§ 4. Land and population. The general principle laid down in the last paragraph is that in primitive agricultural societies capital is of little use and subsistence easy to acquire; therefore every able-bodied man can, by taking a piece of land into cultivation, provide for himself. Hence it follows that nobody voluntarily serves another; he who wants a labourer must subject him, and this subjection will often assume the character of slavery.
But this general rule requires an important qualification. Hitherto we have supposed, that there is much more fertile land than is required to be cultivated for the support of the actual population. Such, indeed, is the case among most savages; but it is not always so. And where it is not so, our general rule does not obtain. When all land fit for cultivation has been appropriated, a man, though able-bodied and willing to work, if he owns no land, cannot earn his subsistence independently of a landlord; he has to apply to the owners of the land for employment as a tenant or servant. In such case free labourers are available; therefore slaves are not wanted.
In this and the ensuing paragraphs we shall endeavour to prove by facts the hypothesis arrived at here by a deductive reasoning, which we may express thus: where all land fit for cultivation has been appropriated, slavery is not likely to exist.
The same vieuw is held by some theoretical writers.
According to Cairnes
"slavery, as a permanent system, has need not merely of a fertile soil, but of a practically unlimited extent of it. This arises from the defect of slave labour in point of versatility. As has been already remarked, the difficulty of teaching the slave anything is so great -- the result of the compulsory ignorance in which he is kept, combined with want of intelligent interest in his work -- that the only chance of rendering his labour profitable is, when he has once learned a lesson, to keep him to that lesson for life. Accordingly where agricultural operations are carried on by slaves, the business of each gang is always restricted to the raising of a single product . . . . Whatever crop may be best suited to the character of the soil and the nature of slave industry, whether cotton, tobacco, sugar, or rice, that crop is cultivated, and that alone. Rotation of crops is thus precluded by the conditions of the case. The soil is tasked again and again to yield the same product, and the inevitable result follows. After a short series of years its fertility is completely exhausted, the planter -- "land-killer" he is called in the picturesque nomenclature of the South -- abandons the ground which he has rendered worthless, and passes on to seek in new soils for that fertility under which alone the agencies at his disposal can be profitably employed . . . . Slave cultivation, wherever it has been tried in the new world, has issued in the same results. Precluding the conditions of rotation of crops or skilful management, it tends inevitably to exhaust the land of a country and consequently requires for its permanent success not merely a fertile soil but a practically unlimited extent of it."Therefore expansion is a necessity of slave societies. [Cairnes, pp. 53-56, 62, 179 sqq.]In the same sense Weber, speaking of the ancient states of Asia and Europe, remarks that slavery is uneconomical, where a dense population and high prices of the land render an intensive cultivation necessary. [Weber's Article "Agrarverhältnisse im Altertum", in Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, 3rd edition (1909) I p. 63.]
It is easy to see that these arguments do not apply to slavery as practised by savages. Rotation of crops and skilful management are wanting among most savage tribes, whether they keep slaves or not. Moreover, as we have already remarked, the slaves kept by them are not pieces of machinery, nor, as in the United States, kept in compulsory ignorance; they are rather regarded as members of the master's family; there is no great difference between master and slave. [Cairnes is also aware of the difference between ancient and modern slavery (pp. 109 sqq.).] We may therefore suppose that, whether a savage tribe keeps slaves or not, agriculture is carried on in the same manner.
Loria also holds that slavery requires an abundant supply of ground; but his arguments are quite different from Cairnes'. His reasoning is as follows.
As long as there is land not yet appropriated, which a man destitute of capital can take into cultivation, capitalistic property cannot exist; for nobody is inclined to work for a capitalist, when he can work for his own profit on land that costs him nothing. If, then, the capitalist wants by any means to get a profit, he must violently suppress the free land to which the labourer owes his force and liberty. And as long as the population is scarce and therefore all land cannot possibly be appropriated, the only means of suppressing the free land is by subjugating the labourer. This subjugation assumes at first the form of slavery; afterwards, when the decreasing fertility of the soil has to be made up for by a greater fertility of labour, slavery gives place to serfdom, which is milder and makes labour more productive.
When the population increases, and all land that can be cultivated by labour without the aid of capital had been appropriated, quite another state of things prevails. The labourer has now no other resource but to sell his labour to the capitalist for such wages as the latter likes to give; he is compelled to yield to the capitalist the greater part of the produce of his labour. Now the latter need no longer use violence to get his profit; for it falls to him by the automatic operation of the social system. Yet, even then the capitalistic regime is not absolutely certain to arise, for there is still land not yet appropriated, that can be cultivated with the aid of capital. If, therefore, the labourers could save a portion of their earnings and thus accumulate capital, they would be able to take this land into cultivation and so make themselves independent of their employers. This consideration induces the capitalist to keep wages so low that they cannot exceed the immediate wants of the labourers, which he brings about by various artificial means.
When, finally, a further increase of population makes the total appropriation of the land possible, the mere appropriation of it by the capitalist class renders the labourers for ever subjected. The capitalist need no longer have recourse to artificial methods of reducing wages; the system operates automatically. The capitalists have only to retain the land for themselves; they will then secure a perpetual revenue at the cost of the labouring class.
"The basis of capitalistic property is thus always the same, viz. the suppression of the free land, the exclusion of the labourer from the appropriation of the land. This is brought about by various means, according to the fertility of the land and the extent to which it has already been appropriated. As long as there is free land fit for cultivation by labour without the aid of capital, the only means of suppressing it are slavery and serfdom; afterwards, when the land not yet appropriated can only be cultivated by one who owns capital, it is sufficient systematically to reduce wages to a level that does not enable the labourers to save; when, finally, the population has so far increased as to make the appropriation of all land possible, the capitalists have only to keep the land to themselves". [Loria pp. 2-6.] [306]Many objections can be made to Loria's arguments. He is constantly confusing capitalist and landlord. He seems to consider capitalists and labourers as two strictly separated classes, though we see continually people passing from one class to the other. And when he tells us that, if wages were higher, the labourers would save a portion of their earnings and so accumulate capital, but that the employers, wishing to prevent this, keep wages low, -- he ascribes to both capitalists and labourers so much forethought and consciousness of class-interest as men scarcely ever have, except in books on political economy. [On Loria's incorrect manner of reasoning, see B. Croce's essay on "Le teorie storiche del Prof. Loria", in "Materialismo storico ed economia Marxistica". A much better opinion of Loria is held by Sombart (I p. 358).] Yet we cannot think but that in the main Loria is right. The gist of his reasoning is what we have already remarked in the beginning of this paragraph. As long as there is an abundance of land not yet appropriated, and therefore at the disposal of whoever may choose to cultivate it, nobody applies to another for employment, and the only labourers a man can procure are forced labourers. But when all land has been appropriated, those who own no land are at the mercy of the landholders, and voluntarily serve them; therefore slaves are not wanted.
Much more fully has the true reason, why in densely peopled countries there is little use for slaves, been recognized by Wakefield in his book on the art of colonization. With him, the theory is not based upon a general conception of society, but upon the facts of the colonial history of his own time.
Wakefield, then, complains that in Australia and other colonies manufactures cannot thrive; the reason for this is, according to him, that there are no labourers to be had; for there is so much free land that every newly-arrived labourer becomes a landowner rather than work for wages. Therefore there are many colonies which would keep slaves if the home government let them. This leads the writer to an investigation of the circumstances which induce men to keep slaves.
"They are not moral, but economical circumstances; they relate not to vice and virtue, but to production. They are the circumstances, in which one man finds it difficult or impossible to get other men to work under his direction for wages. They are the circumstances . . . . which stand in the way of combination and constancy of labour, and which all civilized nations, in a certain stage of their advance from barbarism, have endeavoured to counteract, and have in some measure counteracted, by means of some kind of slavery. Hitherto in this world, labour has never been employed on any considerable scale, with constancy and in combination, except by one or other of two means; either by hiring, or by slavery of some kind. What the principle of association may do in the production of wealth, and for the labouring classes, without either slavery or hiring, remains to be seen; but at present we cannot rely upon it . . . . . . . .Slavery is evidently a make-shift for hiring; a proceeding to which recourse is had, only when hiring is impossible or difficult . . . . it is adopted because at the time and under the circumstances there is no other way of getting labourers to work with constancy and in combination. What, then, are the circumstances under which this happens?
It happens whenever population is scanty in proportion to land. Slavery . . . . has been confined to countries of a scanty population, has never existed in very populous countries, and has gradually ceased in the countries whose population gradually increased to the point of density. And the reason is plain enough . . . . In populous countries, the desire to own land is not easily gratified, because the land is scarce and dear: the plentifulness and cheapness of land in thinly-peopled countries enables almost everybody who wishes it to become a landowner. In thinly-peopled countries, accordingly, the great majority of free people are landowners who cultivate their own land; and labour for hire is necessarily scarce: in densely-peopled countries, on the contrary, the great majority of the people cannot obtain land, and there is plenty of labour for hire. Of plentifulness of labour for hire, the cause is dearness of land: cheapness of land is the cause of scarcity of labour for hire".[Wakefield, pp. 323-325. Marx (I pp. 795-804) gives a detailed account of the same argument as developed in another book of Wakefield's, and adds that the exclusion of the mass of the people from the soil forms the basis of the capitalistic mode of production (ibid., p, 798).][308]
Wakefield proposed that the government should sell the new land in the colonies at a sufficient price, i. e. at a price which would oblige the newly arrived labourers to serve a few years for wages before being able to become landowners. [On the practical result of Wakefield's plan, see Cunningham, English Industry, II pp. 603-607. Professor Cunningham justly calls Wakefield "a judicious and far-seeing man" (ibid., p. 605, note 3).]
Another writer on colonial matters of the same period, Merivale, follows quite the same line of argument as Wakefield. The great demand for slaves and the great profitableness of slavery, he says, arise altogether from the scarcity of labour.
"When the pressure of population induces the freeman to offer his services, as he does in all old countries, for little more than the natural minimum of wages, those services are very certain to be more productive and less expensive than those of the bondsman, whose support is a charge to the master, and who has nothing to gain by his industry . . . . This being the case, it is obvious that the limit of the profitable duration of slavery is attained whenever the population has become so dense that it is cheaper to employ the free labourer for hire. Towards this limit every community is approximating, however slowly."That the relation between land and population is indeed the determining factor as regards the system of labour most suitable to a country, is clearly shown by the effect which the emancipation of the slaves had upon the economic development of the different colonies. Merivale then proceeds to divide the British slave colonies, at the time of emancipation, into three classes, as respects their economical situation. First, the oldest settlements, established in the smaller Antilles (Barbadoes, Antigua, etc.). They were those in which the land was nearly all occupied. "They were less injured than any others by the immediate effect of emancipation; for the negroes had no resource except in continuing to work; there was no unoccupied land for them to possess, no independent mode of obtaining a subsistence to which they could resort, still less of obtaining those luxuries which habit had rendered desirable to them.''
"The next class is that of colonies in which the fertile or advantageously situated soil was all cultivated, and becoming exhausted; but there remained much unoccupied soil, of a less valuable description, and the population was not dense in proportion to the whole surface." This applies especially to Jamaica. Here the colonists"were injured, perhaps, by the abolition of the slave trade; and they suffer now, since emancipation, by the difficulty of compelling the negroes to perform hired labour while they have their own provision grounds, and other resouroes, at their disposal."In these colonies, after emancipation,
"Finally, there is a third class of colonies, in some of which the fertility of the cultivated soil is as yet unexhausted, in others there is abundance of fertile and unoccupied land. Such are the Mauritius and Trinidad, and, in a far higher degree, Guiana"."the negroes have found it easy to obtain a subsistence in a country overflowing with natural wealth: they have been rescued from a servitude involving, perhaps, a greater amount of labour than in any other settlements: they have abundance of land to resort to for their maintenance. The accounts, both from Guiana and Trinidad, seem to report the negroes as generally peaceful and well-inclined, but indisposed to labour, to which they can only be tempted by the most exorbitant offers of wages". [Merivale, pp. 305, 313-317. See also Waltershausen, article "Negerfrage", in Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, 2nd edition, V p. 973.]There is one more reason why slaves are of little use in those countries where all land has been appropriated. When there is free land, a man can, by increasing the number of his slaves, to any extent augment his revenue: every slave will take a new patch of land into cultivation; the more slaves a man owns, the more land he will have in tillage. But when the supply of land is limited, each landowner can employ only a definite number of labourers. As soon as there are hands enough to cultivate his grounds, an increase in the number of labourers soon becomes unprofitable. What we have said of pastoral tribes obtains here too: it may be that slaves are wanted, but when they are procured the point will soon be reached at which a further increase in their number yields no longer any profit. Therefore, when all land has been appropriated, even though it be equally divided between the members of the community and so a labouring class be wanting, there is little use for slaves.
It must be understood that we speak here of self-dependent agricultural countries. Where manufactures and the trade with foreign parts are highly developed, economic life becomes much more complicated and presents quite another character.
What we want to prove is that in such self-dependent agricultural countries, when all arable land has been appropriated, slavery is not likely to exist.
All land has been appropriated, when every piece of land is claimed by some one as his property. The owner, of course, need not be an individual; land may also be owned by a group of individuals. Yet the statements of our ethnographers concerning tribal property may not be accepted without much caution. They often tell us that a tribe claims the ownership of the territory it inhabits. This so-called right of property held by the tribe often proves to consist in this, that no strangers are admitted to the territory, but every member of the tribe may cultivate as much of the land as he likes. In such case, whether it be the tribe or the king to whom the land is stated to belong, the term "ownership" is very inappropriately used. [See Dargun, pp. 49 sqq. Hildebrand (Recht und Sitte, pp. 134 sqq.) rightly remarks that in primitive societies the uncultivated land is not the property of the community, but nobody's property (res nullius).] We shall only speak of appropriation of land when some one claims the use of it to the exclusion of all others, and values his property. Where the so-called owner is always willing to give a piece of it in cultivation to whoever wants to cultivate it, we shall not speak of appropriation; where, however, the land is never (except by way of favour) given in use gratis, but a rent is always stipulated, it appears that the owner values it, it has now really been appropriated. [Where the State owns the land and gives it in use gratuitously or at a low rent, the land is practically free. Such was the case in China, in the 5th century of our era, where the State gave allotments to farmers at a definite tax. "It is obvious, that the condition of the free cultivators without land could not become intolerable so long as they were able to rent in on the simple condition of paying the ordinary tax; and as long as the State had land to let on these terms, private agglomerators would be unable to get farmers to pay more to themselves; so that large estates could only be profitable on condition of evading the land tax, or being tilled for the owner by servile labour." Simcox, II p. 127.]
It is not always clearly stated whether all land has been appropriated. Then we shall have recourse to some criteria from which we may infer whether such be the case.
The principal criterion is the existence of a class of freemen destitute of land. ["Destitute of land" is not the same as: "who own no land." When the population is so scarce that even the most fertile land has no value, nohody owns land; but there are no men destitute of land, any more than in our countries there are men destitute of air or water; every one has land at his disposal. Only when every piece of land has an owner, can there be people destitute of land, i. e. who have no land at their disposal.] Where such people are found we may be sure that there is no free land; else they would be able to take it into cultivation. It need scarcely be added that even where no such people are found, it may be that all land has been appropriated, everybody sharing in it.
The appropriation of the land does not imply that all land is actually being cultivated. There may be land actually out of tillage and yet valued by the owner. But when it is stated that all land is being cultivated, it must all have been appropriated. This will therefore be our second criterion.
There is another criterion that proves that all land has not yet been appropriated. When we are told that clearing a piece of land is a modus acquirendi of landed property, there must still be free land.
The appropriation of all land implies that property in land exists; but the reverse is not true: when we are informed that property in land exists, this does not prove that all land has already been appropriated. For as soon as the population has so far increased as to require the cultivation of land less fertile than that which was at first exclusively cultivated, the more fertile land acquires value. "On the first settling of a country" says Ricardo "in which there is an abundance of rich and fertile land, a very small proportion of which is required to be cultivated for the support of the actual population, or indeed can be cultivated with the capital which the population can command, there will be no rent; for no one would pay for the use of land, when there was an abundant quantity not yet appropriated, and, therefore, at the disposal of whosoever might choose to cultivate it." But "when in the progress [312] of society, land of the second degree of fertility is taken into cultivation, rent immediately commences on that of the first quality, and the amount of that rent will depend on the difference in the quality of these two portions of land". [Ricardo, pp. 35, 36.] As soon as land of the second degree of fertility is cultivated, rent commences; but in such cases there is possibly much land of the second degree not yet appropriated, and at any rate land of the 3rd, 4th, etc. degrees. Accordingly we find that among some savage tribes, where there is an abundance of free land, some very fertile or very favourably situated pieces of land are highly valued. We shall give one instance. Among the Sea Dyaks land is so abundant that, if a Dyak, when about to cultivate a piece of land, finds a dead animal lying on it, which he considers a bad omen, he immediately leaves the land, and seeks a new field. Yet among the same Sea Dyaks "parents and children, brothers and sisters, very seldom quarrel; when they do so, it is from having married into a family with whom afterwards they may have disputes about land. One would imagine that was a subject not likely to create dissensions in a country like Borneo; but there are favourite farming-grounds, and boundaries are not very settled. It used to be the practice not to have recourse to arms on those occasions, but the two parties collecting their relatives and friends, would fight with sticks for the coveted spot". [Spenser St. John, I pp. 74, 60.] The last sentence proves that these quarrels were rather frequent. When, therefore, it is stated that land has value, or that lands are rented, or that the wealth of individuals consists partly in landed property, this does not prove that all land has already been appropriated.
We have spoken of all land fit for cultivation being appropriated. What land is fit for cultivation in each country depends on the ability of the inhabitants in agriculture. Much will also depend on the character of the individuals. Where these are vigorous and enterprising, the people destitute of arable land will endure many hardships in taking new lands into cultivation, whereas weak and indolent men will prefer being employed by the rich. A good instance of this is furnished by the Bontoc Igorot of Northern Luzon. Landed property here is highly developed. "It is largely by the possession or nonpossession of real property that a man is considered rich or poor." "Irrigated rice lands are commonly leased." "Unirrigated mountain camote lands are rented outright." Yet there is still unoccupied land. "Public lands and forests extend in an irregular strip around most pueblos . . . Public forests surround the outlying private forests. They are usually from three to six hours distant. From them any man gathers, what he pleases, but until the American came to Bontoc the Igorot seldom went that far for wood or lumber, as it was unsafe." There are, however, people who do not own land enough to live upon. "It is claimed that each household owns its dwelling and at least two sementeras and one granary, though a man with no more property than this is a poor man and some one in his family must work much of the time for wages, because two average sementeras will not furnish all the rice needed by a family for food". [Jenks, pp. 160-163.] So the poor work for wages rather than going to settle on the outlying public lands, to which they have free access. Here again we see that economic phenomena have always a psychological basis. [Dr. Tönnies, in his review of the first edition of this work, remarks that the last sentences contain a most important qualification of our theory of the connection between slavery and land tenure. Every one does not want to take land into cultivation, though he may do so without any payment. On the other hand, where there are people destitute of land, it is not certain that they serve the landowners and so make slavery superfluous. It may be that, though they own no land, they have other resources to live upon, or that they are not apt to perform such work as is most wanted by the rich, etc.
We are well aware of all this. Yet we think we are justified in concluding that, generally speaking, slavery only exists where there is still free land, i. e. free land fit for cultivation. That we admit many exceptions to this rule, will appear from the last paragraphs of this chapter.] [314]
We shall not, in order to prove our hypothesis, examine the regulations of landed property among all agricultural savage tribes, but confine ourselves to one geographical group, in which the phenomena we have spoken of in this paragraph most strikingly present themselves. This group is Oceania, comprehending Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia. We shall, however, leave out of regard New Guinea, one of the largest islands of the world. The rest of Oceania consists chiefly of small islands.
Slavery in Oceania (with the exception of New Guinea) has never prevailed to any great extent. In the second chapter of Part I it has been shown that slavery, so far as we can know, existed only in the N. W. Solomon Islands, on the Gazelle Peninsula of Neu Pommern, and in New Zealand.
We shall try to account for this fact by showing that on most of the Oceanic islands all land had been appropriated, which led to a state of things inconsistent with slavery as a social system.
In the following paragraphs we shall inquire what our ethnographers have to say about landed property in Oceania and the extent to which the land had been appropriated.
