From the Spencerian standpoint the foregoing article is a sound criticism of Mr. Spencer. Mr. Yarros is a believer in Mr. Spencer’s absolute ethics, and he is successful in establishing a flat contradiction between Mr. Spencer’s ethics and his attitude of practical acquiescence in land monopoly. Readers of the article, however, should distinctly understand that Liberty, unlike Mr. Yarros, is not a believer in Mr. Spencer’s absolute ethics, and consequently does not base its opposition to land monopoly thereupon. Liberty does not believe that there is a law of equal freedom, in the sense in which Mr. Yarros uses the term law. The contract to observe and enforce equal freedom is, in Liberty’s eyes, simply an expedient adopted in consequence of the discovery that such observance and enforcement is the best, nay, the only means by which men can steadily and securely and harmoniously avail themselves of the highest advantages of life. This discovery is not invalidated as a general truth by the necessity which arises, in special cases and under peculiar and abnormal circumstances, of doing violence to equal freedom, any more than the general truth that it is more economical to travel the straight road is invalidated by the necessity of occasionally making a détour. It is sometimes absolutely necessary for the Anarchist to become Archist, to abandon for the moment the guiding rule of his life, and to coerce the non-invasive individual. For instance, a hostile army is marching on a community of Anarchists. This army is composed in part of would-be invaders and in part of innocent men conscripted by a government and forced to bear arms and march by the side, or perhaps in front, of the invaders. The Anarchists must, in self-defence and to avoid being killed or enslaved, open fire upon this attacking army, knowing well that their fire will kill or wound, not only the invaders, but the innocent, the non-invasive. No believer in absolute ethics, holding that to declare the expediency of departing in a single instance from the observance of equal freedom is to deny that equal freedom is a law, can confront the problem which this attacking army raises, give these hypothetical facts an unprejudiced consideration, and still maintain that equal freedom is a law.
Mr. Spencer and Mr. Yarros actually do maintain this, and they maintain further that, as a corollary of this law, all men have an equal right to the land; of course, then, Mr. Yarros may properly complain when Mr. Spencer refuses to enforce this equal right to land. Liberty joins Mr. Yarros in charging this inconsistency, but it does not join him in advocacy of the dogma that men have an equal right to land. While Liberty would not hesitate, in case of necessity, to deviate from equal freedom, in dealing with the land question it finds itself confronted by no such necessity, for to Liberty, as has been stated in these columns before, equal freedom means, not equal freedom to use land, in the sense that all land or land values must be distributed equally among all men, but equal freedom to control self and the results of self-exertion.
We are here, on earth. Not one of us has any right to the earth. But every one of us must use the earth, and means to do so. To secure ourselves in this use, each contracts, or will ultimately contract, with his fellows not to encroach upon those portions of the earth which they are actually using, in return for their agreement not to encroach upon that portion of the earth which he is actually using. By this contract, and by similar contracts pertaining to other matters, each becomes secure in his person, in his property, and in control of his product. Such security is equal liberty. But it is not necessarily equality in the use of the earth.
In Liberty’s view, the occupancy-and-use theory of land tenure is as inconsistent with Spencerian ethics as the existing system of land tenure. Spencerian ethics requires the believers therein to adopt some method, be it Communism, or Land Nationalization, or the Single Tax, of giving to all men equal use of the entire use. Of course, no method can possibly accomplish that result; but that only shows the absurdity of Spencerian ethics. Liberty thinks that Mr. Spencer can answer Mr. Yarros: Tu quoque.
Spencerian Ethics and the Land in Liberty Vol. X.–No. 21, Whole No. 307 (February 23, 1895). 3.