Communal property

“ The system of landholding in the most ancient races was COMMUNAL. That word, and its derivative, COMMUNISM, has latterly had a bad odor. Yet all the most important public works are communal. All joint-stock companies, whether for banking, trading, or extensive works, are communes. They hold property in common, and merge individual in general rights. The possession of land by communes or companies is gradually extending, and it is by no means improbable that the ideas which governed very remote times may, like the communal joint-stock system, be applied more extensively to landholding. ”

“ On the other hand, we cause a statement to be drawn up in each commune, of "the condition of citizens without property," and "of national possessions not disposed of;" we divide these possession in small lots; we distribute them "in the shape of national sales" to poor folks able to work. We give, "through the form of rental, "an acre to each head of a family who has less than an acre of his own. "We thus bind all citizens to the country as well as to property. ”

“ When you bring together the Scotch township which is nothing more than an association of tenants, the Russian mir which seems to have long been only an association of serfs, the Servian village which, on the other hand, is a household community, and the allmend or commons which are a consequence and accompaniment of private property, you confuse things which are absolutely different, and which, moreover, are very far removed from the system of community in land that you are anxious to prove. ”

“ The rights of the individual and the rights of the Community commingle more or less in private property of every kind, at least to the extent that the latter may tax the property if needful for the common wellbeing, as it is bound also legally to secure it to the owner when threatened by others ”

“ There may be a 'consensual' community within a so-called 'legal' community. In some of the so-called 'legal' community property states separate property of one spouse may be converted by contract or deed into community property or vice versa. ”

“ If this were not the case, then by priority of appropriation one man could acquire and could transmit to whom he pleased, not merely the exclusive right to a few acres, but to a whole township, a whole country, a whole continent. ”

“ By the cession, public property passes from one government to the other, but private property remains as before, and with it those municipal laws which are designed to secure its peaceful use and enjoyment. ”

“ Ideally there should be a community house erected at a convenient location, and large enough to accommodate as many as might desire to assemble. It should be equipped for all the social uses to which it might be put. It should be paid for by the voluntary contributions of all the people, but title to the property should be in the hands of a board of trustees or associates who would be responsible for its maintenance and for the uses to which it would be put. ”

“ No owner of land need be dispossessed, and no restriction need be placed upon the amount of land any one could hold. For, rent being taken by the State in taxes, land, no matter in whose name it stood, or in what parcels it was held, would be really common property, and every member of the community would participate in the advantages of its ownership. ”

“ But, subject to this proviso, the state is at liberty to deal with landed property as the general interests of the community may require, even to the extent, if it so happen, of doing with the whole, what is done with a part whenever a bill is passed for a railroad or a new street. The community has too much at stake in the proper cultivation of the land, and in the conditions annexed to the occupancy of it, to leave these things to the discretion of a class of persons called landlords, when they have shown themselves unfit for the trust. ”

“ Apprehension of land as common property The doctrine of eminent domain, which makes the sovereign theoretically the only absolute owner of land, springs from nothing but the recognition of the sovereign as the representative of the collective rights of the people. ”

“ It is essential that relations of precise equity shall prevail between the proprietors of a Collective Home. The right of individual property in each domicile should be fortified by separate title and right of sale, subject only to chartered restrictions. In a well constructed and organized Federative Homestead such domiciles would always be salable at full cost value. A precise account, based on accurate standards of measurement, must be kept with each individual or family, including both general and special supplies and services. ”

“ The 'mir,' moreover, is in its nature opposed to private ownership, and every discussion between the member of the village communism and the property-holder is artfully prevented by the scattering about of compulsory peasants. For property-owners are at present for the most part Liberal. ”

“ Those who are giving their time and energy to the production of wealth, face the fact that property rights have been so construed as to give property owners a first claim on production and to make property income a fixed charge on the industry of the community. ”

“ The efforts of the propertied interests have been exerted to good purpose. The public mind, the laws and constitutions, the forms of judicial practice—in short, all of the social forces that were of advantage have been bent to the guarantee of property income permanence. ”

“ If one doubts this he should reflect on recent rent legislation, which in effect treats the renting of houses as a business affected with a public interest in which reasonable rates must be charged as by a public utility. Also it means that cases of legal application of wealth to collective uses are becoming continually more numerous. He then argues that the law of property answers to the economic need of applying certain wealth to definite individual or collective uses and the consequent need that society guarantee and protect that application. ”

“ The rights of property have been so much extended that the rights of the community have almost altogether disappeared, and it is hardly too much to say that the prosperity and the comfort and the liberties of a great proportion of the population has been laid at the feet of a small number of proprietors, who neither toil nor spin. ”

“ If the idea so constantly appealed to in justification of property law is to be realised; if the fruits of each man’s labor [68] are to be guaranteed to him and he is to own the instruments with which he works; if the laws of property are not to establish a parasitic class taking tribute from the labor of others in the forms of Rent and Interest, then we must modify our administration of property. ”

“ What I would propose is, that common land should be divided into sections of five acres or thereabout, to be conferred in absolute property on individuals of the laboring-class who would reclaim and bring them into cultivation by their own labor. ”

“ Like man himself, every form of the property of man possesses, besides its special character which makes it the private possession of an individual, a universal side which men gives the community a well-grounded claim to a right to it. That the State and the municipality appropriate a part of the property of every citizen as taxes we all consider a matter of course, or that the law limits the free control of the individual's property. ”

“ In order that the question of proprietorship may not remain too long unsettled, and thereby injure the public welfare, disturbing the peace of families and the stability of social transactions, the law has fixed a time when all claims shall be cancelled, and possession shall regain its ancient prerogative through its transformation into property. ”

“ The disintegration of the large feudal estates operated to increase the number of landowners, and the abolition of the restraints by which landowners endeavoured to compel labourers to remain on their estates also contributed to draw away attention from the essential injustice involved in private property in land. ”

“ Property is abolished and community of goods established, so that private citizens have no further need for savings, and the savings of his life-time are appropriated by the State. Next, the organisation of industry by the State necessitates the separation of the family. ”

“ Later, when they began to settle in defined localities to till the soil, the ownership of property ceased to be collective. As population and the area under cultivation increased, private property appeared at first as the right of the family and finally as the right of the individual. ”

“ This evil has gone on increasing till acre after acre of the soil of England which was termed common land has been appropriated with the manifest effect of making the rich richer, and the poor poorer.
The inclosure of commons may be taken as an instance of the conversion into private property of what was not private property, under the pretence that the effect will be to give more employment to the agricultural labourer. ”

“ As it would be difficult to say who should pay whom, and money is needed for communal use, it should be arranged that he who uses the good land should pay the amount of the value of his land to the commune for its needs. ”

“ Now, the law bases property upon immemorial, unquestionable possession; that is, prescription. Labor is only the sensible sign, the physical act, by which occupation is manifested. If, then, the cultivator remains proprietor after he has ceased to labor and produce; if his possession, first conceded, then tolerated, finally becomes inalienable,—it happens by permission of the civil law, and by virtue of the principle of occupancy. So true is this, that there is not a bill of sale, not a farm lease, not an annuity, but implies it. ”

“ But the most important, indeed, the only essential point of the whole system is this: the land with all the houses, buildings, factories, trading establishments, etc., that on it are, must become the unalienable property of the community and come into its direct possession at the close of each generation. Any one desirous of owning land or factories, will receive a title to them for his life-time from the State, for which he must pay an annual rental, which will be a certain percentage of the total amount of capital represented. ”

“ The landholders to have the use and profits of all the grounds until the city is laid off into lots, and sale is made of those lots, which, by this agreement, become public property. Nothing is to be allowed for the ground which may be occupied as streets or alleys.'
Subsequently, in order to carry out the agreement, the lot owners conveyed their lands to trustees. ”

“ Such foresight and pre-arrangement, never before exercised in an effective manner, are displayed conspicuously in the case of Garden City, where the land, as we have seen, is vested in trustees, who hold it in trust (after payment of the debentures) for the whole community, so that the entire increment of value gradually created becomes the property of the municipality, with the effect that though rents may rise, and even rise considerably, such rise in rent will not become the property of private individuals, but will be applied in relief of rates. ”

“ As tenants, these men acquired, from generation to generation, sacred rights over the soil which they cultivated in the interest of lazy and pillaging masters. As fast as the social tempest abated, it became necessary to respect the union and heritage of these villeins, who by their labor had truly prescribed the soil for their own profit. ”

“ Community of goods again, private property being abolished, calls for a regulation whereby all citizens are to dine at the public expense in the various public halls of the city, the particular place of each being determined by lot ”

“ In the earliest society the proprietors made their own wealth, and so long as it comes to the owners in the direct way, no other opinion would arise in any equitable community than that property should make the law for property, and persons the law for persons. ”

“ Lenin was reading the Decree on Land:
(1.) All private ownership of land is abolished immediately without compensation.
(2.) All land-owners' estates, and all lands belonging to the Crown, to monasteries, church lands with all their live stock and inventoried property, buildings and all appurtenances, are transferred to the disposition of the township Land Committees and the district Soviets of Peasants' Deputies until the Constituent Assembly meets. ”

“ Whatever expense we as a Municipal Council may put the owners to in order to make their property healthy, is strictly regulated by law. We cannot go beyond the letter of the law. The reason why investors [Pg 161] in slum property have reaped such a rich harvest in the past is because neither they nor the local authorities have carried out the law. ”

“ In the first place the labourer's dwelling, which is to consist of seven rooms, is, with all that it contains, to be his own property: it is the only landed property he is allowed to possess, but every family should be the absolute owner of all things which are destined for its exclusive use. ”

“ These shares were frequently redistributed, so that no man might permanently hold a more fertile portion than his neighbour, and the right to leave property by will was strictly limited. The head man of the village was elected by the community. ”

“ The land is all private property,—or nearly so, very little of it remaining in the hands of the Government on behalf of the people generally,—and having been divided into these large sections, cannot now be split up into smaller sections except by sale or inheritance. ”