Land reform in Scotland (2026)

From the April 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the inception of the Scottish Parliament, land reform has been a significant issue. It is widely recognised that there is considerable concentration of land ownership in Scotland. Typically, land reform is an issue in formerly colonised countries, where the occupying power has concentrated land ownership, such as in South Africa and Zimbabwe, to benefit the colonisers and exert control.

The concentration of land in Scotland, through the famous Highland Clearances, was a precursor and a part of the same process, appropriating land for the ruling class and sending people out to colonise other parts of the world.

According to the Scottish Land Commission: 1,252 owners hold 67 percent of privately owned rural land. Of these estates, 87 are estimated to be larger than 10,000 hectares (67 of these are in the Highlands), 667 are 1,000-10,000, and 371 are smaller than 1,000 hectares. There are 5.5 million people in Scotland.

As they note, this is not unusual:

‘Ownership of agricultural land is becoming increasingly concentrated in Europe, with one percent of agricultural businesses controlling 20% of agricultural land in the EU and three percent controlling 50%. Conversely, 80% of agricultural businesses control only 14.5% of agricultural land (European Economic and Social Committee, 2015)’.

Early in the parliament’s existence, the then Labour government passed laws to abolish the last vestiges of feudal land ownership – no longer requiring the payment of feudal duties and creation of outright ownership of land.

The Scottish Parliament took the opportunity to make changes, now it was no longer confronted by the power of landowners in the House of Lords. By 2004, it passed its first Land Reform Act, which included a broader right to roam than in England and Wales, and also introduced community right to buy, where populations up to 10,000 could register a right of refusal on land sales and transfers. This legislation also placed responsibilities on landowners for the management of their property.

The SNP have continued the process by passing further acts in 2015, 2016 and 2025. The 2016 legislation gave Scottish ministers the power to intervene in land sales. Some of this legislation was refinements of the process following human rights cases that upheld the right of private ownership against the provisions of the Land Reform Acts, particularly Salvesen v Riddell.

The 2016 Community Empowerment Act gave communities rights to intervene in disused or neglected land causing harm to communities (including urban properties). The 2025 Act includes a requirement to consider reasonable requests to lease land or convert parts of it into crofting land. This act also requires a plan which will improve biodiversity, adapt to climate change and contribute to net zero.

The large estate owners continue to fight a rearguard action, maintaining that large estates can be run more efficiently and with economies of scale (eg, when a part of the estate has a lean year, they can cross-subsidise from other parts of the estate to continue paying staff for maintenance and other costs).

Campaigners maintain that there is evidence that large estates stifle development, and concentrate power into a few hands:

‘Scotland’s current pattern of landownership frustrates economic development within fragile rural communities. Most of these responses were very general in nature but the overall perception was that because landowners have a very high degree of control over decisions about how land is used, they also have the capacity to either help or hinder economic development. The implication of this is that where local economic development is not regarded as a priority by the landowner, then it will not happen.’

Further, some landowners are perceived as ‘trophy’ owners, holding the land as a status symbol (mostly for shooting); whereas some charities are seen as hindering economic development in the name of conservation. As the land commission notes, ‘This indicates that the issue here is more to do with concentration of power and resources more generally, and that land holdings are acting as an outlet for the exercise of this power rather than its source’.

These frustrations reflect the desire of small-business folk and entrepreneurs who are locked out by their more powerful rivals. Indeed, part of the impetus behind land reform is securing the votes of rural population, including farmers and small-business people. The fact that the legislation is locked in with significant requirements for Scottish ministers to intervene, means that wealth and social connexion may, however, be the real determinant for how much, or how little changes. It will be interesting to see how much this will affect land held by the King in his own right (rather than as Crown land, which itself is managed by Scottish ministers and accounts for 35,000 hectares), such as Balmoral, and if ministers will be willing to impose conditions and lettings on any of his land.

So far, there has been little change in the pattern of land ownership, and sales and transfers of large estates are few and far between. Much as in land reform in many parts of the world, the power and right of property tends to chafe against any attempts to constrain it.

Where land is owned by public bodies, such as ‘Forestry and Land Scotland,’ commercial imperatives still apply, so the logic of capital predominates regardless of titular ownership. It is this logic that will continue to predominate even if the land is parcelled up into smaller lots.

Socialists want to end the private ownership of land and want to see it used rationally to benefit the needs of the whole community. That means, not state ownership or ownership by forestry commissions or trusts, but common ownership and democratic control.

Land being held in common doesn’t mean that people won’t be free to use their initiative to employ the land, but that under properly understood and agreed common and democratic rules, people would be able to co-operate to meet their individual and collective needs without all the layers of complexity and chicanery that come with the private ownership of land.

Pik Smeet

The Town and Country Planning Bill (1947)

From the March 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

“A man will no longer be able to buy farmland at £200 an acre in the hope of reselling it as a factory site at £600 an acre. True, it will be worth more as a factory site—but the State, through a Central Land Board, will collect all or most of the difference” (Daily Herald, 8/1/47).

Thus the Labour Government carries out a longstanding demand made in the interests of the industrial capitalist. H. M. Hyndman, in his “Economics of Socialism,” dealt with this. After reviewing the Ricardian theory of rent and the many objections which present themselves to that theory, he wrote: —

“It seems, therefore, that a wider definition of the rent of land under Capitalism is needed than that, given by Ricardo, and the following is suggested: Rent of land is that portion of the total net revenue which is paid to the landlord for the use of plots of land after the average profit on the capital embarked in developing such land has been deducted.”

On the question of confiscating rent he pointed out that it “would not affect the position of the working portion of the community unless the money so obtained were devoted to giving them more amusement, to providing them with better surroundings and the like. . . . In fact, the attack upon competitive rents is merely a capitalist attack. That class sees a considerable income going off to a set of people who take no part in the direct exploitation of labour; and its representatives are naturally anxious to stop this leakage, as they consider it, and to reduce their own taxation for public purposes by appropriating rent to the service of the State. That is all very well for them.”

On this point Marx says: —

“We can understand such economists as Mill, Cherbulliez, Hilditch, and others, demanding that rent should be used for the remission of taxation. That is only the frank expression of the hate which the industrial capitalist feels for the landed proprietor, who appears to him as a useless incumbrance, a superfluity in the otherwise harmonious whole of bourgeois production.” (“Poverty of Philosophy,” Kerr edition, 1920. Page 176.)

“Rent,” says Marx, “results from the social relations in which exploitation is carried on. It cannot result from the nature, more or less fixed, more or less durable, of land. Rent proceeds from society and not from the soil.” (P. 180.)

(The above quotations are used by H. Quelch in his Introduction to Marx’s “Poverty of Philosophy,” Kerr edition, 1920.)

Horatio.

SPGB Snippets: Stealing the common from off the goose . . . (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website

March 25, 2026

The UK government has just published the first ever Land Use Framework for England, in which joined-up thinking, better mapping tools, and free access to ownership data will supposedly rationalise legacy chaos so that “land can support house building and infrastructure, a resilient food system, climate mitigation and thriving nature.”

The framework enthuses about community consultation and partnerships but never, of course, questions the very idea of ownership. 10 percent of land is held in secret and just 8 percent of England is public access. Capitalists got their start by stealing the land off the people, worldwide, forcing generations to live as landless wage-slaves. We will never be free until we take the land and other resources back and abolish capitalist ownership laws.

Cooking the Books: Capitalism – an irrational system (2025)

The Cooking the Books column from the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Landowners see more profit in solar farms than growing crops’ read the title of an article in the Times (20 October).

‘The largest farm management company in Britain is cancelling 20 per cent of its contracts with landowners because it is becoming harder to make money from arable farming. Industry insiders fear soon-to-be-released farmland could be turned into solar parks, which gives landowners a greater return on their investment.’

Although only landowners can switch from having their land farmed to using it for solar parks, ‘landowners’ is not the entirely accurate word here as it could imply that the management company concerned (the Velcourt Group) is working with those who own the land; in fact, it is with those who farm it whether or not they own it. Some will be landowners who farm their land themselves; others will be tenant farmers who are paying rent to the landlord. So, the ‘returns’ in question are capitalist profits rather than rents paid to landowners.

Land is not used just for growing crops; it can also be used for raising livestock or for growing timber or for quarrying or mining (or, for that matter, for building houses and factories), depending on the land’s particular characteristics. The article was reporting that investing capital in arable land was, for various reasons, becoming less profitable and that the owners of Velcourt had therefore decided to cut back on their investment in that and to invest in other types of farming.

Capitalism, as an economic system, is based on the resources that society needs to survive being monopolised by a section only of society and being used to produce goods and services for sale with a view to making a profit. Decisions on what, where and how much to produce are made by capitalist enterprises, whether private or state owned, each seeking to make a profit. That, not to meet people’s needs, is the incentive to produce.

Under capitalism productive units do not primarily produce useful things (even if what they produce has to be useful to some person or body, otherwise it wouldn’t sell); what they are essentially doing is seeking to increase the value of the capital they invested in them by making a profit. If those who control the deployment of capital consider that they can make a bigger profit from investing in some other activity than the particular one they have been investing in, they will withdraw from that and invest in the other.

So it is quite in accordance with the logic and imperatives of capitalism that a capitalist enterprise such as Velcourt should cut back on its investment in an activity that is no longer making enough profit or whose future profit-making is not bright. It is equally logical that the owners of the land should look for other ways of using their land so as to get ‘a greater return’ even if this has nothing to do with agriculture. That’s the way the capitalist economy works.

The change from one line of production to another doesn’t reflect a change in real demand for something, only changes in paying demand. Given that under capitalism about 20 percent of paying demand comes from capitalist enterprises in search of profit — and that that is what drives the economy — and that the smaller your monetary income the less your real needs are taken into account, what results is an irrational use of resources in the sense of not meeting everyone’s needs.

Voice From the Back: The benefits of globalisation (2001)

The Voice From the Back column from the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

The benefits of globalisation

“With a “catastrophe” in the world’s trade and many growers facing starvation, a leading coffee buyer appealed to the International Coffee Organisation in London yesterday for a tax of $1 on a 50kg bag to save farmers . . . “It is a huge and wealthy industry, yet the beans are grown almost entirely by very poor people who receive hardly anything for their labours.” . . . Prices have halved to $75 a bag this year, mainly because of a World Bank-financed drive to plant coffee in Vietnam. Production has risen from 4m bags to 16m. Big firms, including Nestle, Procter & Gamble and Sara Lee, which owns Douwe Egberts, have kept prices up to benefit shareholders while the price to growers has halved.” Guardian (27 September). The rich get richer and the impoverished producers get poorer. Sound familiar? The answer isn’t a $1 tax but the complete transformation of society from one based on production for profit to one based on production solely for use.

Futile reforms

“The recovery of the ozone layer could be delayed significantly because the chemicals produced to replace those banned in the Montreal Protocol are proving equally damaging and are not controlled by international law, the UN Environment Programme reported.” Times (17 October). Another example of how reforms often don’t solve the problems of capitalism and another reason to get rid of it.

Save the children

During October the charity organisation Save The Children mounted a massive publicity drive to raise funds. According to their appeal “Around the world today, one in four children live in poverty – poverty serious enough to blight their lives just as they are beginning. Poverty can leave children without enough food to eat, rob them of the chance to go to school and force them into poorly paid work – vulnerable to adult abuse and exploitation.” How abusive can be gauged by the experience of a nine year old who worked for two years as a sari embroiderer, fell sick, was sent home and was paid nothing for 2 years work. The charity’s solution – send £3 a month! If only these well-meaning people would look beyond the effects of poverty to its cause we might really be able to save the children.

Same old Tories

Anyone who thought that two crushing electoral defeats would change the core policies of the Conservative Party can rest assured that the old Tory Party is sticking by its principles – support the rich against the poor. The columnist Matthew Parris writing in the Times (10 October) on their annual conference illustrated that very well when he observed: “The Shadow Chancellor, Michael Howard, railed yesterday against a Government he accused of leaving people to die in the queue for heart treatment – and was met with stony silence. Then he scolded the Government for cheating the shareholders of Railtrack – and was greeted by applause.”

Land of the free?

It reads like an Orwell-inspired dystopia, a nightmarish piece of fiction, but it is a recent letter to the editor of a mass circulation magazine. It reveals the frightening mind-set of some workers scared by the World Trade Towers disaster. Capitalism breeds paranoia and xenophobia, but even by capitalism’s standards the following is pretty scary stuff. “Our people must take an active part in the vigilant protection of our country. Civilians must assume roles in our civil defense as block watchers, neighborhood police, campus observers and providers of information to authorities about those who act suspiciously or who voice anti-American opinions.” Patrick Grant, New York City. Time Magazine (15 October).

More waste makers

Many years ago in his book The Waste Makers, Vance Packard wrote about “planned obsolescence”; the artful dodge of manufacturing products that needed to be replaced all the time. Some 40 years later we have the perfect example of this in the music business. Concerned about the misuse and selling on of the latest singles released to music executives for compiling play lists, the ingenious boffins of the music business have come up with a cunning ploy. “Tornado, the distributor of digital media products, has found a way of making Mission Impossible come to life. It has designed a voice recording that self-destructs after it has been played.” Sunday Times (7 October). There is no limit to the ingenuity of capitalism when it comes to protecting profits. Inside socialism, human inventiveness will be used for something more important than Mission Impossible recordings.

Classless society?

In his recent book Almost Like A Whale the geneticist Steve Jones comes up with some figures on land ownership that would seem to contradict those who argue that we live in a classless society where the barriers of ownership have been broken down. “Half the private land in Scotland is owned by three hundred and fifty people (in a country where half the population has no landed property at all); and the greatest proprietor of all, at a quarter of a million acres, is the Duke of Buccleuch. The Duke’s lesser titles include a couple of Earldoms, a Barony or two – and the Lordship of Eskdale”

Letter: Two countries (2011)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two countries

Dear editors

We actually live in two different countries.

On the one hand, we have a tiny minority of people, who own and control this land of “theirs”. On the obverse side of the coin, we have us, the vast majority whose only real possession, is our ability to labour, to use our mental and physical abilities, to earn a wage or salary.

The businesses we toil for do not belong to us. Our only interest is our salary or wage, at the end of the week or month. There ends our interest in the firms that employ us.

According to the Land Registry, 75 percent of the land mass of the UK belongs to approximately 1400 people. I am not one of them, are you? The figures on share ownership are similarly skewed, with less than 1 percent of the population owning over 99percent of all marketable shares!

We live in two different countries. For the mouth-pieces of capitalism to say “we are all in this together” is arrant lies and nonsense. Whether said by Coalition or Labour figures makes not one jot of difference to us, the majority.

They own, we do not. We labour and toil, they do not. We are leaves on the capricious winds of capitalism’s speculation, they are not. We worry about the price of food, energy, housing etc and all the fluctuations of this system, they do not.

Capitalism is not “fair” to the vast majority of us, the population of the Earth. It does not work in our interests. It subverts our nature as co-operative human beings. It and they treat us as dumb adjuncts to the productive process that affords them vast wealth and opulence, whilst at the same time, condemning us, the majority, to the stress, poverty, starvation, homelessness, misery, insecurity, etc, etc, etc, that afflicts our lives every second of everyday, of our lives.

Only a revolution in thought and understanding of this reality will serve to free us from this. Only a working together of us, the disenfranchised and powerless within the present system, capitalism, will ensure that we live in a world where we all can live in dignity, inclusion and empowerment and not in want, insecurity and fear.

Steve Colborn, 

Seaham, Co. Durham.

The Rear View: Everything’s for sale (2020)

The Rear View Column from the November 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Everything’s for sale

This is the title of a ‘…shocking film on the privatization of American public lands. “We’ve arrived at a moment,” Herring says in the film, “where we are going to decide whether we’re going to keep the birthright and the legacy of our public lands [system] or whether we simply want to unleash the forces of industry and live in a world where everything is for sale.” In other words, the November elections could determine the fate of many of the most iconic and cherished ecosystems in the US, from national forests to wildlife refuges’ (theguardian.com, 25 September). This month’s election in the US has not changed anything: capitalism continues and everything remains for sale. The National Trust’s 2,480 km2 of land – with its 1,300 kilometres of coast, 500+ historic houses, castles, ancient and industrial monuments, gardens, parks and nature reserves — might be seen as inalienable, yet Parliament can override this. If capitalism really wants something then wildlife, natural beauty, peace and quiet, or anything else, will take second place.

50s-era landfill?

There is one for sale in Wilmington, North Carolina.’The Town paid $25 for the land, and used it to house hurricane debris and trash. The only thing that now stands between the Beach and a $1.05 million sale is a snafu involving an N.C. contractor and state regulators, who disagreed on how much it should cost to clean the former landfill’ (portcitydaily.com, 25 September). In fact, capitalism does put a value on a summer’s day. And on a work of art. On a mosque. A social system which works by profit, whose wheels are lubricated by money, must put a price on everything. It bruises many sensitivities in the process, but capitalism can work in only one way.

Recycled condoms?

‘Police in Vietnam have busted a factory that took recycling one step too far. Some 345,000 used condoms were seized from the factory near Ho Chi Minh city, where they had been boiled, reshaped with a wooden phallus, and packaged for resale, Reuters reports. According to state media, the 34-year-old woman who owned the factory said it had received a “monthly input of used condoms from an unknown person.” Health officials said the recycled rubbers posed an “extreme health risk” to users, reports the AP. The factory was raided after a tip from a local resident. Police said the factory owner told them she was paid 17 cents per kilogram of recycled condoms. She has been detained and authorities are seeking other people involved in the operation’ (newser.com, 25 September).

Escape from Covid-19?

(i) for the gullible 99 percent. According to Dr. Vikas Mishra, ‘People are happily wearing these cards and moving around in crowded places which exposes them to the infection. Believing that any unverified and untested product would save one from the virus is foolishness and also exposes people to the danger of catching the infection…’ (news18.com, 21 September). Apparently, medical ‘. . . stores are earning a handsome amount and owners say these cards are selling like hot cakes.’

(ii) for the 1 percent. ‘Starting an overseas holiday with two weeks quarantine may not sound deeply appealing, but a tour operator says well-heeled clients are prepared to do it. Both National and Act party border control policies would allow foreign tourists to stay in privately managed isolation facilities that met strict rules… The package, including two weeks in an isolation facility, would cost $15,000 to $20,000 per person, and she said if up to 700 people were allowed in over the coming summer, they would generate $10m to $15m in tourism income…’ (stuff.co.nz, 22 September).

Eternal life?

‘The super-rich are already living the best lives. Now they’re trying to make those lives last forever with a wide array of weird and wonderful ideas from the fringes of science… Ambrosia is one of three outfits looking at experimental “vampire” blood transfusions that put the blood of young people into the veins of oldies. According to commercial finance experts ABC Finance, the cost of the trials currently ranges from £6,000 to about £215,000. The technique has worked well in mice, although as yet there are no positive results from human trials’ (dailystar.co.uk, 19 September). Such developments come as no surprise to socialists who have long understood capitalism’s voracious nature and how it seeks ever new ways to drain what it can out of the working class. Marx noted: ‘Capital is dead labour which, vampire like, lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks’ (Capital, Volume 1, Chapter 10). Capitalism causes pollution, war and want, but for the system to continue it must avoid eradicating its source of unpaid surplus value. Indeed, the introduction of basic healthcare, welfare payments and even parks is primarily in the interest of the parasite, not the host.

Moneyless moonshine?

‘Work with us. Do not believe those who tell you any political party, or any “reformers” or any special legislation, can do away with crimes that are only the result of our whole system of society to-day. If you would do away with these crimes, you must do away with their cause. Help us. Help us to save not only yourselves, men and women; not only your little children. Help us also to save the very criminals, who now “drain your sweat and drink your blood.” Come to us. Join hands with us; and hand in hand, heart to heart with us, labour in this great cause. Never forget that when once the people will there is no gainsaying them. Once you rise “in unvanquishable number,” you are many, they — your enemies — “are few” ‘ (Eleanor Marx-Aveling, The Commonweal, August 1885).

50 Years Ago: Taxation of Land Values (1984)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Marx's writings clearly indicate that land owning as a dominant social status declined with the final breakdown of feudal society and the imposition of capitalism on its ruins. The industrial capitalist, employing many hundreds or thousands of workers, has supplanted the feudal over-lord. Today the workers enter the spheres of production, etc., not merely on "the land", but in vast factories or mills where they are exploited by the owners of giant machinery and the various appliances necessary to the output of wealth. The immediate employer or capitalist is the exploiter of the workers he engages. He has to hand back to them, in the form of money—wages only a portion of the value of their product. The remainder is his own property immediately considered; but. as is well known, he may not own the land or the factory where his production takes place, hence he is compelled to pay rent for the privilege of using these to their owners. From out of what does he pay? Answer, out of the unpaid labour of the workers. From the surplus left over after the wage bill of the workers has been met, a portion of the wealth may be handed to the landlord, and still another portion to the lender of money.

But where, however, our capitalist owns his own factory site and does not have recourse to loans of money whereby interest charges have to be met. he takes and holds the surplus himself. The all- important point to the workers is that no matter which position applies, it would not matter a brass farthing to their position as an exploited class.

Even were it possible to tax the holders of land out of existence, as the land tax advocates insist, it would solve no problem towards social ownership, such as we Socialists are seeking to establish. 

(From an article Socialism and Land Ownership by R. Reynolds. Socialist Standard. October 1934)

Highland Hypocrisy (2000)

From the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Spare a tear for that hard-up aristocrat John MacLeod of MacLeod. The poor man’s castle is badly in need of repair so he has had to put on the market his beloved Cuillins. This is an area of real estate consisting of 35 square miles of mountain range, bordered by 14 miles of coastline and two salmon rivers. So desperate for the readies is the poor fellow that he is prepared to let it go for a mere £10 million.

 “I regard the Cuillins as priceless”, he said. “They are part of my soul and putting them up for sale is an extremely painful experience. They are my ancestors. Our clan grew out of the history of the Cuillins” (Times, 23 March).

What the fellow doesn’t tell us of course is that, like all Clan Chiefs, his ancestors stole the land in the first place. The ownership of the land was vested in the whole clan until the Chiefs stole it from them. It is a process that is well-documented by Karl Marx in Capital:

“The Highland Celts were organised in clans, each of which was the owner of the land on which it was settled. The representative of the clan, its chief or ‘great man’, was only the titular owner of this property, just as the Queen of England is the titular owner of all the national soil. When the English government succeeded in suppressing the intestine wars of these ‘great men’, and their constant incursions into the Lowland plains, the Chiefs of the clans by no means gave up their time-honoured trade as robbers; they only changed its form. On their authority they transformed their nominal right into a right of private property, and as this brought them into collision with their clansmen, resolved to drive them out by open force” (Volume I, page 681).

The journalist John MacLeod mockingly describes how the title of “MacLeod of MacLeod” is another piece of robbery as the man exulting in that grandiose title was actually born John Wolridge-Gordon. Commenting on the proposed sale of the estate, he digs up some edifying information about how a previous MacLeod “great man” tried to raise money:

“In 1739 The MacLeod kidnapped dozens of his tenancy and attempted to sell them as slaves to Barbados” (Herald, 4 April).

Richard Donnelly

How to end property speculation (1973)

From the June 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the war over a hundred people have become millionaires out of property speculation. This is a measure of the failure of town planning. Indeed it has partly been its effect within the context of the private ownership of land.

The private landowner is a social parasite extracting an income from society simply because he monopolizes a limited natural resource. A large part of London is still owned by the traditional landowning class — the dukes, the earls, the Church and the Crown — but in recent years these aristocrats have been joined by a commoner breed: the property speculator.

The property speculator operates by exploiting the shortage of land for office building in central London. Land prices depend entirely on market demand and reflect the prospective income a piece of land can be expected to bring its owner. For many years now the demand for land in London for office building has exceeded the supply. Hence rising land values.

What most of these new millionaires did was to buy up land in a particular area, secretly and in small parcels, until they had acquired an area large enough for a big “development”. As soon as they had done this their land became worth many times more than they had paid for it. Some became millionaires quite literally overnight and, with office rents rising faster than inflation generally, they go on getting richer every day simply by holding their land idle. This basically is what Harry Hyams has done with Centre Point, that monument to the anti-social nature of private property at the end of Tottenham Court Road. It pays him more, through the increasing value of his land, to keep this office building empty rather than to let it at a fixed rent for a fixed period.

So obviously absurd is this that even supporters of capitalism have had to complain. The Tories have traditionally been the property owner’s friend so they have not done much. The Labour Party has tried harder, but its efforts to control speculative office building backfired by aggravating the shortage of office space, so further pushing up land prices. Labour apparently has not learned the lesson of this as its GLC manifesto promised “to halt the building of additional offices”. Some Labour-controlled councils have even been forced into partnership with speculative office builders in order to salvage some space near central London for housing.

Both Labour and Liberal critics of the property speculator have shied away from what, even under capitalism, is the only way to stop people making fortunes out of rising land values: the abolition of private property in land by the expropriation without compensation of all private landowners. This radical solution was advocated by their bolder predecessors in the 19th century and has been recognized by many architects to be the minimum requirement before there can be effective town planning.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain however does not advocate the abolition merely of landed property and does not favour this as an isolated measure. We stand for the abolition of all private property rights, over industry as well as land. The abolition of the private ownership of land under capitalism would eliminate the landed aristocrat and the property speculator but not the industrial capitalist. It might relieve the housing shortage a little by allowing more lower-rent accommodation to be built for sale to lower-paid workers, but the working class would remain wage and salary earners exploited for profit by their employers. Under these circumstances town planning, even with the abolition of private landownership, could still not be geared to furthering human welfare.

Only Socialism, based on the common ownership and democratic control by all the people of all land and industry, will provide the framework for doing this. There would then be no vested interests or market forces working to negate plans to create an enjoyable urban environment for people to live and work in. People would be able to exercise effective democratic control over town planning instead of the farce of “consultation” and "participation” practised by the GLC and local councils today.

Economics: Theory of Rent (part 2) (1975)

From the April 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to part 1

Generally speaking, commodities sell at their price of production. This is calculated by the amount of the total capital involved in their production — constant capital (machinery, materials, etc.); variable capital (wages); plus a profit. Through the action of competing capitals an average rate of profit is formed, and all capitals, usefully employed, whatever the field of investment, will generally obtain the average.

This means that the range of goods produced by these capitals will sell at average prices appropriate to their classification as use-values. For instance, similar-quality bread produced by one baker would not alter dramatically in price from that of another baker, although their individual prices of production may be different. The amount of profit is the difference between the cost of production and the average price of production, which is not determined by individual prices, but by a socially determined price based on socially-necessary labour which regulates the market. Socially- necessary labour is not measured industry by industry.

It should be borne in mind that no capitalist manufacturing concern by itself produces commodities or value; products only become commodities when they come into contact with other commodities which provide their social equivalent. This means they all contain social labour — the labour of society. The individual labour which has gone into the production of groups of commodities forms part of the social labour. The value of commodities is determined by the amount of social labour, measured in time, and they exchange with one another according to the amount or proportion of this social labour vested in them. It is not individual producers who determine the proportion, but society generally. The realization of the market price (value) of a commodity depends purely on social interaction without regard to the nature of the commodities, whether they be agricultural products, motor cars, pig-iron or coal. Commodities can only average this price of production with reference to the whole field of commodities, and the total social capital, and cannot realize their price of production in groups isolated from other groups.

If we assumed that all commodities sell at their price of production, and that all capitals secured the average rate of profit, there would be no rent available for the landlord. As land in itself does not form part of the social cost of production, it cannot have any influence on the rate of profit. Therefore, rent must come from a profit over and above the average rate of profit — in effect a surplus profit. The individual cost of production for most capitalists within particular industries are generally the same, pro rata to the capital invested. The larger firms may be more efficient, although this is not always the case. Wage rates are regionally and nationally determined, and the cost of materials, machinery, etc. and the other elements of constant capital are similar. This will establish a general average cost of production.

Let us assume that a few factories within a certain country, because of their location are able to drive their machinery with the use of natural hydro power, whereas the great majority of other factories have to use electricity in the production of their commodities. Suppose that for every £100 unit of capital expended the factories using electricity make a profit of £15. The average price of production of the commodities in that case would be £115. (We are ignoring for the moment any temporary fluctuation of the market or any other accidental factors.) Assume that the factory using water power could produce the same quantity of commodities in the same time, but that instead of using a unit of £100 capital they need only use a unit of £90, because the water power was provided by a natural force, and not having to buy electricity they managed to save £10, this brings their production costs down to the £90 referred to above.

In effect, through the use of this force they were able to produce the same amount of commodities with less capital. In the normal way their commodities would contain less value than those of the capitalists using electricity, because less social labour was involved in their production. But the average price of production is based on the socially-necessary labour of the whole of society, not of individual factories. The majority of factories using electricity determine the price of production, because all commodities can only realize their value by acting as equivalents to each other over the whole field of commodity production, and not in separate compartments.

Individual industries do not produce commodities as value; it is society at large which creates the commodity form (e.g. a tailor produces a coat. He does not produce the exchange-value of a coat — that is socially determined.) The capitalist using water power, would, therefore, be able to sell his commodities at an average price of production, i.e. £115 — the same as the others. In that case, he would receive a surplus of £25 per unit of capital, an excess of £10 over all the other capitalists who had to buy electricity. This is a surplus profit; a profit over and above the average rate of profit, and this fact directly arises because the conditions under which he used his capital were more favourable; his exclusive use of the natural force denied to other capitalists, and which could not be reproduced by them and consequently was not at their command. Capital can reproduce electricity at will, but you cannot reproduce a natural waterfall or the land upon which it flows.

In the same way, capital cannot reproduce land, and therefore the landowner holds a position of monopoly. In the final reckoning, the surplus profit of the capitalist using water power was due entirely to this force — something which had no value because no labour had entered into its production, as with all natural power. The labour of harnessing this natural power would add value, and this is taken into account. Nevertheless, the cost of harnessing and supplying electricity has been shown to be greater, and it is this difference in cost which constitutes the surplus profit.

Inevitably the owner of the land over which the river or waterfall flowed would require payment for permission for the use of the land which contained the natural force, otherwise he would forbid its use. If the capitalist were to part with the surplus profit of £10 out of the £25, he had received, to the land- owner, that would constitute a ground rent. He would have, in effect, transferred his surplus profit to the landlord. At the end of the day he would have earned a profit of £15, the same as the body of capitalists who used electricity. If he owned the land it would make no difference to the formation of the ground rent. In that case he would retain the surplus profit of £10 in his capacity as landlord and not as an industrial capitalist, because the surplus profit was not due to his capital as such but to a natural force which he has monopolized.

It is evident that any capitalist who is able to use a natural force based on land, whether it be hydro power, naturally fertile land, natural pasture-land, land where the climate is more favourable, and other natural attributes, will be able to cut down his production cost below that of his fellow capitalists who are not in a similar position. He will always be in a position of earning a surplus profit over the average rate of profit, which he transfers to the landlord by way of ground rent for permission to use the land in question.

Agriculture and mining dominate the use of land. The degree of fertility of the soil and the potential mineral wealth will determine the amount of rent. But the existence of rent is due to the use of the land itself. There is an erroneous view held by the Labour Party and other left-wing parties that if you nationalize land you abolish rent. In fact, at no time has any Labour government taken any action to abolish ground rent. The object of the present Land Nationalization Bill is to curtail by taxation the profits of the landlords the price of whose land has risen because of planning and other consents — external factors. In other words, an attempt to prevent landowners from consuming the whole fruits of social progress instead of sharing it with their brother capitalists whose interests are represented by the State.

This makes no difference at all to the formation of ground rent, nor would it make any difference if all ground rent were paid to the State. It would mean that all land was owned by the State and has been taken from the private owners. How this came to pass, whether by nationalization with compensation or by confiscation does not matter. In point of fact, the State is inevitably the largest landlord in any country, and the State is the embodiment of all capitalists’ interests. It is a fallacy to assume that the State or local authority will act differently from private landlords and refrain from levying a ground rent.

At the moment, the Government owns directly, or through the nationalized industries, over 5¼ million acres of land. There are 345,000 acres of Crown Estates; 183,000 acres Church Commissioners; 248,000 acres National Coal Board (50 per cent, farm land); 220,000 acres British Rail (Sunday Times, 2nd February 1975):

The new landlords are operating on strictly commercial terms . . . the tenant farmers have Crown Estates, the Treasury, and tough minded agents for landlords.

(Wiltshire: Sunday Times 2nd Feb.)

The Crown Estates are one of the biggest landlords in London, owning large blocks of flats and houses in Regent’s Park and Kensington. If anything, the rents charged are higher than those of a private landlord, and furthermore Crown property is not subject to the application of Rent Acts, and courts and Rent Officers have no power to fix “fair rents”. According to the agricultural correspondent of the Daily Telegraph: “Tenant farmers occupy about 40 per cent, of the country’s holdings and farm nearly half of the agricultural land.” Rents vary from £30 per acre for good land to £12 per acre for other land. (Daily Telegraph 28th February 1975).

As the total amount of agricultural land in England and Wales is 27.2 million acres (Min. of Agriculture statistics 1972), tenant farmers alone pay an average of £260 millions rent annually for the use of the 13.6 million acres. The formation of rent over the whole 27.2 million acres would amount to approx. £540 million by present rent levies. Practically the whole of London is in the hands of ground landlords, both public and (very) private family trusts. The colossal amount of wealth which is appropriated annually in rent comes solely from the surplus value produced by the working class. Every advance in agricultural science, every intensification of the use of land, is of direct benefit to those parasites who have literally inherited the earth. In the same way, every advance in technology and science generally is appropriated for the benefit of their industrial capitalist brethren.

If human rights mean anything, they mean the right of every man, woman and child to the best possible existence society can provide. Freedom from paying rent, selling labour-power, and producing surplus value for a wealthy group of international idlers. Capitalist society simply cannot cope with the multifarious social problems which it has created because of the restrictive social relations which hold it together. Socialism is an urgent necessity, and working men and women everywhere must devote their thoughts and energies to its establishment through the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Jim D'Arcy

Economics: Theory of Rent (part 1) (1975)

From the March 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Carved in stone above the Royal Exchange in the City of London is the Biblical legend “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof”, to which we reply “The earth is the landlord’s and the rent therefrom”. In the same Biblical strain we add “And he reaps where he does not sow”.

The ancient forms of rent paid to a feudal lord, or lord of the manor, or to the Church, were usually levied in kind, and met either by the supply of a portion of the produce from the land, or by performing unpaid labour on land belonging to these groups. These old social relations of feudal society have been replaced with other higher social relations of production associated with the land and its capacity to attract rent. Land use, including agriculture, has been specifically adapted to the needs of capitalism. The vast bulk of society’s food is obtained from the land, and takes the form of commodities, i.e. articles produced for sale and profit. Consequently agriculture is under the domain of capital.

Rent is the money tribute levied by one section of society (landlords) against other sections for permission to use certain portions of the globe which they (landlords) have appropriated and monopolized to the exclusion of others. To grow food, to build houses, factories, shipyards, etc., a ground rent must be paid to the owner of the soil. Private property of land, and this includes land owned by the State, is a prerequisite for extracting rent. History is full of instances as to how the rural labourers were driven off the land by force, bloody violence, threats of imprisonment and deportation, as in the case of the Land Enclosures over the last few hundred years. The fact remains that permission even to inhabit the earth has to be obtained from a group of rentier parasites who monopolize it. Ground rent is surplus-value which has previously been extracted from the working class. Whether this is paid to private individuals, the State or the Church makes no difference. It is an element in the overall economic organization of capitalism.

Land has no value — that is, it contains no socially necessary labour, the source of value. The labour of society has not participated in its creation. It cannot be reproduced, and is therefore not a commodity. Not being a commodity it does not have an exchange-value, and consequently does not contain surplus-value. Surplus-value comes from unpaid labour, and as no labour at all has gone into its creation it cannot contain value. Land has use-value as have commodities generally, but whereas you can have use-value (the utility of a thing) without exchange-value (price), you cannot have exchange-value without use-value. The landlord cannot sell non-existent commodities; the service he provides is the service of rent collection.

It is obvious that land is bought and sold both as building plots and agricultural land. To that extent it assumes the commodity form. Capital can be fixed in the soil either through the erection of buildings, land improvements like ploughing, drainage and fertilization, mining and quarrying operations etc. This capital forms part of the labour of society generally and does not spring from the soil. The capitalist farmer produces wheat etc. in the same way as the capitalist manufacturer produces other commodities. They differ only in the element in which their capital is invested. Their capital, like all other, qualifies for the average rate of profit, and if needs be can move from one sphere of production into another.

Capital fixed in the soil — plant, factories, office-blocks etc., as with capital elsewhere, would be entitled (under the laws of capitalism) to attract interest, but strictly speaking this is not the same thing as ground rent, which is specifically paid for the use of the soil and for permission to fix the capital in it in the first place. Unlike machinery and industrial plant which wears away and has to be replaced, the land (apart from natural catastrophe) with normal care and attention, fertilized and drained regularly in the case of arable land, or developed with office blocks and shopping precincts, continues to improve. To that extent it can attract a higher price for its use in the form of ground rent, or fetch a higher price should the landlord decide to sell it. The price of land has nothing to do with its value, which is nil. The price of building land depends purely on the oscillations of the market, or competition between buyers and sellers.

The location of the land is a very important factor in this competition. Land required for building in a big commercial centre like London will fetch a higher price than land elsewhere. With agricultural land the position is somewhat different, but the monopoly of the land owner is a major factor in the determining of the final price in both cases. Obviously good agricultural naturally-fertile land which can yield 2 tons of grain per acre would fetch a higher price than land of lesser quality which would only produce 30 cwts of grain per acre. The rent charged for the use of these lands would vary, and bear some relation to their yields.

Certain vineyards in the Bordeaux/Medoc area — Pauillac, Pomerel, etc. because of certain chemical properties in the soil, are able to produce fine wine. Other vineyards which lack these properties in the soil are unable to produce such fine wines, although the same amount of useful labour has gone into their production. The finer wines and lesser-quality wines contain, broadly speaking, the same amount of useful labour, but there is a considerable difference between the price of a bottle of Chateauneuf de Pape from the Rhône  valley, and a bottle of Chateau Petrus or Chateau Lafite from Pomerel or Pauillac, as any wine-drinking capitalist will tell you — at £5 per bottle this is hardly a worker’s tipple.

The difference in price does not arise from the labour involved but purely because of the natural properties of the soil. The owner of land where the vines were grown would be able to charge a higher rent for the use of this land, and the wine producer would have to part with a larger share of the surplus- value to the landlord than would the Rhône  wine producers. Were the fine-wine producer the owner of the vineyards instead of the tenant this would make no difference. In that case, he would pocket the extra profit in his capacity as a landlord and not as a wine-growing capitalist. In any event, before he could become a landlord, he would have to acquire the land from the previous owner, and spend a capital sum in order to achieve this. To that extent, the rent that he virtually paid to himself instead of to the landlord would merely represent the interest on the capital which he had invested in the purchase of the land.

Rent is the way in which land realizes itself economically, and whilst rent itself is not interest (i.e. money paid for the use of capital), it is influenced by the rate of interest, as also is the buying and selling of land. Naturally, market conditions intervene because of the monopoly of landlords (sellers) and the demand from other portions of the capitalist class (buyers), particularly competition for building sites in city centres where any price may be paid. During periods of inflation the price of land will rise with other prices, not only because the value of money has fallen but because ownership of land provides a certain protection against the depreciation of money. The price of farmland rose from approximately £50 per acre in 1949 to £800 per acre in 1973, due to inflation. Prices are now falling. They fell 22 per cent, in the first half of 1974, and are expected to fall to £582 per acre towards the end of 1974. (Farmland market, Farmer's Weekly: The Times 3rd February 1975). Mr. Donald Campbell, editor of the report, said “The market is highly volatile; only a few years ago changes in value were gradual and their range was small.”

Over a period, the yardstick for measuring the price of land is by a capitalization of the rent. That is, by assuming that the rent represents the interest on an imaginary capital. If the prevailing rate of interest is 10 per cent, and the landlord receives a ground rent of £500 p.a., that £500 would represent the interest on an imaginary capital of £5,000. Were the rate of interest to fall to 5 per cent, the £500 p.a. would represent the interest on an imaginary capital of £10,000. The price of land is arrived at under normal conditions by the number of years it would take for the rents to reach the capital sum. In the first case the price of land would be £5,000 i.e. 10 years’ ground purchase. The external rate of interest can and does influence the price of land. During a period of low interest rates, the price of land will tend to rise, and during a period of high interest rates the price of land will tend to fall, without affecting the rent at all. In England particularly, land is usually sold at so many years’ purchase, usually twenty years or more.

A value is therefore conferred on land by circumstances outside, i.e. the rate of interest, and does not arise from the land itself, simply because those who own the monopoly can prevent others from having access except on terms and conditions decreed by them. In this the landlord is joined by capitalists generally who operate in the same way by excluding society at large from access to the means of production and distribution, as well as monopolizing the social wealth. As society develops, and the population increases, and there is a growing demand for land for all purposes, the landlord will share in the fruits of this social progress without contributing anything at all. The industrial capitalists who dominate the political machinery take legislative measures to curb the appetite of the landlord, but you cannot abolish rent without abolishing private property in land, and as this forms the basis of the capitalist system of production, you cannot abolish private property in one sphere and retain it in another.

Private property includes State property, which will be dealt with later.

Jim D'Arcy

This land is your land (or maybe not) (2007)

Book Review from the March 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Author Kevin Cahill is wrong. Wider landowning is not the answer as we are excluded from ownership of the means of production in general not just land

So you’ve paid off your mortgage and now you own your house and the land on which it stands. No, you don’t — the land still belongs to the queen, who is the sole legal owner of land in the United Kingdom. So-called freeholds are actually leases from the Crown. This is one of many startling facts revealed by Kevin Cahill in Who Owns the [World] (published by Mainstream at the end of last year).

In fact the queen also owns all the land in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and a number of other Commonwealth countries. In all, according to Cahill, she owns well over six billion acres (one-sixth of the earth’s land surface), making her by far the largest landowner on the planet. She’s not the only monarch who claims ultimate ownership of their country’s land, and various kings, sultans and sheikhs make up the rest of the list of the largest landowners. Countries without kings or queens may still operate on a comparable principle: in Ireland the state is the sole owner of land.

When there is no such system of legal ownership by a monarch or state, there can still be massive landholdings. The Catholic church, for instance, is the second-largest  landowner in New York, and the other big religions are pretty wealthy too. Although they are in theory just tenants of the queen, the British aristocracy own plenty of land — around a billion euros’ worth in the case of the Dukes of Atholl and Westminster. The biggest landowner in the US is Ted Turner of CNN fame, though other individuals or families have more valuable holdings as the land is in richer areas. Fewer than one-fiftieth of one percent of the population of Europe (77,000 people) own 5 percent of the farmland and receive massive subsidies from the government.

At the same time, all this massive concentration of landownership is largely concealed from the general public. Few countries have comprehensive, accurate and easily available land registries, so it is difficult, if not impossible, to discover who owns what. A comprehensive account for the UK (then including the whole of Ireland) was published in 1872-6, as The Return of the Owners of Land. At that time, 96 percent of the population, over 27 million people, owned no land at all, while a third of a million owned more than an acre. Nothing of comparable scope has been published since then. But in 2006, Cahill argues, only 30 percent owned nothing, while 70 percent had a stake in land, i.e. a home. This is one of the themes of his book, the way in which private home-ownership has increased and so made most people relatively prosperous.

If Cahill had simply compiled and organised a mass of information about landownership throughout the world, his book would still have been a most useful work of reference. And there’s no doubt that that is what it is. If you want to find out, say, the largest landowners in Estonia, this is the place to look (it’s the Estonian state, a Finnish milk cooperative and IKEA). However, the book is far more than that: it is also written in support of a particular analysis of capitalism and a programme for change. The argument, basically, is that enabling people to own land and a home outright, with a proper free market in land, will lead to ‘universal prosperity’. Further, it ‘creates the essential condition for the universalisation and democratisation of capital.’ The claims here need to be assessed very critically.

For a start, what difference does it really make if in the last analysis the queen owns the land your house is on, supposedly making you and everyone else serfs rather than free individuals? In Britain the government can no longer legally seize land in the name of the Crown, but in theory the queen could sell Canada (just as Russia sold Alaska to the US in 1867). However, converting land to be genuine private property of its owner rather than something held on a kind of sufferance from the monarch would have not the slightest impact on workers’ daily lives. Those who now really owned a bit of land would still have to work for a living, just as they do now, and just as those in rented accommodation have to under any system.

Furthermore, home-ownership, whether true ownership or via Crown lease, is not all that it’s cracked up to be. It does not in itself remove a person’s status as a wage worker, and a mortgage is an enormous burden on most workers (witness the number of repossessions). Cahill asserts that increased home ownership leads to increased prosperity, but he never considers that the causality might be the other way round, that higher wages might lead to more workers owning their homes. In fact, from a comparative viewpoint, there seems to be no necessary connection here at all: his figures for owner-occupation in Europe show that Ireland, Spain and Greece have the highest rates (over 70 percent), while Sweden, Germany and France are at or just under 50 percent. Cahill’s bizarre description of Ireland as ‘the most advanced capitalist country on earth’ only makes sense on the basis of a very odd idea of how to measure such advancement.

He also goes wrong in describing a home as ‘capital’: the house you live in is not used for investment or productive purposes. And there is no such thing as a right to shelter, nor any point in putting such a ‘right’ in a country’s constitution. What matters is the effective ability to buy or rent a house or flat, not some abstract unenforceable ‘right’.

Much of this book is directed at landowners, complaining about the kind of subsidies they get from the taxpayer, which means other members of the ruling class. The capitalists think that landowners are unproductive and merely monopolise something which is in short supply and can therefore receive massively high rents, which are a drain on the capitalists’ profits. The idea of taxing land values as a way of hitting landowners and cutting taxes on other capitalists has been around for many years and was recently revived as a way to ‘make the New Labour project actually work’ (Ashley Seager, Guardian, 8 January). Socialists have always refused to take sides in debates about how the capitalist class distribute the paying of tax among themselves.

Cahill’s pro-capitalist views are clear from a throw-away remark about the unions having been out of control and needing to be tamed by Thatcher. He does at one point come close to seeing the real problem, when he writes that poverty is caused by exclusion, specifically by exclusion from ownership and use of, and access to, land. However, there is an extra step (or giant stride) which needs to be taken, to realise that this exclusion must be seen in terms of workers being excluded from ownership and access in the means of production in general, not just land but also factories, offices, shops, warehouses, etc. It would be unreasonable in the extreme to think that one book, written by one individual, could have assembled information about the ownership of all this as well as the land. But increasing home ownership and letting people own land directly will make no impression on the capitalist class’s monopoly of the means of production, and that is what needs to be done away with.

Paul Bennett

Quotes: George Sand. (1922)

From the November 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “The wealth of the soil, the harvests, the fruits, the splendid cattle that grow sleek and fat in the luxuriant grass, are the property of the few, and but instruments of the many. The man of leisure seldom loves, for their own sake, the fields and meadows, the landscape, or the noble animals which are to be converted into gold for his use. He comes to the country for his health, or for change of air, but goes back to town to spend the fruit of his vassal’s labour.

On the other hand, the peasant is too abject, too wretched, and too fearful of the future to enjoy the beauty of the country and the charms of pastoral life. To him, also, the yellow harvest fields, the rich meadows, the fine cattle, represent bags of gold; but he knows that only an infinitesimal part of their contents, insufficient for his daily needs, will ever fall to his share. Yet year by year he must fill those accursed bags, to please his master, and buy the right of living on his land in sordid wretchedness.”

* * *

  “Is not the furrow of the labourer of as much value as that of the idler, even if that idler, by some absurd chance, has made a little noise in the world, and left behind him an abiding name?”

George Sand

The commons of South London (2005)

Book Review from the May 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Down With The Fences: Battles for the Commons in South London. 36 pages, ú2; Past Tense Publications, c/o 56 Crampton St, London SE14, November 2004.

“The law condemns the man or woman

Who steals the goose from off the common

But lets the greater villain loose

Who steals the common from the goose.”

Most of the text of Down With The Fences was the basis of a talk given to the South London Radical History Group. Many of the open spaces in London – commons, woods, greens and parks – exist because they were preserved from development by collective action: by rioting, tearing down .

According to the pamphlet, between the 16th and 19th centuries, much of the open land, commons or woods south of the River Thames in London was enclosed for development, usually by rich landowners, or sold off for house building. Despite its name, the common land was rarely if ever actually land held in common. It was almost always land owned by the Lord of the Manor, on which over time local people had come to exercise some rights. But these rights often had no legal weight; they were just part of an unwritten social contract.

Of the “commoners”, the pamphlet notes that some of them “could become wealthy individuals themselves. Thus later struggles sometimes developed into struggles between different local rich persons. Gradually as capitalism developed, slowly replacing a society of complex vertical social obligations and customs with one based entirely on profit, the impetus was on for landowners to replace traditional land use with intensive agriculture. This demanded the clearing of woodland and the exclusion of the poor from the commons.”

This process did not take place without massive upheavals. The enclosures increased resistance. The pamphlet describes the wave of rebellion for Sydenham Common, and the conflict on Westward Common in Barnes. Richmond Park, Streatham Common, Woolwich Common and South Lambeth Common are also mentioned. As late as the 1860s, there were struggles over access to Wimbledon Common.

By the l850s, reformers were articulating the need for urban parks, to “relieve the stress and overcrowding of the city for the millions (of workers) packed into built-up areas”. It was also hoped that by converting some open spaces and commons into landscaped parks, they would be made respectable “for the aspiring working classes”. For example, “In South London, Battersea Fields, until the 19th century a place of bawdy working class recreation, including animal fairs, stalls, drinking, etc. became Battersea Park. Local vicar Reverend Fallon proposed building of the modern park to encourage the poor to reform and ‘become orderly’. As part of the process in 1852 all persons ‘trespassing’ on the park with animals or barrows were ordered to be nicked.”

Stockwell Green was used for local recreation, often rowdy, until a local toff bought it and built railings round it. Wandsworth Common, as part of the wastes of the Manor of Battersea and Wandsworth, was largely enclosed and reduced in size, and split in three by the new railway lines the 1840s. The pamphlet mentions numerous other open spaces, commons and parks in southern London, and the various battles and conflicts over their ownership and access. It notes, however, that the struggles described in South London were not unique. Through the 16th to the 19th centuries there were thousands of local battles against the enclosure and development of open spaces. And although not mentioned in the pamphlet, it should be noted here that in a socialist society all the land, and not just commons or parks, would be the common possession of society as a whole.

Peter E. Newell

Ill Fares the Land (2021)

Book Review from the January 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who Owns England? How We Lost Our Land and How to Take It Back. by Guy Shrubsole (William Collins £9.99.)

The answer, of course, is a small number of very rich people. Thirty percent of land in England is owned by the aristocracy and gentry, 17 percent by ‘new money’, 18 percent by companies, 8.5 percent by the state, and just five percent by homeowners, with another four percent spread among crown, church and charities. Even these figures leave around one-sixth of the land unaccounted for, such is the difficulty of acquiring information about land-ownership, as ‘concealing wealth is part and parcel of preserving it’. The rise of digital technology has made investigating who owns land somewhat easier, but it is clear that the author has devoted a great deal of effort to uncovering the information provided here. He operates the website whoownsengland.org, and it is also worth looking at whoownsscotland.org.uk, which is separately run but deals with similar facts and figures.

Another way of describing the extent of inequality is to say that just 36,000 people own half the rural land in England and Wales. The origin of this dates back to Norman times, when William the Conqueror handed out land to less than two hundred clergy and barons. Many aristocratic land-owning families can be traced back to those days, such as the Dukes of Westminster, who remain unbelievably wealthy. Male primogeniture has played a large part in perpetuating the wealth and power of a small group of aristocrats. Much of the land they own is given over to grouse moors: apart from grouse shooting being a thoroughly nasty ‘pastime’, managing the moors can lead to environmental problems, such as flooding downstream.

Aristocrats became wealthy through owning land, but those with new money have bought land as a result of becoming wealthy. An example would be the Vestey family, who derived their wealth from selling cheap meat, purchased country estates and, like so many other landowners, used trusts and tax havens as a means of protecting their wealth. They have been joined more recently by Russian oligarchs and those who reap massive profits from Middle Eastern oil, both of whom specialise in properties in central London.

State ownership of land means primarily the Forestry Commission and the Ministry of Defence. The biggest corporate owners are privatised water companies, and also such as Peel Holdings, which, among much else, owns the Manchester Ship Canal and land adjoining it; Peel’s owner is a billionaire who lives on the Isle of Man, and it exercises power via a mass of subsidiary companies. Peel Holdings ranks only 33rd in Shrubsole’s list of land-owning companies, though it probably owns much more than the 15,000 acres attributed to it.

The author provides an excellent survey of land ownership and how it came about, though with relatively little on the enclosures that played a major part in the emergence of capitalism. Read his book for what it says about the past and present situations, not for the reforms proposed in the final chapter, such as ending unsustainable uses of land, which will be impossible in a society of private property but straightforward when the land belongs to everyone.

Paul Bennett

Inflation and the price of oil (1979)

From the September 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent increases in oil prices announced by OPEC, the cartel formed by some producer countries, are once again providing Western governments with an excuse for not honouring their oft-repeated promise to keep down the general level of prices. As after the Arab-Israeli War of 1973, we are hearing the refrain again, that inflation is caused by the rise in the price of oil.

Obviously we hold no brief for the OPEC cartel, but the fact remains that inflation is not caused, or even aggravated, by rising oil prices. Inflation, as the word’s etymology suggests (inflate = blow up), means, correctly understood, an over-issue or blowing-up of an inconvertible (into a fixed amount of gold, that is) currency. In fact, in the nineteenth century the phrase was often given in full as currency inflation, inflation of the currency.

The inevitable result of over-issuing, or inflating, an inconvertible currency, is a rise in the general price level. All prices rise in the same proportion because, as has often been explained in these columns, issuing more of an inconvertible currency than the economy requires for its transactions is tantamount to reducing its gold content. (All currencies, including inconvertible ones, are in economic reality related to gold, whether or not this relationship is legally recognised in some regulation or Act of Parliament.) If an inconvertible currency is defined as, say, one ounce of gold, and twice as much of it is issued as is required by the economy, then its definition will in economic practice change to being half an ounce of gold. All prices — expressed in units of the currency — will tend to double. This is purely a monetary phenomenon and, since governments have a monopoly in currency issue, one for which governments alone have ultimate responsibility.

Unfortunately, the word inflation has come to be used more and more loosely over the years so that it is now almost a synonym for simply ‘rising prices’. This usage is wrong. Inflation is not rising prices. On the contrary, a rise in the general price level is the result of inflation. The easiest way to grasp this is to remember that the word is short for ‘inflation of the currency’.

Oil Prices
The recent rise in the price of oil is merely a rise in the price of a particular commodity and not a rise in the general price level, which is unaffected by this change. All that has changed is the price of oil relative to other commodities. Those who have been buying oil now have to pay more and, if they want to continue buying the same amount, will have to cut back on their other purchases. No extra purchasing power — no inflation — is created; there is simply a re-direction of the previously existing purchasing power. This re-direction may be a painful process, since it means that demand for some non-oil products is going to fall, with inevitable bankruptcies and sackings in firms which will no longer be profitable enough. But whatever the result, it can’t be inflation, since that depends on the government. (Of course, if governments respond to the recent increase in the price of oil by printing more money to allow non-oil spending to continue at the old level, then the result will be a rise in the general price level, what is popularly called inflation. But the cause will not be the rise in oil prices but the government decision to print more money.)

The economic laws governing the incomes of those involved in oil production are similar to those governing incomes in agriculture as analysed by the classical political economists in the last century. According to their theory of differential rent, the price of an agricultural product like wheat is determined by its cost of production (plus average rate of profit) on the least fertile farmland in use. All wheat, even that produced on more fertile land, sells at this price. This means that tenant farmers of more fertile land make extra profits, which they have to pay over to the landlord as ground rent. The landowners are thus enabled to draw an income without having to invest any capital, let alone having to do any work, purely and simply because they monopolise a portion of the globe’s surface. The oil sheiks and, in other OPEC countries, the State which owns the land under which there is oil, are in the same position. Their royalties are a pure monopoly income paid them for nothing. (A qualification is necessary here: to the extent that they don’t spend all this windfall income in riotous living — and some of them try hard to — and invest a part in oil production, then a part of their income becomes profit, a return on the capital they have invested, and not differential rent. A part of their income, though, is always such rent.)

Since the cost of production of oil is cheapest in the Saudi Arabia area, the sheiks who monopolise the land there get the biggest free income, differential rent, royalty, monopoly profit, call it what you will, quite literally for doing nothing. This explains, incidentally, why Sheik Yamani can afford to be in favour of more ‘moderate’ price increases than some of his fellow price-fixers. All they have to do is to lounge about in their palaces waiting for the money to roll in — just like the landed aristocracy of Britain until the opening up of much more fertile wheat lands in North and South America during the nineteenth century deprived them of this privilege.

Absolute Ground Rent
Marx, in Volume III of Capital, identified another element in the income of landowners over and above differential rent, what he called ‘absolute ground rent'. This was the ransom the landlord class was able to extract from the rest of society — essentially, a diversion of surplus value from the capitalist class to the landlord class — by exploiting its position as the monopoliser of a limited natural resource, land. Such absolute rent can only exist where the landowners are well organised, where in fact they form a compact and relatively small group, as did the aristocracy in Britain in the nineteenth century. Today’s oil royalty owners are in a basically similar position. A relatively small group, the members of OPEC, has been exploiting its monopoly position to extract absolute ground rent from the industrial capitalist world. This is different from differential rent — which will come their way anyway, whether the OPEC cartel exists or not, simply as a result of the normal workings of the capitalist economy — and depends entirely on the balance of forces between the two sides.

As the world’s oil resources are used up, so the cost of producing oil — and hence its value and price — tends to rise in any event, since less productive wells and fields now have to be exploited. As the cost of production of oil rises, so, of course, the differential rent of the oil monopolists falls, an additional reason, no doubt, why the rulers of the OPEC countries are seeking to recuperate the loss of this part of their purely parasitic income by trying to increase the other clement in it, absolute ground rent.

This quarrel between the OPEC rulers and the capitalists of the industrialised world is not one that concerns the world’s workers. For, as our analysis has shown, it is essentially a conflict over the division of the spoils of the exploitation of the working class. When we describe the OPEC rulers as ‘parasites’ it should be clear that they are parasites on the world’s industrial capitalists. Since these latter are also parasites they’re the ones who directly exploit wage-labour for surplus value — the oil sheiks and other OPEC rulers are really parasites on parasites.

What happens to the surplus value the working class produce after it has been extracted from them by the industrial capitalists during the process of production whether or not these latter are forced to share some of the loot with some other group, and how much — does not affect the workers. But it vitally concerns the capitalist class. Which is why they have launched the current press campaign — with its racialist undertones and including the myth that rising oil prices cause inflation — directed against OPEC.

If the rent, absolute and differential, of the oil sheiks were reduced to zero, the working class wouldn’t gain a penny. But the capitalist class would, just as they did following the abolition of the Corn Laws in Britain after 1848 which enabled them to pocket a part of the surplus value which they had previously been constrained to disgorge to the landlord class as rent.

Adam Buick