|
“When you enter the land that I am giving you, let the
land, too, keep a
Sabbath for the LORD. For six years you may sow your field, and for
six
years prune your vineyard, gathering in their produce. But during the
seventh
year the land shall have a complete rest, a sabbath for the LORD, when
you
may neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard.
The fiftieth year you shall make sacred by proclaiming
liberty in the land for all
its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when every one of you
shall return
to his own property, every one to his own family estate.
In this fiftieth year, your year of jubilee, you shall
not sow, nor shall you reap
the after-growth or pick the grapes from the untrimmed vines. Since
this is the
jubilee, which shall be sacred for you, you may not eat of its
produce, except
as taken directly from the field. In this year of jubilee, then,
every one of you
shall return to his own property. Therefore, when you sell any land
to your
neighbor or buy any from him, do not deal unfairly.
Do not deal unfairly, then; but stand in fear of your
God. I, the LORD, am
your God. Observe my precepts and be careful to keep my regulations,
for
then you will dwell securely in the land.
The land shall not be sold in perpetuity; for the
land is mine, and you are
but aliens who have become my tenants. Therefore, in every part of
the
country that you occupy, you must permit the land to be redeemed.”
from the 25th
chapter of Leviticus
New American Bible translation
As soon as the land of any
country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other
men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its
natural produce.
Adam Smith,
The Wealth of Nations, 1776
All right of property is
founded either in occupancy or labour. The earth having been given to
mankind in common occupancy, each individual seems to have by nature a
right to possess and cultivate and equal share.
William Ogilvie of
Pittensear,
The Right of Property in Land,
1782
To put the bounty and
health of our land, our only commonwealth, into the hands of people who do
not live on it and share its fate will always be an error. Whatever
determines the fortune of the land determines also the fortune of the
people.
Wendell
Berry, Conserving Forest Communities, 1995
I had just
returned from a series of assignments in Namibia where that small country
had reclaimed its fishing grounds from the European and South African
fleets that had exploited them to a state of severe depletion, when I got
a call from a young university researcher by the name of Andy Wightman. I
had written a few articles on national and local ownership rights of
marine waters, including one published in a national Sunday newspaper,
together with Roger Mullin. The success of the fledgling African
government and its local fishing industry, elicited a number of
complimentary responses from fishermen’s associations and those like
Wightman who were working on parallel issues of ownership and control of
land. Following a coffee meeting with Andy in the Royal Mile, I was
invited to submit a paper to an environmental journal, and later to speak
at an international conference on land reform and taxation. At the
international conference in Edinburgh University, I was struck by the
number of senior academics and researchers from other countries, who saw
the issues of land reform and taxation as lying at the root of much of the
inequality and injustice of current relevant laws and management
structures. It was particularly interesting to hear senior professors from
the USA, UK and Russia, in complete harmony on the issue. It was at that
conference I first obtained an in-depth glimpse of the works and idea of
Henry George.
Andy Wightman, writer,
lecturer, and tireless Scots advocate of land reform
Andy Wightman
went on to publish Who owns Scotland? and Scotland : Land and
Power, and to be a leading proponent and supporter of Scotland’s
limited act on land reform, Land Reform Scotland Act 2003. The Act
has guaranteed, 1) the right to roam, including wild camping and canoeing,
2) the right of pre-emptive purchase at government valuation by a
community of rural land that is put up for sale, and, 3) in areas
traditionally governed by crofting tenure, the right of a community to buy
their land at valuation even when the laird has not placed it on the
market. An earlier 1976 act allowed individual crofters to buy their patch
freehold. That act forced individualism and so was shunned by many
indigenous tenants. The 2003 act in contrast, allows land to be bought
with tenancies over it to be held by the community.
There are two
powerful and privileged groups in most of the world’s societies who
increase their wealth day by day with scarcely any effort or sacrifice on
their part, save a tenacious defense of their property and power. The two
groups are those with legal title to land, and those who own or control
the major banks and financial institutions. The constantly increasing
value of their assets is based on the labour and industry of the rest of
society. Yet they continue to tax society at increasing rates by the
tools of rent and usury.
The ownership
and control of land is a concept that has come down to us from medieval
times, and become a foundation truth of capitalist society. Yet a number
of cultures and civilizations have regarded it as an alien principle.
Under the old Hebrew economy, land was ultimately God’s property
(Leviticus 25). The early Scots constitutional document, the
Declaration of Arbroath,1320, and subsequent legal statements,
declared that the land was held under God on behalf of the people. The
King or Guardian could not utilize lands in ways that offended the laws of
God, or were contrary to the interests of the people.
Copy of the Declaration of
Arbroath, Scotland’s oldest constitutional document
Illustration of feudalism
Many peasant
peoples have had a strong historical attachment to the land they tilled or
on which their animals grazed. Few such attachments were stronger than
those of the Hebridean and West Highland Scots which made their eviction
in the century of the Clearances – 1750 – 1850, all the more cruel.
American Indians regarded land and nature as a sacred gift of God, and
could not conceive of it being sold or fenced off. To this day, most of
the countries of the South Pacific prohibit or limit the sale of land and
permit only its lease for a period. Most states in the world prohibit the
ownership of land by foreigners.
Similarly, the
key role played by major banks and financial institutions, in the control
of global and national economies, began in medieval times, and has
developed to the point today where their tentacles extend to the smallest
and most remote pockets of economic activity. Strangely the fiercest
condemnation of excessive interest charges is found in the Hebrew
scriptures, and yet that people were to dominate much of the banking world
to present times. Islamic law also prohibits the application of interest
charges to lending. Banks make money out of nothing. Banking laws permit
lending far beyond the original financial deposits, and further credit
issue is maintained by a myriad of methods. Today, small borrowers pay
obscene rates of interest to the banks through the numerous credit
vehicles such as credit cards, hire purchase schemes, overdraft
facilities, and direct bank loans.
It fell to a
young American printer, a 7th grade school graduate, to
recognize the key roles of land ownership and taxation in protecting the
wealthy and powerful, and how they might be managed for the benefit of
all. Henry George, 1839 – 1897, was a ‘curious and attentive lad with a
strong mother wit’. He was also a voracious reader, devouring the works
of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Hubert Spencer, and John Stuart Mill. His
first major book was Progress and Poverty, published in San
Francisco, and destined to be regarded as one of the classic works on
economics. Among its and George’s later admirers were notable figures
such as Leo Tolstoy, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, and John Dewey.
Henry George wrote of the “deplorable
circumstances where in large measure a very powerful few are in possession
of the earth’s resources, the land and its riches, and all the franchises
and other privileges that yield a return”.
Henry George, the
proponent of a Land Tax based economic system
He went on to
ask, “Why should a man benefit merely from the
act of ownership, when he may render no services to the community in
exchange ? What gives the wealthy the right to become rich – not for
service rendered to the community, but from the good fortune to have
advantageously situated land?”.
His solution
to the inequalities produced by the economic system of 19th
century America, was a single tax, - a land tax, that would release the
value inherent in the nation’s land, to the benefit of the people as a
whole. He reckoned that a single tax would absorb all rents with no tax
whatsoever on wages or interest. A single tax would in effect lead to
ownership of land as common property. While his idea excited interest, it
did not lead to such action in its day, but now, over a century later,
there are numerous academics, economists, reformers, and students of
government, who believe that a land tax would indeed be a hugely
beneficial measure for any country.
In Britain
today, we cannot get a land ownership register, never mind a land tax, so
powerful are the vested interests that oppose any encroachment on their
privileged positions of profit and power. Scotland is the most backward
part of the country in terms of land reform and land distribution. Nearly
two-thirds of the country are owned by around 1,000 persons. This
situation is largely a relic from feudal ages past and from the aftermath
of the Jacobite rebellion when King George granted huge swaths of the
north-west of the country (the highland estates) to those who sided with
him and with the Hanovarian cause. There is sufficient land in Scotland
for every man, woman and child to have 4 acres, yet when anyone wants a
tiny plot on which to build a small dwelling house, they have to pay
anything from £20,000 to £70,000 pounds or more. Why should a piece of
unused land cost almost as much as a house ?
A close friend
of mine, author of the book, Soil and Soul: People versus corporate
power, Alastair McIntosh, has been a powerful and articulate voice for
justice in our management of land resources, and for respect for our
historical and spiritual roots. His book is largely about land reform and
the community land trust of which he was a founder on the Isle of Eigg.
He noted that when Keith Schellenberg first bought Eigg, in 1975, he paid
£ 250,000 for it. When the island was sold on to Marlin Maruma, two
decades later, he got one-and-a-half million (though it was less than he
might have got had it not been for the market-spoiling tactics of the Isle
of Eigg Trust). By this time it no longer conferred respect to claim to be
“The Laird” in many parts of Scotland. It had become thinkable to
challenge the system whereby one class of people live from the proceeds of
a tax known as “rent” paid by those who lack control over the place where
they live.
Island of Eigg, Scotland
Members of the Eigg Trust
Scotland’s west coast
McIntosh goes
on to say that ‘rent, after all, is a tax from the relatively poor to the
relatively rich. Even the land component of our mortgages can be traced
back to such a transfer of wealth from poor to rich. Land is not in short
supply in rural Scotland. There is no earthly reason why the building plot
should typically cost as much as building the house. After all, there are
5 million Scots and 20 million acres of Scotland. That’s 3 football
pitches each, which is not bad even if two of them are on mountain sides.
The central cause of the rural housing shortage continues to be control
over land ownership and a planning system set in place when county
councilors were typically lairdic types, who valued the countryside not
for the number of people whose lives it could support in dignity, but as a
playground for themselves and tied housing for their servants.’
Alastair
believes that the 1976 crofter’s right to purchase the land he works, did
not sit well with the crofting communities or accord with their views on
rural communities, environmental sustainability, local entrepreneurship,
or affordable housing. He believes, under land reform, crofting
communities can be democratically accountable landholders unto themselves,
and that it is essential to block the leakage of community assets onto
speculative private markets. “This can be achieved in various ways.
Burdens on title deeds are one. Joint ownership (or shared equity) is
another, where the community retains a controlling interest. And a third
is to develop existing crofting tenure so that communities retain
inalienable control of the land upon which private properties are built. Crofting matters for the future of Scotland. It matters as a pattern of
tenure by which people can live with the land if not necessarily from the
land. This generates a cycle of belonging, identity, values, and
therefore, responsibility that sustains both people and place.”
Alastair McIntosh, writer,
lecturer, poet, and advocate of crofters’ rights
My own view,
which is mirrored in the land laws of some of the small island states of
the Pacific, is that there should be no private ownership of land, but
that all should be held by the state for the benefit of the people. Land
then may be leased, but not held in perpetuity by a single family or
corporation. In rural areas, communities could control local land use and
distribution in much the fashion as described by McIntosh. These are my
views and if ever put into practice, they would channel the enormous
income from increasing value of real estate, to the people who live in the
country, instead of to the banks and speculators as at present. However,
those powers are so entrenched in our society and its legal and fiscal
structures, that the chances of such reforming legislation ever coming
about, are close to zero!
Similar land
reform issues are being faced by the descendants of the once mighty tribes
of American Indians whose reservations today amount to just 4 % of the
land area of the USA. Winona LaDuke, a Muckwuck or Bear Clan, Mississippi
band, Anishinabeg Indian, struggled with the land issue for many years,
trying to win back or buy back, their reservation lands. Her tribe, of
which there are some 250,000 around today, is known as Ojibways in Canada,
or as Chippewas in the northern USA. Spanish historians of the
post-Columbus period have estimated that 50 million American Indians
perished in a sixty-year period. In addition to the genocide, there
followed cultural extinction that eliminated knowledge and records of
America’s indigenous peoples from most of the country’s libraries and
schools. White settlers believed they had a God-given right to the
continent, and that led to a denial of any rights for the natives.
Winona LaDuke, advocate of
native Indian’s rights
The White
Earth Reservation of Winona’s people was created by treaty in 1867. In
1887 a General Allotment Act was passed to teach Indians the concept of
private property and to facilitate the removal of more lands from that
nation. The reservation land was divided into 80 acre parcels and
distributed among the Indians with scant regard to the ecosystem or to
traditional land tenure patterns. After the land parcels were allocated,
the “surplus” land was given to white homesteaders. The federal government
then began to tax the Indians for their ‘allocated’ lands, and when they
were unable to pay the taxes, the land was confiscated. Speculators also
came and cheated illiterate Indians out of their reduced land-holdings.
The sad story is a tale of land speculation, greed, and unconscionable
contracts. The White Earth Reservation lost 250,000 acres to the State of
Minnesota. Throughout America, reservations lost on average a full
two-thirds of their land this way.
Access road through the
White Earth Reservation
The LaDuke
project, if we can term it that, seeks to restore land to Indian ownership
and utilization on the lines of the traditional economy. It also
addresses the issue of absentee landlords, and works to restore and
strengthen cultural values and practices. Through numerous legal battles
they attempt to redress the Federal Government’s failure to honour treaty
obligations, and to reverse past decisions that were clearly illegal.
Winona believes that the term ‘sustainable development’ is a misnomer.
She says that it is communities that are sustainable, not development per
se. But proper use of land is at the centre of the project. Her tribes
are entering into a co-management agreement with northern Wisconsin and
northern Minnesota to prevent further environmental degradation of the
region.
The pattern
of ‘colonial’ expropriation of land from indigenous peoples has been
repeated all over the world. In South Africa we had the shameful
Apartheid policy that forced people into miserable townships from
where they had to serve the labour needs of the mining industry or of the
affluent suburban whites. In Kenya, Lord Delamere told a Native Labour
Commission of 1912-13: "If ... every native is to be a landholder of a
sufficient area on which to establish himself then the question of
obtaining a satisfactory labour supply will never be settled."
During my
years in the Philippines, I saw the social inequities, environmental
damage, rape of resources, and exploitation of the rural poor, that all
result from ownership and control of land by a privileged few. The
situation continues all over the country, but especially in Negros, and
the Visayan islands, and in huge parts of Luzon. It is the leading factor
contributing to the nation’s four main ills : wealth and political power
in the hands of a small elite; an over-powerful army that treats rural
peasants with callous brutality; NPA and Mindoro (extreme Moslem) led
terrorist reprisals; and blatant corruption throughout the government and
its institutions or organs.
What has and
continues to happen in the Philippines, is going on throughout Latin
America, Africa, South Asia, and Indo-China, to varying degrees. Rural
peoples who had traditional ownership or user-rights to their lands, are
having these disregarded or overthrown by legal thievery or the power of
the market in a situation of escalating land values. Poor families are
being pitted against powerful property developers. The basic problem to
me is the privatisation of land. When it is a saleable commodity, (as
with fish quotas or fishing rights) it leads to a trade in people’s jobs
and communities’ futures.
Land
ownership and land tenure are extremely sensitive and contentious issues
in the Pacific states and small island countries of the Indian Ocean and
the Caribbean. Over 90 % of land in the Pacific islands is customary
land, - held by individuals or families under traditional or legally
recognized customs. Land may not be bought or sold, especially to
foreigners, except under arrangements that are strictly controlled.
This can be frustrating to colonial powers or investors from abroad, who
continually badger governments for more flexibility, - fortunately, with
little success in most cases. But land can be leased for a period to a
foreign company, or to a local joint-venture company with foreign
partners.
Perhaps no
other issue is more delicate, or discussed more often by the Pacific
states and international bodies like the World Bank, and the Asian
Development Bank. These institutions, accustomed to globalization and
to western capitalism, are not normally sympathetic to traditional
practices when they conflict with modern business attitudes, - but they
have come to recognize that in those island societies, land has deep
cultural, tribal, historical, and even religious significance for the
people, and outsiders meddle in the arrangements at their peril.
Australian governments tried to impose their laws on land ownership or
title to Papua New Guinea, but failed, and probably caused some damage
in the attempt.
As
expressed elsewhere, I personally believe that all land should be kept
under national control, and all income from escalating land values
should be shared between the people and government, and used to assist
young couples to obtain their first home, or to help small or emerging
businesses with locations for their establishment. At present it is
mostly banks and speculators who benefit.
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Changing land values in Cambodia
The
lovely people of Cambodia went through such horrors during the period
of the Khmer Rouge regime, are now somehow putting the past behind
them and building a productive and sustainable future for themselves
and their children. Among the many threats they face is land-grabbing
which is increasing at an alarming rate.
Rural villages in
Cambodia’s Tonle Sap basin
The
land-grabbing is fuelled by escalating prices to meet the demand for
commerce and tourism, and housing for the wealthy. Individuals and
families that acquired a few hectares of land ten years ago, have
become millionaires as a result. This has tempted thousands of others
to engage in land speculation. Small farming communities where cash
income is as low as one dollar a day, can be sorely tempted to sell
out to these opportunists. Where they do not sell, the would-be
buyers can get around that obstacle by bribing local officials and
individual community members to connive in legalising an improper
purchase. But if the buyer is very rich, or a senior military
officer, or a high-ranking government person, then even the legal
niceties can be disregarded.
Take a
community that has lived for generations in the Tonle Sap region
(which the United Nations has declared a biosphere to be protected),
and which engages in simple sustainable agriculture, fishing or
forestry. Located nearby are the magnificent temple complexes of
Angkor Wat. That national treasure attracts tourists from all over
the world and these tourists need to be housed and fed. The expansion
of hotels and restaurants in the provincial capital of Siem Reap has
been phenomenal. That in turn has raised demand for real estate and
so escalated the cost of local land. The growth in business has
benefited those with opportunity and some capital, but it has largely
left the rural people behind, apart from a few who have been able to
obtain work in the service sector.
The main temple site
of the immense and historic Angkor Wat Temples
So, while
foreign tourists can reside in 4 or 5 star air-conditioned hotels, and
enjoy good dining at cheap prices, there is hardly a village in the
surrounding countryside where the people have access to clean water.
Their schools are barely equipped, and village school teachers get a
poverty-level wage. Health services are also minimal. Water-borne
disease is the main cause of high infant mortality. Tuberculosis is
prevalent as are dengue fever and malaria. And as elsewhere in the
world, HIV and aids are on the rise.
Now the
land and water on which they rely for survival and livelihood, has
become an attractive commodity for business and investment. The
possible existence of petroleum deposits underneath the basin could
escalate the demand for ownership and control of the land. So the
future of the 3 million rural inhabitants of that region of Cambodia,
looks uncertain to say the least.
Luxury hotels springing up in Siem
Reap, near the Angkor Wat site
The
question such situations raise is – should land be traded for the
benefit of the wealthy and powerful, or should it not be held in trust
or controlled for the benefit of the whole nation? If industrial
development is to take place, should not the enormous wealth it
generates be shared substantially with the people it has displaced
from their generational source of livelihood? |
In the Celtic lands, waged
labour was needed in land-owner-controlled industries such as fishing and
processing seaweed for industrial uses. But equally, the vacated land was
wanted for sheep farming, wool being more profitable than tenants. As for
the Potato Famine, that was a political famine. In both Ireland and
Scotland tenants had become over-reliant on the single crop that could
produce high yields from little land. Meanwhile, as the people starved,
food was exported from Ireland to English cities. These are colonial
realities that have to be faced so that our peoples can move on. [Most
of the above section draws on Alastair McIntosh’s brilliant and scathing
review of a book written by Michael Fry, Wild Scots: Four Hundred Years
of Highland History, John Murray, 2005]
The idea of
individual or private ownership of of fixed parcels of land is a
relatively recent phenomenon, and by no means universl, writes Ed Iglehart.
It is the result of replacement of custom in earlier more innocent
societies by statute in later more individualistic societies. When
property is created by a legal title, transferable for money, the deep
relationship between land and occupier, gained through residence, labour
and improvement, can be ignored, and the land acquired or disposed of at
will. Absentee owners, inconceivable before, can evict residents with the
full support of the law.
Scotland and Land Reform
map of northwest
Scotland
The need for
a reform of the law and taxation relating to land ownership and use, is
nowhere more pressing than in Scotland. That country has a land area of
over 19.0 million acres, 3% of which is urban and 97% is rural. Over 16
million acres of the rural land is privately owned as follows:
|
One
quarter
is owned by |
66
landowners in estates of |
30,700 acres and larger |
|
One third
is owned by |
120
landowners in estates of |
21,000 acres and larger |
|
One half
is owned by |
343
landowners in estates of |
7,500 acres and larger |
|
Two
thirds
is owned by |
1252
landowners
in estates of |
1,200 acres and larger |
So, as Ed
Iglehart says, in Land and Democracy, quoted above, two-thirds of
Scotland is owned by one four-thousandth of the people. (1999
Territory, Property, Sovereignty and Democracy in Scotland,
www.caledonia.org
web site).
No one has
researched and advocated the case for land reform in Scotland the past 20
years as much as Andy Wightman. Below are some excerpts from one of his
papers.
|
LAND AND POLITICS
Land and
politics have been intimately related since the beginnings of modern
society. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued, 'The first man who enclosed
a piece of ground and found people simple enough to believe him was
the real founder of civil society' (Rousseau, 1754). In Scotland, as
elsewhere, the history of landownership began with a system of
governance based upon the feudal relationship between the Monarch and
the nobility - a system of land tenure still with us today 900 years
later and an indication if ever it was needed of the resilience of
Scotland's land laws and our historic failure, indeed inability, to do
anything fundamental about reforming them. Rights over land which
began as political rights of civic administration, evolved over time
and under the control of those who possessed them, into full-blown
property rights.
This
transformation has been carefully and assiduously protected and
nurtured by landed interests for many centuries. And it has been this
careful definition and assiduous protection which has denied Scotland
the kinds of reforms enjoyed by our West European neighbours. And
closely associated with politics has been the phenomenon of power -
political power, economic power, and cultural and social power. As
Loretta Timperley observed in her academic analysis of landownership
in Scotland, 'Power and land ownership have been synonymous in
Scotland from time immemorial'.
THE POLITICS OF LAND REFORM
The 19th
and early 20th century saw radical action on land reform and delivered
lasting social and economic progress. In the aftermath of the Second
World War, however, despite Labour's commitment to land reform, little
has happened. It was not until the 1970s that political attention
again seriously engaged with the land question. That period ended of
course with the election of the Conservative Government in 1979 and
led to those long years of political discontent in Scotland. Ideas
have, though, moved on since the 1970s. No longer, for example, is the
land reform debate conducted
across the ideological divide between private and public
landownership. And the denial of a land reform agenda by the
Conservatives also resulted in civic society picking up the issue and
responding in a practical way on the ground to the problems it faced.
This approach, most prominently captured in the activities of the
Assynt crofters and of the islanders of Eigg eschewed the barren rocks
of political ideology and instead generated a revitalised citizen's
agenda for land reform, an agenda it should be noted which has a long
and honourable history going right back to the Chartists and the
National Land Company, the Highland Land League, the Stornoway Trust
and the Scottish Farms Alliance.
For much
of this country's recent history the political process has failed to
respond to 150 years of civic effort to promote more equitable and
socially beneficial forms of landownership (Boyd, 1999). He argues
that there have been four great failures. These were:- the failure
between 1840 to 1886 to legislate to break up sporting estates and
sheep farms into smallholdings and thus secure the continuity of
peasant society in Scotland; the failure between 1890 and 1940 to
legislate to protect scenic landscapes, provide a right to roam and
establish national parks ; the failure between 1950 to 1980 to
legislate to fully protect and safeguard areas of national and
international significance to nature conservation and; the failure
between 1950 and 1999 to legislate to protect the public and local
community interest in land for livelihood improvement and economic
development.
Typical of the vast
tracts of land in the area which remain largely un-taxed
The
lesson is that civic society can articulate and develop the case for
land reform but without the political means or will to deliver, its
efforts are largely in vain. The political means are now in existence
but what of the political will? How have the various traditions in
Scottish political life responded to the need for land reform and what
has been their record? Labour, to the extent that it gave much
thought to the land issue at all over the past 20 years has, right up
until recent years, remained burdened with the legacy of state
socialism and state ownership - this was the response of McEwen
himself to the land question. The legacy goes right back to the early
days of the Labour movement. In response to the excesses of Victorian
and Edwardian capitalism, the left sought refuge in the power of the
state to solve economic and social problems. In the process it
rejected the social democratic model which had merged on the
continent.
A social
democratic property owning society with strong mutual and cooperative
institutions exists right across Scandinavia and Western Europe. Walk
into any village in the Netherlands, in France, in Denmark or Norway
and you will find farmer-owned supermarkets, banks and food processing
factories. The revolutions which swept Europe in the 18th century laid
the groundwork for today’s rural economy of small-scale proprietors
linked by a strong network of collective institutions which give
European social democracy a distinctive and culturally rooted
constituency of support.
In
Scotland, however, two further centuries of landed power prevented
that pattern from emerging and so the engine for an alternative social
democratic model based upon co-operatives of small scale proprietors
controlling the land and economy was lost. The Tories meanwhile were
busy privatising public assets and promoting a property-owning
democracy which could be relied on (or so it thought) to vote
Conservative. What was inconsistent about this ideology, was that it
attacked public monopolies but not private ones, and limited the
ideals of property ownership to the home. There was no promotion of a
property owning democracy in the countryside - precisely the opposite
in fact. Tory politicians would have as soon countenanced an extension
of a property owning democracy in rural Perthshire as they would have
engaged in a massive programme of nationalisation of heavy industry.
Some later actions of Michael Forsyth did begin to acknowledge and
develop the idea on state-owned agricultural and forestry estates,
that giving individuals and communities more power over land was a
good idea and consistent with Conservative philosophy.
Andy Wightman, 6th John McEwen Memorial Lecture on Land Tenure in
Scotland, 1998 |
Croft settlements
Crofters at work on the
Isle of Harris
The issue of
land reform is one then that concerns historical justice, cultural and
spiritual values, economic opportunity, sustainable communities, and a
taxation system that is truly fair and equitable.
There is a
much less well known and parallel need in Scotland, to address an evil
that has robbed communities of their assets, and continues to do so. Much
land and property in urban areas and countryside regions, was classed as
“Common Good Property”. This includes parks and museums and libraries,
parts of green belts and some buildings of charitable institutions, that
were donated to the townsfolk in years past, by wealthy benefactors.
These public assets have been brazenly disposed of by Councils for private
developments that benefit only the councils themselves and the commercial
developers. The whole process is illegal and unethical, but has been
perpetrated without any transparency or public accountability, so that
today few in our towns and cities realise it has happened. Yet at the
same time they wonder why council tax and water charges escalate year by
year. The assets they have been robbed of by stealth, could have
comfortably covered the costs of water, schools or waste disposal.
While I
believe in a basic land tax, I recognise that there are other imaginative ways
in which taxation could support land reform and sustainable land use.
Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute, has written about the value of
an environmental tax which is being introduced in a number of countries.
Lester Brown of the Earth
Policy Institute
“Several
European countries are benefiting from a steady decline in income taxes as
governments lower taxes on income and raise taxes on environmentally
destructive activities—like burning gasoline or coal. The purpose of this
tax shifting is to incorporate the environmental costs of products and
services into the market price to help the market tell the environment
truth. This rewards environmentally responsible behavior such as reducing
energy use. Among the various environmentally damaging activities taxed
in Europe are coal burning, gasoline use, the generation of garbage
(so-called landfill taxes), the discharge of toxic waste, and the
excessive number of cars entering cities. Germany and Sweden are the
leaders among the countries in Western Europe that are shifting taxes in a
process known there as environmental tax reform. A four-year plan adopted
in Germany in 1999 systematically shifted taxes from labor to energy. By
2001, this plan had lowered fuel use by 5 percent. It had also accelerated
growth in the renewable energy sector, creating some 45,400 jobs by 2003
in the wind industry alone, a number that is projected to rise to
103,000 by 2010. In 2001, Sweden launched a bold 10-year environmental tax
shift designed to convert 30 billion kroner ($3.9 billion) of taxes from
income to environmentally destructive activities. Much of this shift of
$1,100 per household is levied on cars and trucks, including substantial
hikes in vehicle and fuel taxes. Electricity is also being taxed more
heavily. This tax restructuring is an integral part of Sweden’s plan to be
oil free by 2025.
Among the
other European countries with strong tax reform efforts are Spain, Italy,
Norway, the United Kingdom, and France. There are isolated cases of using
taxes to discourage environmentally destructive activities elsewhere. The
United States imposed a stiff tax on chlorofluorocarbons to phase them out
in accordance with the Montreal Protocol of 1987 and its subsequent
updates. When Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, adopted a trash
tax of $1.20 per bag of garbage, the city reduced its daily trash flow 18
percent within one year. Cities that are being suffocated by cars are
using stiff entrance taxes to reduce congestion. First adopted by
Singapore some two decades ago, this tax was later introduced by Oslo,
Melbourne, and, most recently, London. The London tax of £5, or nearly
$9 per visit, first enacted in February 2002 by Mayor Ken Livingstone, was
raised to £8, more than $14, in July 2005. The resulting revenue is being
used to improve the bus network, which carries 2 million passengers daily.
The goal of this congestion tax is a restructuring of the London transport
system to increase mobility and decrease congestion, air pollution, and
carbon emissions. While some cities are taxing cars that enter the central
city, others are simply imposing a tax on automobile ownership. New York
Times reporter Howard French writes that Shanghai, which is approaching
traffic gridlock, “has raised the fees for car registrations every year
since 2000, doubling over that time to about $4,600 per vehicle—more than
twice the city’s per capita income.” In Denmark, the steep tax on an
energy-inefficient new car doubles the price of the car.
Traffic in the streets of
Shanghai
London traffic
Traffic in Tokyo
An excellent
model for calculating indirect costs is a 2001 analysis by the U.S Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which calculated the social
costs of smoking cigarettes at $7.18 per pack. This not only justifies
raising taxes on cigarettes, which claim 4.9 million lives per year
worldwide (more than all other air pollutants combined), but it also
provides guidelines for how much to raise them. In 2002, 21 U.S. states
raised cigarette taxes. Perhaps the biggest jump came in New York City,
where smokers paid an additional 39¢ in state tax and $1.42 in city
tax—a total increase of $1.81 per pack. If the cost to society of smoking
a pack of cigarettes is $7.18, how much is the cost to society of burning
a gallon of gasoline? Fortunately, the International Center for Technology
Assessment has done a detailed analysis, entitled “The Real Price of
Gasoline.” The group calculates several indirect costs, including oil
industry tax breaks, oil supply protection costs, oil industry subsidies,
and health care costs of treating auto exhaust-related respiratory
illnesses. The total of these indirect costs centers around $9 per gallon,
somewhat higher than those of smoking a pack of cigarettes. Add these
external costs to the average price of gasoline in the United States—just
over $2 per gallon in 2005—and gas would cost $11 a gallon. For Americans,
this is shockingly high, but it is not that much higher than the $9 per
gallon that British, German, French, and Italian drivers now regularly pay
for gasoline.
Asia’s two
leading economies -- Japan and China -- are now considering the adoption
of carbon taxes. For the last few years, many members of the Japanese Diet
have wanted to launch an environmental tax shift, but industry has opposed
it. China is working on an environmental tax restructuring that will
discourage fossil fuel use. According to Wang Fengchun, an official with
the National People’s Congress, “Taxation is the most powerful tool
available in a market economy in directing a consumer’s buying habits. It
is superior to government regulations.”
Environmental
tax shifting usually brings a double dividend. In reducing taxes on
income—in effect, taxes on labor—labor becomes less costly, creating
additional jobs while protecting the environment. This was the principal
motivation in the German four-year shift of taxes from income to energy.
Reducing the air pollution from smokestacks and tailpipes reduces the
incidence of respiratory illnesses, such as asthma and emphysema -- and
thus overall health care costs.
Some 2,500
economists, including eight Nobel Prize winners in economics, have
endorsed the concept of tax shifts. Harvard economics professor N. Gregory
Mankiw wrote in Fortune: “Cutting income taxes while increasing gasoline
taxes would lead to more rapid economic growth, less traffic congestion,
safer roads, and reduced risk of global warming -- all without
jeopardizing long-term fiscal solvency. This may be the closest thing to a
free lunch that economics has to offer.”
Accounting
systems that do not tell the truth can be costly. Faulty corporate
accounting systems that leave costs off the books have driven some of the
world’s largest corporations into bankruptcy. Modern right wing
economists and businessmen cleverly externalise social and environmental
costs, in order to maximise corporate profits. In the wake of their
ruthless push for economic efficiency, we see an erosion or collapse of
pension provisions, a decline in health benefits, and enormous increases
in the cost to all consumers of basic services such as water supplies.
The risk with our faulty global economic accounting system
is that it so distorts the economy that it could one day lead to economic
decline and collapse. If we can get the market to tell the truth, then
the world can avoid being blindsided by faulty accounting systems that
lead to bankruptcy. As Øystein Dahle, former Vice President of Exxon for
Norway and the North Sea, has pointed out: “Socialism collapsed because it
did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may
collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological
truth.” One might add that neither system was prepared to recognise the
spiritual truth that they both devalued and degraded their human capital.
Oystein Dahle, former Vice
President of Exxon Norway, now Chairman of the WorldWatch Institute |
