Yesterday we looked at what The Founding Fathers had to say about private property Private Property as a Commodity (and a derivative at that) Part VIII
Thomas Paine wants a non-violent revolution, legally
       Now we come to a thinker who realized that property, as land, was linked to injustice. Thomas Paine (1737 - 1809) continued in the tradition of Hobbes, Locke, & Hume but, instead of positing a hypothetical “State of Nature,” he used, as a real-life example, the situation of our Native Americans. “There is not, in that state, any of those spectacles of human misery which poverty and want present to our eyes in all the towns and streets in Europe. Poverty, therefore, is a thing created by that which is called civilized life. It exists not in the natural state” He goes on to point out that compared to the poor in industrialized Europe, “The life of an Indian is a continual holiday” (Paine [1795], 11).
       Paine continues by explaining that the problem of private property as land is one of the causes of this inequity. “It is a position not be controverted that the earth, in its natural, cultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with the rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal. But the earth in its natural state, as before said, is capable of supporting but a small number of inhabitants compared with what it is capable of doing in a cultivated state. And it is impossible to separate the improvement made by cultivation from the earth itself, upon which that improvement is made, the idea of landed property arose from that parable connection; but it is nevertheless true, that it is the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property.
       “Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community ground-rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea) for the land which he holds; and it is from this ground-rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue“ (Paine [1795], 12, 13).
       The “plan” to which Paine refers, is his plan to pay retribution to poor people on the premise that their poverty is due to their being denied their natural right to the common property, because it was taken from them by rich landowners.
       “In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity, that I am pleading for. But it is that kind of right which, being neglected at first, could not be brought forward afterwards till heaven had opened the way by a revolution in the system of government. Let us do honor to revolutions by justice, and give currency to their principles by blessing.
       “Having this in a few words, opened the merits of the case, I shall now proceed to the plan I have to propose, which is,
       “To create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property” (Paine [1795], 14, 15).
       This idea was never adopted in Paine’s time. To those who consider it an extremely radical idea, I want to address a few remarks. (1) Paine never called for a violent revolution to take land away from the rich. The American and French Revolutions had already happened and all he wanted was for the new regimes to adopt his plan. (2) He allows landowners to keep their land, he only wants them to pay rent to the community. These ideas too, I will elaborate on more later. Now let us continue our chronological survey of the issues arising out of the concept of “private property.”
      Monday: "Native Americans Get Suckered By Scam Artists."
My rants on racial identity began on July 9th
My rants on private property began on July 14th

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