Thomas Paine's 'Agrarian Justice'
The Rights of Individuals to Own Property Investigated
Paine shows how land is not a human right, but is a possession of humanity in common. Any ownership must be justified by the payment of taxes for the benefit of society.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was an English political philosopher and activist most famous for the Rights of Man, written in 1791 in the wake of the French Revolution, and the influential pamphlet of the American Revolution entitled Common Sense. Both laid out the inalienable rights of the individual, which were the proper basis of the concept of sovereignty, and therefore democracy. Lesser known is Paine’s radical essay Agrarian Justice published in 1795.
Land Justice
Paine believed ‘… the earth, in its natural, uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race.’ In condemnation of land owners who let those without land starve, he declaims ‘… the first principle of civilization ought to have been, and ought still to be, that the condition of every person born into the world, after a state of civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born before that period.’
Possession is Nine-Tenths of the Law
To Paine we owe this saying, but it is often incorrectly quoted. He is not defending the possessor of land, but rather convicting him. The fraction is to draw attention to the debt (the one-tenth, or a normal Church ‘tithe’) that the possessor in fact owes to those who are dispossessed, and society in general. However, Paine, like John Locke before him, does recognize worked land as having an increasing value owing to its occupier. ‘The value of the improvement [through cultivation] so far exceeded the value of the natural earth, … , as to absorb it; till, in the end, the common right of all became confounded into the cultivated right of the individual.’
Defending the Dispossessed
But Paine defends the right of the dispossessed as well as those who have worked their land. He proposes that from a national fund, created from what would be termed today as an inheritance tax and a value-added tax, every person who reaches the age of 21 should receive a sum (of 15 pounds sterling in 1796) as a compensation for their lost property rights, while everyone on reaching the age of 50 should receive a pension (of 10 pounds per year). This is not conceived as a hand-out, as some social welfare critics might term it. ‘In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed [of property], it is a right, and not a charity, that I am pleading for.’ And he wants to guarantee the payments for rich as well as poor. ‘It is best to make it so, to prevent invidious distinctions.’
Rich and Poor
Paine was not against wealth, but he doesn’t believe wealth can be legitimately enjoyed when others suffer as a direct result. ‘The contrast of affluence and wretchedness continually meeting and offending the eye, is like dead and living bodies chained together. … I care not how affluent some may be, provided that none be miserable in consequence of it. But it is impossible to enjoy affluence with the felicity it is capable of being enjoyed, while so much misery is mingled in the scene.’
The Need for Welfare Co-ordination within Society
Paine was one of the first and most eloquent arguers for human rights in the modern period. He believed ‘… with respect to justice, it ought not to be left to the choice of detached individuals whether they will do justice or not.’ Therefore human rights require social organization and common responsibility. As he says, ‘It is only by organising civilization upon such principles as to act like a system of pulleys, that the whole weight of misery can be removed.’
Source: All quotes from Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice, included in Common Sense, Great Ideas Series, Penguin Books, London, England, 2004.
