How Land Tenure Originated

Discussion

Michael Hudson:

"Public vs. private theories of how land tenure originated

Ancient societies rested on an agricultural base. The first and most basic problem for society to solve was how to assign land tenure. Even families who lived in towns that were being built up around temples and civic ceremonial and administrative centers were allocated self-support land–much like Russians have dachas, where most of their food was grown in Soviet times.

In analyzing the origins of land tenure, like every economic phenomenon, we find two approaches. On the one hand is a scenario where land is allocated by the community in exchange for corvée labor obligations and service in the military. On the other hand is an individualistic scenario in which land tenure originated by individuals acting spontaneously by themselves clearing land, make it their own property and producing handicrafts or other products (even metal to use as money!) to exchange with each other.

This latter individualistic view of land tenure has been popularized ever since John Locke imagined individuals setting out to clear the land–apparently vacant wooded land–with their own labor (and presumably that of their wives). That effort established their ownership to it and its crop yield. Some families would have more land than others, either because they were stronger at clearing it or had a larger family to help them. And there was enough land for everyone to clear ground for planting crops.

In this view there is no need for any community to be involved, not even to protect themselves from miliary attack–or for mutual aid in times of flood or other problems. And there is no need for credit to be involved–although in antiquity that was the main lever distorting the distribution of land by transferring its ownership to wealthy creditors

At some point in history, to be sure, this theory sees governments enter the picture. Perhaps they took the form of invading armies, which is how the Norman ancestors of landlords in John Locke’s day acquired English land. And as in England, the rulers would have forced landholders to pay part of their crops in taxes and provide military service. In any case, the role of government was recognized only as “interfering” with the cultivator’s right to use the crop as he saw fit–presumably to trade for things that he needed, made by families in their own workshops.

My Harvard-sponsored group of assyriologists, Egyptologists and archaeologists have found an entirely different genesis of land tenure. Land rights seem to have been assigned in standardized plots in terms of their crop yield. To provide food for these community members, late Neolithic and early Bronze Age communities from Mesopotamia to Egypt allocated land to families in proportion to what they needed to live on and how much they could turn over to the palace authorities.

This tax yield turned over to palace collectors was the original economic rent. Land tenure came as part of a quid pro quo–with a fiscal obligation to provide labor services at designated times of the year, and to serve in the military. It thus was taxation that created land-tenure rights, not the other way around. Land was social in character, not individualistic. And government’s role was that of coordinator, organizer and forward planner, not merely predatory and extractive."

(https://mronline.org/2022/07/13/from-junk-economics-to-a-false-view-of-history/)