On the Liberation of Land, According to the Teaching of Henry George

“The land is God’s,” says the people, increasingly beginning to understand that almost all their misfortunes come from the fact that land can be private property. The misfortunes come from the fact that some people have much land and do not trouble themselves to cultivate it well—they do not need to; they know that even without cultivation the land brings them income because it grows more valuable year by year. Other people have so little land, so very little, that they cannot make proper use of it. Because of this, people flee to the cities, to factories, to offices, everywhere driving down the price of labor, and from this come people’s chief misfortunes.

But how can this be changed so that all people can use the land equally? Take it by force from those who have much of it and divide it equally among those who work it, just as peasants divide their communal land? But even communal land in a single village is difficult to divide equally among all its inhabitants, and it is still more difficult to maintain this equal division without increasing strip-farming to an extreme and making it difficult to manage a farm. Even now there are people in the villages who have twenty or thirty strips in each field and who, despite all their efforts, can do nothing sensible with their land precisely because of such division. And how could all the land be divided among all who want to own it so that it would be equal for everyone? After all, lands throughout the world differ far more in quality than in a single village. There are sandy lands worth fifteen or twenty rubles a desiatina; there are black-earth lands worth three or four hundred rubles; there are water meadows worth a thousand rubles and more; there are lands with ore, with oil, with coal, worth tens of thousands of rubles per desiatina; there are urban lands where a single sazhen is worth a thousand rubles and more. Besides, land prices change. A railroad passes through, the population increases somewhere, and the price of land rises.

That is not all. There are people who do not need land, who live in cities—craftsmen, blacksmiths, locksmiths, tailors, carpenters, those who keep shops, those who work in factories, teachers, clerks. All these people do not need land to cultivate, but they all want to benefit equally with others from everything that the land gives.

How then should it be? How can it be arranged so that all people benefit equally from what the land gives?

For this it is not necessary to take the land away from those who now own it, nor to divide it among everyone. Let whoever now owns whatever land continue to own it. Let those who grow vegetables continue, those who grow orchards, those who keep livestock, those who sow grain. Let those who have ore land extract ore, gold, oil, or coal from it. Let everyone own their land as they do now, but let whoever owns land pay into the common benefit all that this land is worth in yearly rent. If someone’s land—let us say, plowed land—is worth three, five, or ten rubles a year, or meadowland fifty, eighty, or a hundred rubles, or ore land or urban land a thousand rubles—let that person pay this money annually for the common benefit. Whoever would receive hundreds or thousands of rubles from his land if he rented it out by the year without buildings and improvements, let him pay these hundreds and thousands for the common benefit; and whoever’s land would bring only five or six rubles, let him pay these five or six rubles. Let everyone pay from his land as much as it could bring in rent in the year in which he owns it. So that if, let us say, he now pays ten or fifteen rubles for it, but next year people would be willing to pay fifteen or thirty instead of ten or fifteen, then if he wants to own the land, let him pay what others would give for it.

If this is established, there would be enough land for everyone—enough because those who now own lands and do not work them themselves would quickly give up their lands, since without working on them they would not be able to pay the rent. And these lands would be taken by those who work the land.

The money collected from the land should go for the common benefit. This income would be so great that it would replace all other taxes and levies. In Russia the rent from lands is two or three times greater than what is now collected in various taxes. In Moscow alone about twenty million rubles would be collected. Were such an arrangement established, not only would it be good for those working on the land—because there would be enough land and they would not have to pay any duties and taxes—but life would also be good for city people, craftsmen, and factory workers: the population would spread out through the villages, and there would not be, as now, so many excess factory and mill workers who drive down the price of labor; then workers would set the prices, not the owners; and provisions would become much cheaper because there would be no duties or tariffs on goods.

With such an arrangement, people would receive from the land that which God himself has destined them to receive from it—all equally. It would not be as under serfdom and slavery, where some have everything and others nothing, and as it is even now because some people can seize land for themselves and own it as property, taking it from those who want to work on it.

—Presented according to Henry George by S. D. Nikolaev. (Edited by L. N. Tolstoy.)

---

Translator’s Notes:

• Henry George (1839–1897) was an American political economist and journalist whose book Progress and Poverty (1879) became one of the most influential works of the era. He proposed that poverty existed alongside progress because landowners captured the increasing value of land (economic rent) that properly belonged to the whole community.
• George’s “single tax” proposal held that a tax on land values—equal to the full rental value of the land—would replace all other taxes and ensure that everyone benefited equally from the common heritage of the earth. This would not require taking land from current owners but simply taxing its value.
• Tolstoy became an ardent supporter of George’s ideas after reading Progress and Poverty in 1885. He saw in George’s program a practical, peaceful solution to the land question that aligned with his own belief that private ownership of land was morally wrong.
• S. D. Nikolaev (Sergei Dmitrievich Nikolaev, 1861–1920) was a Russian economist and translator who promoted Henry George’s ideas in Russia. He translated several of George’s works into Russian.
• A desiatina (десятина) was a Russian unit of land area equal to approximately 2.7 acres or 1.09 hectares.
• A sazhen (сажень) was a Russian unit of length equal to about 7 feet (2.13 meters). A square sazhen would be about 50 square feet.
• The “communal land” (mirskaya zemlya) refers to the land held collectively by the Russian peasant commune (mir or obshchina), which periodically redistributed land among households. Tolstoy was deeply familiar with the problems of this system.
• Strip-farming (cherespolositsa) was the system where a peasant’s land was divided into many narrow strips scattered across different fields—a result of attempts at fair distribution that often made efficient farming impossible.
• This piece represents Tolstoy’s effort to make George’s economic theory accessible to common Russian readers, using simple language and practical examples drawn from Russian peasant life.