OPEN LETTER before
year 2000
Written
by a group of Georgists around the world
to
Pope John Paul II
November
1997
Your Holiness,
THE QUESTION OF MISERY
At the outdoor mass you held in Wroclaw in Poland during your
recent visit to that country, you said the following very true and sincere
words:
"The Earth is capable of feeding everyone, Why therefore -
here at the end of the 20th century - should thousands of people die from
starvation'" - "Pray solidarity will prevail over the unrestrained
thirst for profit and ways to handle laws of trade, which do not take into
consideration inalienable human rights",
It was the same concern about the greed of the wealthy and the
plight of the poor, that your predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, expressed in his
Encyclical Letter of 1891,'Rerum Novarum'. Yet, in the more than hundred years
that have past, if there has been a change, it has been for the worse!
The wealth is there. The growth of industry and the discoveries
of science about which Pope Leo spoke, are even more fantastic and surprising
than he would have imagined in his most inspired dreams. The enormous fortunes
of individuals, of which he also spoke, have become more enormous. Yet the
poverty is still there. Even in countries that are considered wealthy, people
are homeless and live in cardboard boxes; people die, not just by the thousands
as your Holiness said in Wroclaw, but by the millions, from poverty related
diseases, malnutrition and starvation.
You are indeed right to ask the question: WHY?
THE EXCLUSION FROM THE GIFTS OF GOD
As your Holiness will know, the Encyclical Letter of 1891 was not
only an attack on socialism, but also a strong defence of the right to hold
land as private property, a right that Pope Leo XIII claimed to be natural.
But the right to hold land includes the right for the owner to
exclude other people from it, and, as all usable land in industrially developed
countries is owned in that way, people without such a right will be unable to
enjoy the gifts of God unless they accept the conditions exacted of them by a
landowner. Neither can they work, reside nor relax without land, and again they
have to accept conditions exacted by a landowner.
Normally the landowner will ask people to pay the
market-determined site rental, which is high because of the many excluded
people who want land, or he will offer to let them work at a market-determined wage,
which is low because of many excluded people wanting a working place.
Some people, in fact - as a consequence of the many excluded - a
growing number of people, can neither qualify for a job nor afford to pay the
site rental, and they have to live on the streets, on the roads, at the dumping
grounds or wherever they can find a poor shelter, some clothes and a little to
eat. Some of them find that crime and prison give them a better life than there
is available through the legal opportunities open to them.
In some countries Social Security is implemented to mitigate the
cruel consequences of the exclusion of people from the gifts of God. The Social
Security bill is not paid by landowners, but by entrepreneurs, wage earners,
pensioners, savers and consumers.
In other countries only private charity is available to relieve
the hardships.
But neither Social Security nor charity will change the basic
Injustice, that causes the horrible conditions of the people excluded, that
increases the site rentals to be paid for the use of land, and reduces
net-wages, widening the gap between poor and rich.
The basic cause of these evils has to be destroyed!
Political leaders from all over the world, including
representatives of the Holy See, agreed at the United Nations conference on
Human Settlements (Habitat II) at Istanbul last year, that
"The failure to adapt, at all levels, appropriate rural and
urban land policies and land management practices remains a primary cause of
inequity and poverty".
LETTER TO POPE LEO XIII
Allow us, your Holiness, to point to the Open Letter of September
11th, 1891, written in New York by Henry George and sent to your
predecessor his Holiness Pope Leo XIII, as a response to 'Rerum Novarum'.
Published as a book this Open Letter has been read by many
thousands, and still today the book is sold and read.
Henry George did consider 'inalienable human rights' and
'unrestrained thirst for profit and ways to handle laws of trade'. On exactly
this background he spoke for all people's equal rights to the gifts of God.
To maintain this right for everybody and at the same time to
allow exclusive right for some to own land as private property, he advocated
that people who are given the exclusive right to own land - and thereby the
right to exclude other people from the gifts of Nature - should pay a
compensation to the people they exclude (in fact to all citizens).
The compensation, as a duty to be paid by the landowners, should
be the market-determined rentals of the sites from which they can exclude others.
This being a fair charge of justice as the rentals are not due to efforts or
investments made by the landowners, but due to the development of society and
to the growth of the population of human beings, all wanting a place to work,
and a place to reside.
The rentals should be collected from all landowners by society,
and the revenue should be used to the benefit of all citizens.
In that way, Henry George emphasized, all citizens would be able
to get their equal share of the gifts of God.
HOLY INCENTIVES OR HOLLOW FALSEHOOD
We do agree with your Holiness and with Henry George that people
have private right to property created by man, the right to the fruits of their
labour; and also that people can achieve private right to exclusive possession
of land, from which they can exclude other people.
But we find it logically inconsistent to believe that
people have equal right to life and to be on the Earth, when at the same time
some of them have exclusive right to own land as private property without
paying compensation to those people whom they exclude from their land.
Your Holiness' sincere words, as quoted initially in this letter,
accord with 'Rerum Novarum' of 1891 and with the Habitat II statement quoted
above, but they will only become true if your Holiness will succeed in urging
on the rulers/governments of this world to collect the annual market-determined
Site Rentals of all land in their countries, and distribute the revenue thus
acquired to the benefit of all their citizens.
If your Holiness could succeed in persuading the governments to
do so, all people on Earth would gain equal access to the gifts of Nature, and
true solidarity would become a reality.
If not, all statements about equal right to life, to work, to
education and to residence, will continue being hollow and false; and our
successors will not see a change for the better; on the contrary, they will see
the gap between very rich people and alienated poor people grow bigger, and the
problems of poverty grow more serious than they are today.
OUR PRAYER
We pray your Holiness may succeed in convincing the governments
of this world of the importance of public collection of the annual market
rental of all land, and the revenue to be used for equal benefit of all the
citizens, thus to provide for all human beings, equal rights to the
gifts of Nature.
Let this become the manifesto of the new Millennium, the
2000-year anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ.
Let it become a Jubilee in the original meaning of the word,
striking unjust shackles from society; thereby preparing a new age of humanity,
a social life in friendship and peace.
Written by a group of Georgists in consequence of discussions
taken place at the International Conference in Brighton, July-August 1997, and
endorsed November 5th, 1997 by the President of
International Union for Land Value Taxation and Free Trade
International Georgist Union
Yours sincerely
Ole Lefmann / Robert V Andelson, President