I. According to Tucker, from the standpoint of every one's self-interest and the equal liberty of all there is no objection to property. Tucker rejects only the distribution of property on the basis of monopoly, as it everywhere and always exists in the State. That the State is essentially invasion appears in the laws which "not only prescribe personal habits, but, worse still, create and sustain monopolies"[761] and thereby make usury possible.[762]
1. Usury is the taking of surplus value.[763] "A laborer's product is such portion of the value of that which he delivers to the consumer as his own labor has contributed."[764] The laborer does not get this product, "at least not as laborer; he gains a bare subsistence by his work."[765] But, "somebody gets the surplus wealth. Who is the somebody?"[766] "The usurer."[767]
"There are three forms of usury: interest on money, rent of land and houses, and profit in exchange. Whoever is in receipt of any of these is a usurer. And who is not? Scarcely any one. The banker is a usurer; the manufacturer is a usurer; the merchant is a usurer; the landlord is a usurer; and the workingman who puts his savings, if he has any, out at interest, or takes rent for his house or lot, if he owns one, or exchanges his labor for more than an equivalent,—he too is a usurer. The sin of usury is one under which all are concluded, and for which all are responsible. But all do not benefit by it. The vast majority suffer. Only the chief usurers accumulate: in agricultural and thickly settled countries, the landlords; in industrial and commercial countries, the bankers. Those are the Somebodies who swallow up the surplus wealth."[768]
2. "And where do they get their power? From monopoly maintained by the State. Usury rests on this."[769] And "of the various monopolies that now prevail, four are of principal importance."[770]
"First in the importance of its evil influence they [the founders of Anarchism] considered the money monopoly, which consists of the privilege given by the government to certain individuals, or to individuals holding certain kinds of property, of issuing the circulating medium, a privilege which is now enforced in this country by a national tax of ten per cent. upon all other persons who attempt to furnish a circulating medium, and by State laws making it a criminal offence to issue notes as currency. It is claimed that holders of this privilege control the rate of interest, the rate of rent of houses and buildings, and the prices of goods,—the first directly, and the second and third indirectly. For, if the business of banking were made free to all, more and more persons would enter into it until the competition should become sharp enough to reduce the price of lending money to the labor cost, which statistics show to be less than three-fourths of one per cent."[771] "Then down will go house-rent. For no one who can borrow capital at one per cent. with which to build a house of his own will consent to pay rent to a landlord at a higher rate than that."[772] Finally, "down will go profits also. For merchants, instead of buying at high prices on credit, will borrow money of the banks at less than one per cent., buy at low prices for cash, and correspondingly reduce the prices of their goods to their customers."[773]
"Second in importance comes the land monopoly, the evil effects of which are seen principally in exclusively agricultural countries, like Ireland. This monopoly consists in the enforcement by government of land-titles which do not rest upon personal occupancy and cultivation."[774] "Ground-rent exists only because the State stands by to collect it and to protect land-titles rooted in force or fraud."[775] "As soon as individuals should no longer be protected in anything but personal occupancy and cultivation of land, ground-rent would disappear, and so usury have one less leg to stand on."[776]
The third and fourth places are occupied by the tariff and patent monopolies.[777] "The tariff monopoly consists in fostering production at high prices and under unfavorable conditions by visiting with the penalty of taxation those who patronize production at low prices and under favorable conditions. The evil to which this monopoly gives rise might more properly be called misusury than usury, because it compels labor to pay, not exactly for the use of capital, but rather for the misuse of capital."[778] "The patent monopoly protects inventors and authors against competition for a period long enough to enable them to extort from the people a reward enormously in excess of the labor measure of their services,—in other words, it gives certain people a right of property for a term of years in laws and facts of nature, and the power to exact tribute from others for the use of this natural wealth, which should be open to all."[779] It is on the tariff and patent monopolies, next to the money monopoly, that profit in exchange is based. If they were done away along with the money monopoly, it would disappear.[780]
II. Every one's self-interest, and particularly the equal liberty of all, demands a distribution of property in which every one is guaranteed the product of his labor.[781]
1. "Equal liberty, in the property sphere, is such a balance between the liberty to take and the liberty to keep that the two liberties may coexist without conflict or invasion."[782] "Nearly all Anarchists consider labor to be the only basis of the right of ownership in harmony with that law";[783] "the laborers, instead of having only a small fraction of the wealth in the world, should have all the wealth."[784] This form of property "secures each in the possession of his own products, or of such products of others as he may have obtained unconditionally without the use of fraud or force, and in the realization of all titles to such products which he may hold by virtue of free contract with others."[785]
"It will be seen from this definition that Anarchistic property concerns only products. But anything is a product upon which human labor has been expended, whether it be a piece of iron or a piece of land. (It should be stated, however, that in the case of land, or of any other material the supply of which is so limited that all cannot hold it in unlimited quantities, Anarchism undertakes to protect no titles except such as are based on actual occupancy and use.)"[786]
2. A distribution of property in which every one is guaranteed the product of his labor presupposes merely that equal liberty be applied in those spheres which are as yet dominated by State monopoly.[787]
"Free money first."[788] "I mean by free money the utter absence of restriction upon the issue of all money not fraudulent";[789] "making the issue of money as free as the manufacture of shoes."[790]
Money is here understood in the broadest sense, it means both "commodity money and credit money,"[791] by no means coin alone; "if the idea of the royalty of gold and silver could once be knocked out of the people's heads, and they could once understand that no particular kind of merchandise is created by nature for monetary purposes, they would settle this question in a trice."[792] "If they only had the liberty to do so, there are enough large and small property-holders willing and anxious to issue money, to provide a far greater amount than is needed."[793] "Does the law of England allow citizens to form a bank for the issue of paper money against any property that they may see fit to accept as security; said bank perhaps owning no specie whatever; the paper money not redeemable in specie except at the option of the bank; the customers of the bank mutually pledging themselves to accept the bank's paper in lieu of gold or silver coin of the same face value; the paper being redeemable only at the maturity of the mortgage notes, and then simply by a return of said notes and a release of the mortgaged property,—is such an institution, I ask, allowed by the law of England? If it is, then I have only to say that the working people of England are very great fools not to take advantage of this inestimable liberty."[794] Then "competition would reduce the rate of interest on capital to the mere cost of banking, which is much less than one per cent.,"[795] for "capitalists will not be able to lend their capital at interest when people can get money at the bank without interest with which to buy capital outright."[796] Likewise the charge of rent on buildings "would be almost entirely and directly abolished,"[797] and "profits fall to the level of the manufacturer's or merchant's proper wage,"[798] "except in business protected by tariff or patent laws."[799] "This facility of acquiring capital will give an unheard-of impetus to business";[800] "if free banking were only a picayunish attempt to distribute more equitably the small amount of wealth now produced, I would not waste a moment's energy on it."[801]
Free land is needed in the second place.[802] "'The land for the people,' according to 'Liberty', means the protection of all people who desire to cultivate land in the possession of whatever land they personally cultivate, without distinction between the existing classes of landlords, tenants, and laborers, and the positive refusal of the protecting power to lend its aid to the collection of any rent whatsoever."[803] This "system of occupying ownership, accompanied by no legal power to collect rent, but coupled with the abolition of the State-guaranteed monopoly of money, thus making capital readily available,"[804] would "abolish ground-rent"[805] and "distribute the increment naturally and quietly among its rightful owners."[806]
In the third and fourth place, free trade and freedom of intellectual products are necessary.[807] If they were added to freedom in money, "profit on merchandise would become merely the wages of mercantile labor."[808] Free trade "would result in a great reduction in the prices of all articles taxed."[809] And "the abolition of the patent monopoly would fill its beneficiaries with a wholesome fear of competition which would cause them to be satisfied with pay for their services equal to that which other laborers get for theirs."[810]
If equal liberty is realized in these four spheres, its realization in the sphere of property follows of itself: that is, a distribution of property in which every one is guaranteed the product of his labor.[811] "Economic privilege must disappear as a result of the abolition of political tyranny."[812] In a society in which there is no more government of man by man, there can be no such things as interest, rent, and profits;[813] every one is guaranteed the ownership of the product of his labor. "Socialism does not say: 'Thou shalt not steal!' It says: 'When all men have Liberty, thou wilt not steal.'"[814]
3. "Liberty will abolish all means whereby any laborer can be deprived of any of his product; but it will not abolish the limited inequality between one laborer's product and another's."[815] "There will remain the slight disparity of products due to superiority of soil and skill. But even this disparity will soon develop a tendency to decrease. Under the new economic conditions and enlarged opportunities resulting from freedom of credit and land classes will tend to disappear; great capacities will not be developed in a few at the expense of stunting those of the many; freedom of locomotion will be vastly increased; the toilers will no longer be anchored in such large numbers in the present commercial centres, and thus made subservient to the city landlords; territories and resources never before utilized will become easy of access and development; and under all these influences the disparity above mentioned will decrease to a minimum."[816]
"Probably it will never disappear entirely."[817] "Now, because liberty has not the power to bring this about, there are people who say: We will have no liberty, for we must have absolute equality. I am not of them. If I can go through life free and rich, I shall not cry because my neighbor, equally free, is richer. Liberty will ultimately make all men rich; it will not make all men equally rich. Authority may (and may not) make all men equally rich in purse; it certainly will make them equally poor in all that makes life best worth living."[818]
