Give labor a free field and its full earnings; take for the benefit of the whole community that fund which the growth of the community creates, and want and the fear of want would be gone.
Liberty! it is a word to conjure with, not to vex the ear in empty boastings. For Liberty means Justice, and Justice is the natural law-- the law of health and symmetry and strength, of fraternity and co-operation.
In allowing one man to own the land on which and from which other men must live, we have made them his bondsman in a degree which increases as material progress goes on. This is the subtle alchemy
that in ways they do not realize is extracting from the masses in every civilized country the fruits of their weary toil; that is instituting a harder and more hopeless slavery in place of that which has been destroyed; that is bringing political despotism out of political freedom, and must soon transmute democratic institutions into anarchy.
Political Economy has been called the dismal science, and as currently taught, is hopeless and despairing. But this, as we have seen, is solely because she has been degraded and shackled; her truths dislocated; her
harmonies ignored; the word she would utter gagged in her mouth, and her protest against wrong turned into an endorsement of injustice. Freed, as I have tried to free her-- in her own proper symmetry, Political Economy is radiant with hope.
harmonies ignored; the word she would utter gagged in her mouth, and her protest against wrong turned into an endorsement of injustice. Freed, as I have tried to free her-- in her own proper symmetry, Political Economy is radiant with hope.
Excerpts from Progress and Poverty: An inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and Increase of Want with the Increase of Wealth: The Remedy, Henry George, 1879
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