Land and property ownership are no small matters for a Republic, and we can right the wrongs of the past by empowering American families with land. In the process, we can create a more just society based on distributist and Christian ideas that will strengthen the social fabric of the Republic.
“America is really only about two things: race and space.”
The above quote, often attributed to Mark Twain, strikes at the heart of the two things that first built, then destroyed, and then rebuilt America, and that seems poised to do so again. In our modern era of American politics, one cannot help but see the division fostered by our news, businesses, politics, and general culture. These divisions straddle lines of class, location, and origin, but always seem to circle back to two issues: race and space.
On the issue of race, our national thinking seems vested between two extremes: 1) radical progressive ideology that seeks a remedy in the expansion of the state, welfare, and wealth distribution, and 2) staunch conservative ideology that refuses to recognize that real fissures in American society exist and need to be addressed if the nation is to survive the coming decades. Neither serves us well. Rather than thinking in terms of tax breaks, handouts, or victimization, it is time to return the vitally important “space” mentioned by Twain to American discourse.
To begin, it could be stated that distributist discourse, let alone Catholic social thought, is not widely accepted as a part of the American experience. But perhaps it is within these schools of thought that radical solutions to our current problems ought to be investigated. When Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton wrote about distributist thought in England from the turn of the 20th century to the Great Depression, they examined what they saw as the failures of both capitalism and socialism in Britain. They identified, along with Papal encyclicals such as Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, that a key problem was property ownership. Capitalism allowed it to accrue into the hands of the few while socialism would eventually end the concept of property and ownership, and with it true freedom for families within a society.
It takes only a cursory glance at recent events to see that race and space are once again the primary movers of American discourse, and that all our current solutions seemed based on this dichotomy: capitalism vs. socialism. It is in this space that distributist ideas might have something to say. In the past year, the U.S. has experienced protests against police brutality, race riots, disputed elections, and an ever-fractured citizenry and discourse. This fractured political landscape seeks to redress these issues either through redistribution or through denial, with no middle ground.
Both approaches are rooted in the same old American story of Left versus Right. Progressives want to initiate reparations and redistribute wealth from one part of society to the other while conservatives fight to keep the already distressed status quo intact. None of these policies properly address the fault lines themselves: those of race and space. Instead, they seek to band-aid the wounds by distributing short-term money to the poor or by continuing to empower the very oligarchs who have made the current system so untenable for so many.
So, what then would a distributist answer be to our current issues? To start, it would be rooted in empowering American families through property and ownership. These two things have been the engine of human wealth generation since the invention of farming and create a means for multigenerational accumulation on a broad scale. But what would this look like in practice?
We need look no further than the Homestead Act of 1865. This law, passed in the waning days of the Civil War, opened the Western Frontier for settlement by allowing any American to apply for land in the west for nothing but the cost of the application fee. The new landholder had five years to improve the land by building a house or farming it, and then it was theirs. This Act was not perfect, and it led to corruption and land speculation, but it also granted Americans real access to land ownership and a vehicle toward independence. Many of those farms were still in the possession of the same families up until the Great Depression. This act allowed what Frederick Turner called the “safety valve” of the frontier to diffuse American social tensions. Those who did not fit into the cities or industrialized life were free to seek their fortunes out west, on their own land with their own tools.
What would a New Homestead Act (NHA) look like today? And how would it be implemented? The Federal government currently owns nearly 640 million acres of land. Certainly not all is prime for development, but a good deal of it is. The NHA would seek to sell portions of this land to the average American, for nothing but the application fee.
It would require a complete surveyance of current Federal land holdings, with a system created to categorize land that is prime for development and is accessible. One could imagine this being graded on a 10-point scale, with “1” constituting destitute desert territory and “10” prime farmland with ample access to nearby resources or state amenities such as roads and utilities. The process of surveying alone would likely take several years but would be essential to determine properly what land is available.
After the land is surveyed, an allocation system would need to be created. This would channel individuals on a first-come-first-serve basis to a database of available land. This could be done in-person or online, using unique identifiers such as Social Security numbers and birth certificates to ensure citizenship. There would also have to be controls in place so that, unlike the original Homestead Act, the NHA would prevent large corporations from purchasing plots of land for their own speculative purposes. Perhaps one enforcement mechanism could be the rescinding of said land rights if it is found that the land was purchased for or in collusion with large business interests.
Once the issues of surveyance and distribution systems are worked out, it would be important to make known to the average American just what the NHA would mean to them. For example, a family could purchase a plot of land and then use this land as security to take out a mortgage that they could use to start a farm. Or perhaps they would want to rent their land to another person who would develop it and make business use of it while supporting the family through rents. Groups of families could form cooperatives that pooled their land together in 5- or 10-year increments, and then rent this pooled land out to farmers or larger businesses who could utilize it. Families could get creative and choose to be paid in cash or kind for the land. Instead of monthly cash rent, the family could request monthly delivery of a share of the goods produced by the land, or some form of food that the company processes among other products. This places property and ownership in the hands of American families and gives them the tools to create more wealth.
What is important here is that this program is for everyone, whether they currently own a home or property or not. When politicians talk about reparations, when families feel trapped in urban poverty, or when Americans no longer want to live the city life, this is the opportunity for them. It creates wealth by giving those with nothing a vehicle for their own development. And it would further serve to strengthen the middle class who may already own homes or land. This could reduce urban poverty and generate real multi-generational gains for families of all races. What is more, it does not require the redistribution of wealth and the forced reordering of society that will only further fracture the American social fabric. Instead, it takes what we already have—public land—and distributes it to American families so that they become more empowered in American economy and society.
It is important to remember what has happened to past societies who have attempted or refused land reform. The Roman Republic was ripped apart by the destruction of the smallholding Italian farms for the sake of aristocratic Latifundia. Their attempts to redistribute state land led to political violence that resulted in the murder of the Gracchi Brothers, which entrenched violence as a legitimate political tool. Yet when the Romans did manage land reform successfully, such as when Pompey distributed land in Anatolia to Cilician pirates, they rooted out piracy in the eastern Mediterranean for generations. Centuries later, in Byzantium, emperors such as Basil II fought to distribute imperial land that had been gobbled up by urban aristocrats, so that they might strengthen the peasant farmers as the backbone of the army and economy. Yet when these reforms were allowed to lapse by successors, the Latifundia arose again and the smallholder farmers were destroyed, and with them the backbone of the Byzantine economy, army, and society.
Land and property ownership are no small matters for a Republic, and bringing “space” back into the discourse of American politics, we can right the wrongs of the past by empowering American families with land that provides the key to their and their children’s future. In the process, we can create a more just society based on distributist and Christian ideas that will strengthen the social fabric of the Republic.
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The featured image is “Farmyard Scene” (c. 1872-74) by Winslow Homer (1836–1910) and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The premise put forth that everything comes back to race and space is fundamentally flawed, so I shan’t read past the first two paragraphs to critique the rest of your argument. A house built on sand cannot stand.
The “Marxists” (in quotes because that moniker is used as a placeholder for any number of gnostic, materialistic, and other philosophical approaches to the world) strategy is to divide and provoke. Thus, division by race is a fundamental tool used to achieve their “destroy everything so we can rebuild it in our own item” approach to revolution.
To promulgate the argument that race division is at the core of our society falls into the propaganda that is designed to ultimate cause revolution, destruction, oligarchy and overt fascism.
So any solution that is proposed to “fix” a manufactured crisis is already doomed to failure. The answer is not to “enforce” a distributive economy. First, we need to recognize that the underlying problem is sloth, hatred, greed and our societal shift to materialistic narcissism. Distributism cannot thrive when core values and principles are absent.
Greetings friend, and thanks for commenting!
” The premise put forth that everything comes back to race and space is fundamentally flawed”
While I would agree that the premise of mankind, life, and the world certainly does not boil down to race, I would also say it is a fair argument that race has played a particularly prominent and fundamental role in US history and society, which is what was intended by Twain’s quote.
The seeds of the Civil War were baked into our Constitution with the 3/5th’s compromise. And the Civil War itself was over States Rights…to own slaves. The social issues that moved the 50’s and 60’s with the Civil Rights movements still have repercussions today. So again, I would say it’s quite fair to say that many of our problems today in the US boil down to race.
Regarding space, I was aligning myself with Frederick Turner’s frontier thesis, which saw the frontier not only as fundamentally shaping American character (John Wayne, anyone?) but that it also served as a pressure valve to help relieve social issues by creating a place for those who didn’t fit into industrializing American society to find their own way, with their own land. The idea thus was to create a non-racialized solution by opening land to all Americans regardless of race, and with no qualifications other than that the land ought to go to average American families and not big business interests.
“The “Marxists” (in quotes because that moniker is used as a placeholder for any number of gnostic, materialistic, and other philosophical approaches to the world) strategy is to divide and provoke. Thus, division by race is a fundamental tool used to achieve their “destroy everything so we can rebuild it in our own item” approach to revolution.”
I agree. Which is why I was trying to wrap my head recently around the issues the US currently has, and wanted to come up with an idea that might at least get people thinking, however unfeasible. Nothing proposed here bakes in the racial division. It could have, had it been suggested to offer these things only to minorities or to the poor etc; but I explicitly avoided that specifically for the reasons you raise.
“To promulgate the argument that race division is at the core of our society falls into the propaganda that is designed to ultimate cause revolution, destruction, oligarchy and overt fascism”
It may not be at the core of global society, but it is undeniably an important aspect of American society. Our one and only Civil War was fought because of it. Our current, large Federal government had its seeds laid in that very conflict. So we can’t just pretend that it doesn’t exist. But I agree that there ought to be a healthy skepticism to race based solutions, which is why I tried to avoid any overt racial requirements or distinctions, other than to suggest that this might help relieve tensions.
“So any solution that is proposed to “fix” a manufactured crisis is already doomed to failure”
I would contend that whether you believe the current crisis is manufactured or not (which again, I do to a very large extent believe myself) the solutions proposed here would aim to benefit all races and creeds within the Republic.
“First, we need to recognize that the underlying problem is sloth, hatred, greed and our societal shift to materialistic narcissism. Distributism cannot thrive when core values and principles are absent.”
I don’t disagree with you on any of these points my friend. But that ought not to stop us from trying to think about means available to us that might get people thinking about solutions to these very problems.
This article reminds us all how important it is to look to the past to see where we are going. As quickly as the media works to shift from issue to issue, you are right to remind us that core issues that plague modern America are very much rooted in those of her early years. The suggestion that property be distributed, rather than money or goods, is a tempting idea when considering the impending doom of a world in which AI steals job after job from americans. It implies ‘work’ and ‘opportunity’- ideals foundational to the American way.
While Chesterton is a brilliant exponent of the ‘Land Problem,’ unfortunately distributism is very poorly equipped for a modern economy. The real solution is not to attempt to redistribute physical ownership of land; all of the land so parceled out would end up being concentrated again soon enough, because the mechanisms which enable monopoly have been left untouched. No, the real solution is the old program of Henry George: make land rents common, rather than private, and land monopoly is dissolved completely and forever.
This has the benefit of preserving our natural parks, while doing substantially more good than simply handing out mostly subpar land to the citizenry (most public land in the US is either a national park, useless for development, or both). It liberates the citizenry from taxes on their industry and investment, while preventing the accumulation of personal wealth that occurs without contributing to the market when rents are collected by landlords- who, as Adam Smith pointed out, are paid for doing nothing productive.
“The real solution is not to attempt to redistribute physical ownership of land; all of the land so parceled out would end up being concentrated again soon enough, because the mechanisms which enable monopoly have been left untouched”
I think this is an important point to bring up, and it was something I only barely touched on in the essay itself, concerning mechanisms like appropriation if the land was found to have been purchased for business interests.
“No, the real solution is the old program of Henry George: make land rents common, rather than private, and land monopoly is dissolved completely and forever.”
I find this a very interesting idea. I was unfamiliar with Henry George’s economics but a quick purview already has me interested.
“This has the benefit of preserving our natural parks, while doing substantially more good than simply handing out mostly subpar land to the citizenry (most public land in the US is either a national park, useless for development, or both)”
I was envisioning not touching the national parks with this act, as parkland only covers 84m square miles of the 640m the Federal government holds. However your point that some of it is subpar certainly stands. That’s why I proposed the survey mechanism, to determine what amount of it is actually viable for development. There would still have to be millions of acres of land that is feasible for use and development even if a good portion of it weren’t.
I had also done some research and found that other proposals along these lines involve urban land or “ghost town” land, though many of these schemes target only specific groups or individuals and are concerned with ways the government might still make money off of the deal. Nevertheless it’s somewhere else to start some thinking, I suppose.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply! The issue of distribution and redistribution is, I think, the ultimate economic problem for distributism. Even if we somehow assume that land has been equally distributed without issue, a marvelously large assumption, he only way to keep property distributed is by the force and mandate of government, something which distributists claim to despise and which I distrust. And even then, inheritance must be considered; under such a system those families with the fewest children would inevitably end up with the most land, while the descendants of families with many children would have little.
That is why I prefer Georgism- the land value tax solves the ‘Land Problem’ in a simple and practical way; the benefits of land (rent) can be held in common right without oppressive regulations.
As far as public land goes, having lived in the west, where public land is common (run by BLM, not the protesters), I doubt there is much value in apportioning it. There may be some land which the government owns which could be useful, but it is usually far away from populated areas, and in most cases is fit for little more than cattle grazing or, as is the case in the desert where I live, nothing at all outside of weapons testing. Even if the land was given out, what use would it be to someone who probably lives far away from it? The great majority of public land is in the rural west, while the majority of the US population is urban and lives in the east. If someone were to give me an acre or twenty of rural land a thousand miles away from where I live, particularly under the condition that I not sell it, I can’t say it would do me any good.
I agree with the basic premise, but I think we need something akin to what is proposed in urban areas, sort of an Urban Homestead Act. I believe something similar was tried in the 70s in cities. When I see images of vacant buildings in urban areas such as Detriot and Baltimore I think if Italy’s $1 home program, in which dilapidated buildings in dying urban areas are sold to prospective homeowners to both fix them up but also settle in these areas. Why not sell similar buildings in struggling urban communities to potential buyers for $1.00, let them maintain ownership if improved over 5 years. The government could claim some form of ownership considering the billions in urban improvements spent over the decades which had no effect. Such a program should give preference to People of Color. This would have multiple affects- address the wealth distribution argument, be an form of reparations, promote private property ownership, build communities, and be a means if teaching trades and financial management. Marget Thatcher undertook a similar program in her sale of Council (public) housing to the occupants. This would also take the wind out of the sails if the progressive left over the past history if historic homestead acts which favored White Americans.
So, Seth, my ancestors did homestead, my paternal great-great grandfather (a Kashubian Polish immigrant) in the Dakota Territory in 1888, his son in Minnesota in 1900, and several others (ancestors of my paternal grandmother) during the same time period. They were all from the area of Poland and Austria).
It takes a lot of hard work – something I think MANY individuals in today’s world would have issue with. They want land, houses, and wealth handed to them for free. I disagree that this would work. In fact, many are taking advantage of current laws surrounding federal lands to live – basically free of cost – on those federal lands (squatters).
I am confused by your comment, maybe you could clarify. In the first paragraph you said that your ancestors homesteaded, indicating they acquired land for the nominal cost of the filing fee. In the second paragraph you seemingly disparage people in “today’s world” wanting things handed to them for free…..which is exactly what the Homestead act was provided you build a house in 5 yrs. So why are your ancestors exempt from your criticism of people wanting things for free?
Land is not the source of wealth that it was 150 years ago, and that goes double for the mostly unproductive land the federal government holds. The source of wealth today is knowledge. We need to make learning widely and easily available, even for those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.
I’m not sure Native American communities would agree with this idea nor see this as much of a solution to their challenges.