Note 1227 — Chapter II · : THE THEORY OF RENT AND ITS APPLICATIONS

If we had not decided against the inclusion of the Italian economists, this would have been the place to devote a few words to the writings of Achille Loria. No one excels him as a writer on political economy. An elaborate superstructure of great economic, political, social, and even religious significance has been built upon the foundation of free land, which at least denotes a powerful imagination. A résumé of this thesis is contained in La Terra ed il Sistema sociale, translated for the Revue d’Économie politique in 1892. We cannot examine Loria’s system here. Suffice it to say that in his Costituzione economica odierna (1900) he demands that the law should recognise each man’s right to the land: either to a unit of land (i.e. a quantity of land such as would enable a man to live and set up as an independent producer) or, failing that, to a fraction of such a unit.

Such is the theoretical solution, but the practical suggestion is somewhat milder, a kind of territorial wage being suggested. Every master would be obliged to give to his workmen, in addition to a minimum wage, a certain amount of land at the end of a given number of years. If during that period the workman has been employed by several masters, each master should contribute in proportion to the length of time he has been in his service.

At the end of a certain period every worker would thus become a proprietor. These would thus be in the same position as their primitive ancestors were as far as natural economy is concerned, and would be able to join with the older proprietors in a kind of association of capital and labour on a footing of absolute equality, which Signor Loria thought would be a most fruitful type of organisation. During the intervening years a certain amount of pressure would have to be put upon the proprietors.