Local Income Tax – or Local Empowerment?

Suffice it to remind ourselves that the rental value of the land arrives as pure windfall gain upon site holding, or estate, deriving nothing from the occupant, as it is a value bestowed entirely by the surrounding community.
Since many besides John Swinney declare themselves both for a local income tax and for community empowerment, it is important to understand how the latter is so decidedly undermined by the former. Taxation in all its forms works against community empowerment, because it is precisely an instrument of power centralisation - (while its operators, of course, continue hugely to protest that their agenda is to promote local empowerment!)

Tax = Centralisation
Taxation cannot but promote the centralisation of power, for it is the handmaid of land monopoly, and the monopoly of land lies at the very heart of power centralisation. (How could it be otherwise, when we all have absolute need of land for our survival, so that those dispossessed of land must live at the mercy - or whim - of its possessors?)
Society has only two options for the sourcing of its revenue. As pointed out by our own Patrick Edward Dove and others, it must be drawn “either from the taxation of labour, or from the rent of the lands”, for there is no third option.* But the sourcing of the revenue from the land’s rents would at once defeat land monopoly, since land’s phoney capital value - (the underpinning of land monopoly, see my July article) - would disappear at once into thin air, freeing land for occupation equally by all. The structure of centralised power, being dependent upon land monopoly, must therefore look to taxation for its revenue, since taxation raises no question about the falsity of land’s capital role in the economy, thus perfectly subserving the interests of land monopoly.
Equally, then, taxation in all its forms must be anathema to those who genuinely seek land justice. For what does all our talk about freedom, for ourselves or for others, really amount to, if we continue dumbly to vote for taxes? - handmaiden all, of a system which embodies, and holds intact, the very mechanism of our shackling’: And similarly - of the shackling of other enslaved millions across the globe.

Independence
The Scottish Parliament has no powers to raise revenue in any way but by taxation? No, but we can demand that it have such power! We, the people of Scotland, awake to the cover-up that taxation affords land monopoly, and hence the cover-up it affords the whole unjust economic structure which keeps us down, - let us finally raise our voices and demand a change, through autonomy - independence! There is a saying, “where the people lead, the leaders will follow”. Well, perhaps we have got our present idea of leadership a bit upside-down! William Ogilvie, the great Scottish forerunner of Henry George by a hundred years, declared that “no class of people and no government in power” will ever bring about so radical a change, but that it will need the voice of the people themselves. As one system of taxation after another falls into disrepute, is it not time the people raised a demand for justice, at last, in the sourcing of our revenue?
But the futility of trying to build “community” upon the basis of land monopoly does not end here. A Nockian Society in America preserves the work of a remarkable man, A.J. Nock. Nock’s analysis of the function of a State built upon land monopoly wastes no words. The primary intention of such a State is “to enable the economic exploitation of one class by another” - that is, of course, of the dispossessed by the land’s monopolisers (and the whole State structure which they subsequently erect). As Nock sums it up: “expropriation must precede exploitation. There is no other way to make the political means (the domination of one class by another) effective”.
Such, then, is the essential role of a State built upon land monopoly - to enable the exploitation of one class by another! And hence, of course - cheap labour, on account of the huge populace deliberately rendered workless - (people not needed by the system and with no possibility of employing themselves - because of no access to land). Let us therefore disabuse ourselves of the childish belief that, while land monopoly exists, we can build anything resembling a community - let alone one that is empowered!
No wonder that this little gem of a book by Nock - (of scarcely more than a hundred pages) - is entitled “Our Enemy the State”! ** As an education it perfectly partners the work of Henry George, (which Nock had the good fortune to chance upon in his early adult years).

Grass-roots Power
But Nock is equally interesting on the positive matter of an empowered society. Its land rents are collected, and disbursed, by the smallest political unit - (roughly the size of a parish or the wardship of a town). Thus the fiscal power is retained always at the grass-roots. Since “he that pays the piper calls the tune” - (as we see only too well in the political world!) - here is the end of another great folly of our day: the pouring out - frequently wasting - of time and energies, by countless individuals and groups in every walk of life, imploring central government (or even so called local government), to do - or not to do. Instead, the people will be master of their own affairs.
Nock is not alone in this wisdom. In the pages of “Birthright in Land - and the State of Scotland Today”, (a book embarked upon to bring to light Scotland’s lost knowledge of land justice, but allowing scope for the examination of much else), the chapter “Community and Re-empowerment” collects together similar wisdom from many others in our past - a wisdom we have yet far to go to catch up with. With power delegated upwards from these grass-roots to federated bodies, only for such business as is more fitly so organised - (transport, postal services, etc.), and with the fiscal power held always firmly at the base of society, so that the people remain the deciders of policy at ever; level, Nock comes to the delicious conclusion, re America, that “probably every federal activity could be housed in the Senate Office Building - quite possibly with room to spare”. And Scotland? In a few committee rooms of that white elephant down at Holyrood, perhaps!
Nock, and those other wise thinkers of our past who have concluded similarly, here present us with a real template for community empowerment, so taking a stage further the great work of George, Ogilvie, and others on land justice.
LAND IS LOCAL! - and land yields to the local community its perfect revenue: perfect, because it ensures that never more shall a people suffer under the cruelties of land dispossession.
Can we too soon raise our voices to demand an end to taxation, when such a vision of community empowerment is held out to us through the sourcing of our revenue from land rent?

Shirley-Anne Hardy

* The stock market is, of course, an offspring of land monopoly with which human labour has become entwined, for its claims upon future production are all basically reliant upon land - (the economic term encompassing all natural resources).

** Try the public library, or order from: The Nockian Society, 42 Leathers Road, Port Mitchell, Kentucky 41017, US