not in the absurd sense of equal insulin suggested by Hospers, but in the sense of equal purchasing power--is very strong.
Politically decreed equality of consumption removes a strong and civilized incentive for people to participate in producing the goods to be distributed. One must then distribute equal shares of a smaller total, or use some power other than that of the purse to get people to produce. If the socialists' preferred solution to this problem--the power of the pen--does not deliver the goods, the only remaining alternative is the sword.
Utopias present another danger. When combined with the approach to rational action expressed in A ---> X + Y, they provide justification for outrageous actions. There is a tendency to equate a utopia, the best possible way a human society could be arranged, with infinite value. The utopia is seen as literally priceless. If this desired state of affairs is the goal X then any action promising to deliver it or even bring it closer appears to be both rational and moral, no matter how bad the side effects Y For Y is always a finite quantity, and when you subtract a finite amount of evil from an infinite quantity of hypothetical good, the good always greatly outweighs the bad. Utopia thus appears to be a good bargain even if you have to kill and torture billions of innocent bystanders in the process.
Finally, utopias and utopians have had a strong tendency to exaggerate the importance of politics in human life. The dangers of doing this will be explored in Chapter 17.
Benefits of Utopian Visions
Notwithstanding the serious dangers presented by utopian thinking, it can be very beneficial. James Gregor says that:
In the . . . past, it was generally assumed that the professional thinker in matters political was charged with the responsibility of demonstrating (in some significant sense of that term) that one variety of political organization was particularly praiseworthy and that any alternative was, in varying measure and degree, defective. Footnote 5
Even Hayek, who observed that utopia "is a bad word today," followed this statement up immediately with the following words:
But an ideal picture of a society which may not be wholly achievable, or a guiding conception of the overall order to be aimed at, is nevertheless not only the indispensable precondition of any rational policy, but also the chief contribution that science can make to the solution of the problems of practical policy. Footnote 6
Earlier in his career, Hayek's essay "The Intellectuals and Socialism" (1941) sounded the same theme:
What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a program which seems neither a mere defense of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but a truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty (including the trade unions), which is not too severely practical, and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible.
A utopia can give us a star to steer by in the confusion of our day-to-day political activities. It can provide a systematic yardstick for evaluating actions in a principled way. In rational action, we must not only try to anticipate the chief consequences of our leading alternative actions, but we must evaluate them. A utopian vision can be a partial basis for such evaluations, and may help us to avoid acting inconsistently as we move from one specific decision to another. It can thus facilitate our efforts to make political investments--giving up some currently attainable achievements in order to obtain future circumstances within which we can act more effectively to get what we want. And efforts to think systematically and abstractly about what the best possible arrangements might be help us to avoid the temptation to whitewash existing ones as themselves ideal.
Not only can a utopian vision help us move things forward, but it may help us avoid set-backs. A person with clearly articulated standards may be able to identify bad social trends early enough to stop them quickly while they are still in their infancy.
Metaconstitution Distinguished from Utopia
Utopias visualize the ideal society. Metaconstitutions--a concept of the best possible government--are far less ambitious. Government is an important part of every society, but it is not the only part. A metaconstitutional government, therefore, would not be a panacea for all of mankind's ills. People would not live happily forever after. Sooner or later, all would die. Many good things--love, friendship, a sense of personal worth, even health--cannot be achieved via government.
Love and friendship are Gemeinschaft relations--as we noted in Chapter 3. Politics and government are strictly Gesellschafts, associations valued for what they can give us and not in their own right. Love and friendship thus are in a completely different dimension from government. In politics, "friendship" is a matter of convenience--perhaps temporary, perhaps enduring.
A sense of personal worth may not be impossible to develop via political involvement, but surely this is not one of the most promising avenues. The compromises, the name-calling, the exaggeration, the selfishness that dominate political dealings may do no personal harm to individuals who already have a sense of self-esteem, but they are unlikely to promote development of such a sense in those who have never attained it. As for health, we need only remember Humpty Dumpty; even the government boys, with all their resources, couldn't put him back together again.
THE METACONSTITUTION SUMMARIZED
Throughout this text we have repeatedly introduced specific principles and propositions of good government. Political science cannot be the mere study of "the facts," for there are an almost infinite number of possible facts that could be noted and examined. Which of these facts should we single out for attention? The answer to this question depends entirely on our purposes in studying the subject, and these in turn inevitably draw us into the realm of values and ethical propositions. Nor can the problem be avoided by saying that we should study those facts that are "important." Important for what purpose? Important to whom? Euphemisms only conceal the evaluation that is going on; they do not eliminate it.
Under these circumstances it appears that the only fair thing to do is to articulate our values--so far as we hold them self- consciously--as openly and forthrightly as possible. Students are thus put squarely on notice that the analysis they are reading is based on certain normative propositions. Since these propositions are openly expressed rather than implicit or cleverly concealed, students can think about them and accept or reject them without first having to dig them out from under a mass of pseudo-scientific, objective-sounding rubbish. "Objectivity" in political analysis does not mean detachment or lack of devotion to ethical principles. Rather, it means respect for evidence and a search for ideas that are not mutually contradictory.
To smooth the way of students or instructors who believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with the metaconstitutional analysis upon which this book is based, we will now pull the vision of good government expressed here into a single package. The elements of any system are best understood in the context of the whole. But these elements had to be introduced individually, for one can only think about a limited number of new things at once.
The Three Metaconstitutional Propositions
The basic Metaconstitutional principles developed in this book can be expressed in three propositions:
1. Sanctions are legitimate only when imposed by a government, and only when their application to a specific individual is deduced from a general rule of action laid down in advance.
2. The right to enact rules enforceable by sanctions must be the temporary monopoly of an individual or individuals whose incumbency can be challenged in periodic competitive elections in which all adults subject to their jurisdiction can vote.
3. An ideal government must be universal.
Proposition one is the rule of law. Proposition two refers to the requirement of democracy. Democracy and the rule of law are the two necessary elements of constitutionalism. Proposition three states the requirement of world government.
As we have seen, there are hopeless tensions between the requirements of democracy (governmental openness and a well- informed public) and those of successful diplomacy and war (secrecy, confidentiality, surprise). Furthermore, there is no inherent place to draw boundaries between independent countries, and the cleanest solution to this problem is to draw no such boundaries. Boundaries of integral units in a federal system may remain, but under a world government they will no longer be worth fighting about. War is a great evil in human affairs even though many good technological developments have grown out of wars and the preparation for wars. Only under a universal government can the chances of war be minimized. Thus, although under present circumstances any constitution must provide for foreign relations, any such provision is inherently incompatible with the Metaconstitution. The text of a possible Metaconstitution which follows conspicuously ignores foreign affairs.
Metaconstitution: A Possible Text and Comments
|
Article I. Basic Structure |
|
|
Article II. The Assembly |
This is an effort to reap the accountability benefits of single- member districts and to satisfy the one man, one vote value without creating intolerable problems in distracting and redistricting the constituencies. Weighted voting in the Assembly is practical in the age of computers. No size is specified; if the Assembly is reduced to one person, we would have the hypothetical extreme case discussed in Chapter 7. |
|
2. Assemblors shall serve a four-year term unless the Assembly provides otherwise by bodre effective following the next general elections to the Assembly. Assemblors elected to fill a vacancy shall serve until the next general elections. |
|
|
3. The Assembly shall have supreme power, within
limits established by this Constitution, to enact general rules of
action enforceable by sanctions, and to determine the terms on
which the government is willing to enter into voluntary
associations for the exchange or transfer of inducements with
other parties. |
This clause distinguishes laws and bodres, and is essential if government is not to be regarded as having a single aspect or essence, with all the false conclusions reached when one assumes that "a government action is a government action." The distinction is grounded in the sharp differentiation between sanctions and inducements which is critical to proper thinking about private associations and regulation. It must particularly be understood that to refrain from imposing a threatened sanction does not constitute an inducement and to refrain from granting or continuing to grant an inducement does not constitute a sanction. (See Chapter 3.) |
|
4. No ex post facto laws shall be en- acted. |
It is impossible for an action to violate a rule that has not been passed yet. A government that can impose sanctions for violations of rules enacted after the action was taken is not limited in what it can do to anybody. It need merely look at its victim's past actions, outlaw one of them, then punish him. |
|
5. Tax laws shall expire automatically after two years; and all other laws after 10 years. Appropriations shall be for one year only, and all other bodres shall expire automatically after 12 years. |
This is an effort to force periodic reconsideration of all laws and bodres. The different expiration periods also serve to draw attention to the important distinction between laws and bodres. |
|
6. Tax laws and bodres appropriating money shall be made exclusively by the Assembly. Other laws may be made by the contractor general or the Supreme Court, but shall not come into effect or constitute the ground for deciding any case until they have been published and laid before the Assembly for 60 days; they shall be void if the Assembly so decides during the 60 days, or any time thereafter. Other bodres may be made by the contractor general. Article III. The Contractor General 1. The contractor general shall be chosen by direct election for a four-year term unless the Assembly provides otherwise by bodre. His base salary shall not be increased or decreased during any one term of office. |
This is an effort to relieve judges from the temptation to legislate in the guise of interpreting the Constitution, by giving them an explicit but subordinate right to legislate openly. The exception for taxes and appropriations is a defense of the values expressed in the phrase, "no taxation without representation," and a reaction to present judicial highhandedness in money matters. |
|
2. The Assembly shall establish rules for the succession to this office in the event of a vacancy or disability. Without such rules, the presiding officer of the Assembly shall serve as contractor general pending decision by the Assembly. 3. The contractor
general shall have supreme power to make contracts on behalf of
the government, subject to the requirements that: 4. Bills for the enactment of laws may be vetoed by the contractor general unless they are repassed by the Assembly following the next general elections. The contractor general's veto of a bodre shall be final. |
It is important that occupancy of the top executive office be constant, and that no disputes arise regarding who occupies that office at any given time. |
|
5. Neither law nor bodre shall make it the duty of the contractor general to enter into any contract to which he has not committed himself or the government by a previous contract. |
Since contracts require mutual consent of both parties, there can be no duty to contract. This is just as true of government- as-contractor as of any other party. |
|
6. All laws shall apply equally to the actions of government- as-contractor and to those of private citizens and associations. |
This is implicit in the definition of laws as general rules of action, but it bears emphasizing. The rule forbids such things as the doctrine that government-as-contractor is immune from liability for the torts of its agents, tax exemptions for government corporations, and direct grants of contract-making monopolies to government as done in Soviet-style constitutions. |
|
Article IV. The Supreme Court |
|
|
2. The Supreme Court shall have total discretion as to which cases it will decide, provided only that at least one of the parties requests it to assume jurisdiction. The Court shall decide no more than six cases during any one calendar year, and shall propose no more than 100 words of legislation. |
This work load limit is an effort to allow the Supreme Court to think out its cases very carefully. This will render them as "philosophical" as it is possible for "kings" to be. Six good decisions a year are better than 200 bad ones. |
|
3. The base salary of a Supreme Court justice shall not be increased or decreased during his tenure. |
We try here to maximize judicial independence. Given the long tenure of judges, this might work a hardship if there is serious inflation. However there are incentives built into this Constitution to hold inflation down, one of which is this clause! |
|
4. The Supreme Court shall have the duty of striking down all pseudo-laws and all other laws or bodres that conflict with provisions of this Constitution. |
Pseudo-laws, imposing sanctions on people other than for violating general rules of action, must be struck down by the Court or the Metaconstitution will exist on paper only. No such requirement applies to bodres, since no sanctions are involved in bodres. |
|
Article V. The Board of Trustees |
This board serves as the administrative head of government-as- trustee. Its salaries, and those of its administrative organization, must be paid out of general tax revenues, not out of money taken from the Trust Fund. |
|
2. The right to use land and all other scarce natural resources shall be auctioned to the highest bidder for limited periods of time by the Board. Receipts shall be placed in the Trust Fund. |
Here we incorporate our theoretical solution to the problem of property. |
|
3. Legal monopolies shall be established only by government-as- trustee for the public. Each privilege shall be leased for limited periods of time to the highest bidder. Receipts shall be placed in the Trust Fund. |
Monopolies are dangerous but may be in the public interest. Here, we allow competition for the temporary right to be the monopolist, and benefits go not to the monopolist, not to the government, but to the public for which government acts as a trustee. |
|
4. Government-as-contractor shall pay taxes on the same basis as any private association or person engaged in similar actions. However, taxes paid by government-as-contractor shall be deposited in the Trust Fund rather than in the public treasury, unless they derive from a different level of government in a federal system. |
Taxability of government-as-contractor is implicit in the definition of laws as general rules of action. But a government can hardly pay taxes to itself. (Even this exercise could clarify the cost accounting of government enterprises, though.) In order to make taxes paid by government enterprises just as much a real cost of doing business as those paid by private operators, the money must go to someone other than government. Placing it in the Trust Fund accomplishes this. |
|
5. Annually, or more often if so determined by the Board of Trustees, a social dividend shall be disbursed, with exactly equal amounts of the Trust Fund designated to every natural person under the government's jurisdiction. As nearly as possible, all money in the Fund shall be paid out. At the discretion of the Board, all or part of the dividends accruing to nonadults may be placed in another trust fund, each individual's accumulated share of which shall be paid in a lump sum when that person reaches the age of majority. |
The social dividend is the mechanism by which individual members of the public receive their shares of public benefits. The second trust fund for minors allows for the possibility that paying all of a child's dividend to the parents or other guardians might encourage undue population increase, and that parents might not use the funds for the benefit of their children. |
|
Article VI. Miscellaneous Provisions. |
An effort to prevent assemblers from being judges in their own cases. |
|
2. Actual salaries paid each calendar year to the contractor general, assemblors, trustees, and Supreme Court justices shall be their respective base salaries less 10% for each 1% inflation or deflation in the value of governmentbacked or regulated money during the same period; provided that a change in the value of such money in the opposite direction from that of the immediately preceding year shall count against the base salaries only to the extent that it exceeds the change for the previous year. |
Here we attempt to motivate all top officials to use their influence in favor of monetary stability rather than against it. |
|
3. Law being general rules of action, no sanctions shall be imposed for a person's beliefs about what is true or for his desires. The actions of speaking or writing particular things may be prohibited by law only when violation of a specific law is being advocated or justified, and the punishment shall be no greater than that provided for the illegal action being talked about. To argue in favor of repealing any law can never be illegal. |
Beliefs and desires are not actions, though they may underlie actions. Since sanctions can be imposed only for actions, full freedom of belief and desire is guaranteed. To promise or threaten to do what you have a legal right to do, or to seek to induce another party to do what it has a right to do, is also always legal. But to promise or threaten to do what you do not have a legal right to do, or to seek to induce another party to do what it has no legal right to do, is an action which government legitimately may seek to inhibit. Since it is always legal for the government to repeal a law, arguments to repeal a law (as distinguished from violating it) must always be legal; likewise for arguments in favor of amending the Constitution. |
|
4. No law shall regulate the price at which exchanges between private parties can take place. |
To outlaw exchanges at a given price is to impose sanctions not for illegal actions but for the "illegal desire" to induce somebody to do what he has a legal right to do. This violates Clause 3, above. |
|
5. No sanctions except for incarceration pending trial shall be imposed without trial in a regular court. |
|
|
6. Amendments to this Constitution shall require
either: |
Here, we prevent the Assembly from monopolizing the right to amend the Constitution. We also provide for an appeal from "the public drunk to the public, sober." |
PROGRESS, POVERTY, AND HENRY GEORGE
The analysis of an ideal government or metaconstitution presented here in a not-yet completed form, has its progenitor in the works of Henry George, an American philosopher who wrote and worked a hundred years ago.
Henry George's ideas never quite caught on, though they attracted considerable attention in their day and still have their staunch partisans. Perhaps there were some weaknesses in George's analysis; undoubtedly it complied with the general rule of thumb that all discourse is a mixture of sense and nonsense. However, experience during the century since George wrote seems to confirm what he was saying. And the categories, especially government-as-trustee II, growing out of association theory, suggest some modifications in the details of George's proposals that might eliminate many of the problems posed by his ideas as originally presented.
George's Basic Analysis
Readers often fail to distinguish between George's basic analysis of political economy and his particular proposals for approximating the ideal. The modern reader who knows anything about George tends to see him as the father of the so-called single tax. As we will see, there are serious problems with George's proposal that all government revenue be derived from a single tax on land, including the ease with which his single tax is confused with the modern property tax. But the fact that George's prescription is flawed does not prove that his basic diagnosis was incorrect.
George begins with an apparent paradox which he emphasizes in the title of his main book, Progress and Poverty. It is in the countries where civilization and progress are the most advanced that the most intolerable forms of poverty are found:
It is in the older countries--that is to say, the countries where material progress has reached later stages--that widespread destitution is found in the midst of the greatest abundance. Go into one of the new communities where Anglo- Saxon vigor is just beginning the race of progress; where the machinery of production and exchange is yet rude and inefficient; where the increment of wealth is not yet great enough to enable any class to live in ease and luxury; where the best house is but a cabin of logs or a cloth and paper shanty, and the richest man is forced to daily work-and though you will find an absence of wealth and all its concomitants, you will find no beggars. There is no luxury, but there is no destitution. No one makes an easy living, nor a very good living; but everyone can make a living, and no one able and willing to work is oppressed by the fear of want. Footnote 7
Much later in his book, George again voices the same theme:
I think no one who will open his eyes to the facts can resist the conclusion that there are in the heart of our civilization large classes with whom the veriest savage could not afford to exchange. It is my deliberate opinion that if, standing on the threshold of being, one were given the choice of entering life as a Tierra del Fuegan, a black fellow of Australia, an Esquimau in the Arctic Circle, or among the lowest classes in such a high civilized country as Great Britain, he would make infinitely the better choice in selecting the lot of the savage. Footnote 8
Nor was George a naive advocate of the "noble savage." He was heartily in favor of the technical progress accompanying civilization. George's explanation for the "paradoxical" correlation between progress and poverty was very simple:
The great cause of inequality in the distribution of wealth is inequality in the ownership of land. The ownership of land is the great fundamental fact which ultimately determines the social, the political, and consequently the intellectual and moral condition of a people. Footnote 9
Land ownership is important because "without land, labor is as impotent as would be a man in void space."[Footnote 10] "Land," as George uses the term, specifically includes
not merely the surface of the earth as distinguished from the water and air, but the whole material universe outside of man himself. . . . The term land embraces, in short, all natural materials, forces, and opportunities. . . .Footnote 11
It is everything "that is freely supplied by nature." Footnote 12
In the less developed, thinly populated society, there is plenty of land to go around. Hence, no able worker is prevented from gaining access to the nature with which he must mix his labor in order to produce anything. With "progress," however, this happy circumstance disappears. The value of "land" relative to that of labor inevitably increases (p. 296), and this trend is aggravated by speculation in anticipation of inevitable further increases.[Footnote 13] At the same time, increasing specialization of labor leads to increased interdependency among people:
The efficiency of the whole body of laborers is increased at the expense of the independence of the constituents. . . . [By contrast] The aggregate produce of the labor of a savage tribe is small, but each member is capable of an independent life. Footnote 14
The "working classes," owning no land, are thus caught in a trap in which the market value of their labor falls as a percentage of the market value of what they produce. Increases in the market value of scarce natural resources are distributed, not generally, but to those who own the resources. Thus, says Henry George:
Private ownership of land is the nether millstone. Material progress is the upper millstone. Between them, with increasing pressure, the working classes are being ground. Footnote 15
We must stress that George's analysis is framed in terms of relative values, not absolute ones. It is therefore quite possible for the average purchasing power of the "working classes" (i.e., nonlandowners) to be increasing in absolute terms even as it is falling in relative terms. A decreasing percentage of an increasing product can be more product, depending on the respective rates of decrease and of increase. However it is equally possible for some people to be driven down in absolute as well as relative terms by "progress." In either event, a political reaction is bound to come, since people perceive relative impoverishment just as keenly as they do absolute impoverishment:
The reaction must come. The tower leans from its foundations and every new story but hastens the final catastrophe. To educate men who must be condemned to poverty, is but to make them restive; to base on a state of most glaring social inequality political institutions under which men are theoretically equal, is to stand a pyramid on its apex. Footnote 16
According to George, it is in the interest of both capitalists and workers to put an end to private ownership of land, and to do so as expeditiously and gracefully as possible:
. . . the antagonism of interests is not between labor and capital, as is popularly believed, but is in reality between labor and capital on the one side and landownership on the other . . . Footnote 17
George thus draws a line that capitalist philosophers such as John Locke and Adam Smith do not draw at all, and he does not draw it where Karl Marx and the socialists do. It is not capital that should be common property, for capital is a mixture of resources and stored-up labor. For Marxists, capital is only stored-up labor.
What most prevents the realization of the injustice of private property in land is the habit of including all the things that are made the subject of ownership in one category, as property, or, if any distinction is made, drawing the line, according to the unphilosophical distinction of lawyers, between personal property and real estate, or things moveable and immovable. The real and natural distinction is between things which are the produce of labor and things which are the gratuitous offerings of nature. . . . These two classes of things are in essence and relations widely different, and to class them together as property is to confuse all thought when we come to consider the justice or the injustice, the right and wrong of property. [Footnote 18] (Emphasis added.)
Unlike the various schools of socialism, George thus does not fall into the trap of doctrinaire egalitarianism, nor does he fall into the trap of "doing away with private property in the means of production," with all of the unfortunate side effects such a step implies for the size of the total social "pie" to be divided up. For George, "whatever is received as the result or reward of exertion is 'wages,"' [Footnote 19] and
As a man belongs to himself, so his labor when put in concrete form belongs to man. And for this reason, that which a man makes or produces is his own, as against all the world. . . . No one else can rightfully claim it, and his exclusive right to it involves no wrong to any one else. Footnote 20
Since George does not assume that exertion or talents will be equal, he therefore does not assume that rewards will be equal either. And he vigorously rejects the concept of equal subdivision of land, a popular panacea or demagogic promise among many modern reformers and revolutionaries. It flies in the face of "the general tendency to production on a large scale" and would "reduce the aggregate production of wealth." [Footnote 21] Having dispatched critics to his left, George turns to those on his right who argue that private ownership of land is necessary to encourage productive effort: "What is necessary for the use of land is not its private ownership, but the security of improvements. " Footnote 22
George's ideal society would therefore be one in which
the wealth produced . . . would be divided into two portions. One part would be distributed in wages and interest between individual producers according to the part each had taken in the work of production; the other part would go to the community as a whole, to be distributed in public benefits to all its members . Footnote 23
If necessary, then, strong measures would be justified to take privately owned "land" away from its owners. "There is on earth no power which can rightfully make a grant of exclusive ownership in land. " Footnote 24
In the end, however, Henry George shrank from advocating extreme revolutionary measures to achieve his ideal society. He felt that by imposing a high enough property tax on land, but not on improvements--buildings, machines, fences, etc.--all of the value contributed to production by natural resource scarcities could be captured by the government, thus achieving, not his ideal society, but its equivalent. Since he felt that the captured rents would be entirely adequate to finance all government operations, he advocated the abolition of all other taxes. George thus comes down to us as an advocate of a "single tax on land." But as we have seen, this is not the essence of his analysis, and as we will see it is probably the weakest link in the chain of reasoning forged by George.
Henry George and the Metaconstitution
George's basic economic analysis of the two factors of production--"land" and labor--is strikingly similar to that suggested by the general theory of associations that has been presented in this text. The similarity is all the more striking in light of the fact that I had never read a word of George nor even a decent summary of his views until after having arrived at the same conclusions by a somewhat different route. Ironically, my conclusions were inspired more by the archreactionary novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand. Protracted study of the problems of regulating the American economy and of corruption led me to conclude that government privileges should go to the highest bidder for limited periods. This conclusion applied specifically to the right to broadcast programs over the radio and TV airwaves. The idea of generalizing this approach and extending it to land did not occur until I read the following passage in an essay by Rand:
There is no difference in principle between the ownership of land and the ownership of airways. Footnote 25
The statement was obviously true, but not in the sense Rand intended! Rather than applying the prevailing capitalist approach to airwaves as well as to land, Rand's assertion could equally well be read to suggest applying the approach appropriate to airwaves to land as well. In this sense, it might be rather impiously claimed that the solution to the problem of property suggested by association theory and metaconstitutional analysis is a dialectical combination of Ayn Rand and Henry George.
This is not to say that our analysis agrees completely with that of George. There appears to be no reason why government expenditures need be exactly equal to net rents, the market value of all scarce natural resources auctioned by government-as- trustee II. Nor is there any inherent reason why these captured rents should go to the support of government expenditures. In fact, there are many reasons why they should not, including the fact that not everybody benefits equally from the activities of government.
It seems quite possible that an appropriate level of government expenditures might be either less or more than net rents. The amount of government activity should depend on public evaluation (expressed via elections) of the costs and benefits thereof. Revenues generated by net rents depend on the entirely separate question of the market value of scarce natural resources. Rather than mixing these two issues as George did, the Metaconstitution entirely separates them. Government expenditures are financed out of taxes on just about anything except land. Land rents, on the other hand, are not considered a tax at all, and are placed in the Trust Fund rather than in the government treasury. The main difference from George's system is thus that the benefits of the value contributed to production by scarce natural resources are passed along to members of the public individually in the form of a cash dividend rather than flowing to them collectively in the form of services.
It is, however, a great pity that Henry George has not gotten more attention and Adam Smith and Karl Marx and their fans less. George's ideas were not only ahead of his time, they are still ahead of our time.
SUMMARY
The obvious dangers of thinking about what ought to be should not deter us from doing so. Utopian ideas are too useful for us to give fanatics a monopoly on them. But we should apply the same critical thinking to proposed utopias as we do to present arrangements, and in particular we should avoid assumptions that human nature--as distinguished from manifestations of that nature--can be changed. If we can see that what ought to be done is a separate question, we can think usefully about utopias.
The draft of a possible Metaconstitution presented in this chapter is based on the ideas and values that have been expressed in previous chapters. We pulled these ideas together here so they can be reviewed in context rather than in isolation. Some basic aspects of this Metaconstitution were anticipated by Henry George 100 years ago, but for one reason or another his proposals never caught on. George's fate reminds us that good ideas do not automatically get put into effect. Sad historical experience even suggests that we should not always try to put good ideas into effect. Even so, if we wish to make wise decisions about what ought to be done, we must strive to think as systematically as possible about what ought to be.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Of the three basic questions of political philosophy, which would you say has received the greatest attention (prior to this chapter) in this text, and which the least? Explain why you think so.
2. What idea in the Metaconstitution did you find most surprising, when you first ran into it here or earlier in this book? Why were you surprised?
3. List five things that you think are wrong in the draft of the Metaconstitution, and explain why you think each of them would be a bad idea.
4. What do you think are the three best aspects of the draft Metaconstitution? Why?
5. The text criticizes utopias because, pursued in terms of A ---> X + Y, they appear to justify the most terrible imaginable actions. But if the actions are rational, as per A ---> X + Y, how can we condemn them without admitting the total inadequacy of the formula itself?
6. What are the three basic propositions expressed in the Metaconstitution? To what extent does the U.S. government satisfy each of these three propositions? Do you know of any other government that comes closer to the ideal? Explain.
7. Would a perfect constitution have an amending clause in it? Explain your answer.
8. Is there any way, as population increases, that the ratio of people to "land" can be prevented from increasing? Can you find any basic flaws in Henry George's economic analysis?
9. If George is fundamentally correct, as argued here, how could it be that his ideas have not commanded greater interest and support?
*****************
Footnotes
* Henry George, Progress and Poverty, p. 339.
1. Machiavelli, The Prince, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1947, p. 48.
2. Ibid., p. 78.
3. F. A. Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, VoL I.- Rules and Order, Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1973, p. 65.
4. John Hospers, Human Conduct, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972, p. 351.
5. A. James Gregor, An Introduction to Metaphysics, New York: Free Press, 1971, p. 3.
6. Hayek, p. 65.
7. Henry George, Progress and Poverty, New York: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, 1955, p. 7.
8. Ibid., p. 286.
9. Ibid., p. 295.
10. Ibid., p. 279.
11. Ibid., p. 38.
12. Ibid., p. 38.
13. Ibid., p. 255.
14. Ibid., p. 284.
15. Ibid., p. 357.
16. Ibid., p. 10.
17. Ibid., p. 227.
18. Ibid., p. 337.
19. Ibid., p. 33.
20. Ibid., p. 334.
21. Ibid., p. 323-324.
22. Ibid., p. 398.
23. Ibid., p. 440-441.
24. Ibid., p. 339.
25. Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, New York: Signet, 1967.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are e-mailed to me. I will post excerpts from those I think will most interest readers.