(b) The Common Ownership of Land

With agriculture proper conditions are not nearly so favourable as with afforestation. Yet we must here distinguish between the ownership of land and the utilization of land. There are social conditions under which the ownership and the working of the land are closely bound up together, so that the socialization of land presents the same difficulties as that of agricultural undertakings in these cases, and both processes must be executed at the same time.

But this is by no means the case under all circumstances. Under conditions of occupancy, land ownership and farming are visibly separate things. Immense estates may be split up into tiny holdings, as was to a large extent the case in Italy and Ireland.

Farming is a vital function which cannot lightly be tampered with. On the other hand, the private landlord, divorced from farming, is the most superfluous member of society. But as this superfluous person holds a monopoly of the sources of life of society, he may also be the most dangerous member of society at the same time.

Where the landowner is not a farmer himself, but merely the landlord of the tenant who cultivates the soil or superintends its cultivation, it becomes an urgent interest of society to put an end to the dominant position of the landowner. Generally, the. tenant desires to be a landowner himself, and this desire is favoured by the Liberal outlook.

But in a highly industrialized country like England even middle class Radicalism has found another solution to the land question, which it has raised into a political demand: the nationalization of the land. Tenancy is not to be abolished, but the farmer is to become a State tenant.

This object is very appropriate to a proletarian socialist party which aims at the abolition of private property in the means of production, and cannot leave out of account the most important means of production, if there is a possibility of nationalizing it. This is the case to a large extent in those countries where the tenancy system is prevalent. As landlordism exercises no economic functions in such countries, nationalization of the land could be carried out at one stroke. The method of gradual progress is as much out of place in this case as in that of the abolition of feudal rights. In fact, the abolition of this type of land ownership may be regarded as an echo of the Middle Class Revolution, the methods of which are appropriate for this purpose.

Accordingly, it would not signify any disturbances to the social processes of production if such landed property were expropriated without any compensation. In individual cases, considerations of cheapness or political wisdom might plead against this course. With this we need not here concern ourselves. In any case, no economic necessity exists for compensation. Landlords of this type exercise no economic functions whatever, through the suspension of which the process of production could be endangered.

But these observations unfortunately apply only to countries where the tenant system is prevalent. This is one of the circumstances that will facilitate Labour’s economic revolution in England.

Next to coal, iron, and railways, perhaps even before them, a Labour regime in England would be able to nationalize, by way of expropriation, by far the greater part of the land, agricultural and urban, by this means gaining control of the most vital elements of the economic life. It would be able to transfer the land to the State without paying any great compensation, and thus at one stroke would tap enormous sources of revenue, which could be at once applied to urgent social services.

The position is quite different in most of the States of the European Continent as well as in the United States. Here the majority of the owners of land are also its cultivators. Moreover, they form a numerous class, which is strong economically and, under democratic institutions, strong politically. To assail their property in land would be extremely dangerous from a political point of view, and would be hardly possible economically without grave disturbances, which would be most detrimental to the feeding of the masses of the people, especially the urban population. Even the simple nationalization of the large estates would, under these circumstances, be a very daring operation, which must only be attempted if the socialization of the land could be accompanied by the socialization of its industries, and this is not a simple matter, as we shall see.

In such countries, an immediate nationalization of the whole of the land without compensation, accompanied by the transformation of all the farmers into State tenants, is out of the question.

Nevertheless we should aim at a progressive nationalization of the land, which could be commenced as soon as we possessed the necessary power and before conditions were ripe for the socialization of the farming industry.

Such a progressive policy of the nationalization of the land, without confiscation, could be applied by conferring upon the State a right of purchase whenever a piece of land or an estate were alienated. Landed property to-day is very mobile, and land sales are of frequent occurrence. Every alteration of ownership would be a means of augmenting the State ownership of land. Even if the State did not immediately proceed to set up a socialistic economy upon the acquired property, for which peasant holdings would be far too small, the mere ownership of the land would be an advantage both to the State and the community. It is true that at first the rent which the State tenants would have to pay would only suffice to cover the interest on the purchase price paid by the State. But we live in a period of rising rents, and each further increment of ground-rent would go into the coffers of the State, and not into the pockets of private landlords.

There is the further advantage: The later process of socialization will be all the easier, in the degree that the State has to deal with farmers as its tenants and not as free landowners.

In spite of these advantages for the State, the other parties to the transaction would lose nothing through the exercise of the right of purchase. To the seller of the land it is a matter of indifference whether it is a private person or the State who pays him the price he asks. But the farmer who succeeds the seller also derives an advantage from the fact that it is not he who finds the money.

The solid farmer saves the purchase money if he is merely a tenant instead of a purchaser, and may then employ it either in the better equipment and more intensive cultivation of his fields, or in the leasing of a larger farm than he would have been able to purchase. Both alternatives would lead to an increase in his income, while the former would promote the development of the productive forces of the country.

In this way we should be able to enforce a progressive nationalization of the land in countries without the tenant system.

But important as this may be, we are not merely land reformers. We could not rest content with these measures. We should have to make efforts to link up farming with our system of production for social requirements. And this will be a hard nut for us to crack.