2. M. de Laveleye passes on to the island of Java, and describes the condition of things there in a chapter full of interest; in some places the soil is cultivated in common, it is in others annually divided. But I cannot help noticing that throughout he is speaking of the present time. He describes the condition of things as they are now. He makes use of the regulations of the Dutch Government, of laws of 1853, of parliamentary reports of 1869. The furthest date to which he goes back is to certain regulations of 1806. And yet, since he is dealing with the problem of the origin of property, what one wants to hear about is the ancient state of things. I am aware that some people will at once say “such a system must be old;” but a student who has any critical instinct will rather say that the present existence of such a system proves nothing at all in relation to earlier times. And, indeed, we read in one of the reports on which M. de Laveleye relies, that “this system began with the cultivation of indigo, sugar and coffee for the benefit of the Dutch Government.”[227] The sort of communism we are now considering would in this case be but a recent institution, a creation of the European conquerors. It is true that others make it commence earlier, with the cultivation of rice.[228] This is easily explained: “Rice growing in water requires a system of irrigation, which would be impossible without association; and this necessity gives rise to the practice of common cultivation.” It has been ascertained how these villages arose. “Several families agree to establish a system of irrigation in common. As the water has been brought by the co-operation of all, the result is that the land irrigated by it is cultivated by all.”[229] But it is apparent that the soil does not belong to the nation or the tribe; it belongs to a group, an association. An association of proprietors is not communism; it is one of the forms of property.
We must also observe that private property does exist in Java. In six out of the twenty provinces of the island that alone is to be found, and association is unknown; in eight the two methods are practised side by side; in six association is only practised on the rice fields and irrigated lands, and the rest of the land is held entirely as private property. From these facts I cannot draw the conclusion that community in land was a primitive and natural institution in the island of Java. We meet with it only under modern circumstances, and even here we must recognise that it is less a community than an association.
3. Our author next devotes a few words to ancient India, and here I shall imitate his brevity. He gives but one reference; a sentence from Nearchus, the officer of Alexander the Great. I shall give it first as translated by M. de Laveleye, and then as it really is. “Nearchus informs us that in certain districts of India the land was cultivated in common by tribes, which, at the close of the year, divided the crop among them.” Now the Greek signifies: “In other parts the work of agriculture is carried on by each family in common, κατὰ σνγγένειαν κοινῇ; and when the crops have been gathered each person takes his share for his support during the year.”[230] We see that M. de Laveleye had overlooked the words κατὰ σνγγένειαν. He has mistaken a community of the family for a community of the tribe. I know that many people only too readily identify the two things; but a little attention will show that they are essentially different. When a family, even though it may form a large group of persons, cultivates its land in common, this is not agrarian communism; it is merely an undivided family and undivided family property.
4. M. de Laveleye next speaks of the Germanic mark. Here he does not do more than reproduce Maurer’s theory, on which he relies without apparently having verified a single one of his references.
5. Then follows a chapter on agrarian communities amongst the Arabs of Algeria, the Moors of Spain, the Yoloffs of the coast of Guinea, the Mexicans, the Caribeans, the Afghans and the Tchérémisses. A story or sentence from some traveller is quoted about each of these nations. As to this I have one remark to make: there is nothing rarer or more difficult than an accurate observation. This truth, which is recognised in all other sciences, ought also to be recognised by every one who is dealing with history; for history is precisely that one of all the sciences in which observation is most difficult and demands the greatest attention. A traveller makes the general statement that amongst the Caribeans or the Yoloffs he has seen a partition of land, or has been told that such a thing was customary. But has he observed between whom the partition took place? Was it amongst the members of the same family, or amongst all the inhabitants of the same village, or between the villages and all the various parts of the tribe or nation? These are shades of differences that a hasty traveller cannot notice, and that an historian equally hasty refrains from inquiring into. And yet, the character and consequences of the partition depend altogether upon the answer to this question. The study of a social system is a serious undertaking, and one not often to be met with in travellers’ tales.
And then we must ask whether, side by side with certain facts reported by travellers, there are not others which contradict them. You see common land among certain Arab tribes; but it must also be noticed that the Koran recognises private property, and that it has existed among the Arabs from time immemorial.[231] There are other nations where you may meet with examples of land held in common, but where, nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that private property greatly preponderates. In Spain, for instance, we are told that “in certain villages the land is divided anew each year amongst the inhabitants.”[232] In how many villages? Two ardent inquirers, whose only desire was to find proofs of this community in land, M. Oliveira Martins and M. de Azcarate, found it in only four villages in the whole Iberian peninsula.[233] Perhaps you will think that these are vestiges of an earlier state of things that may once have been general. Not at all. It has been proved that in these four villages the system of common ownership did not appear until the twelfth or thirteenth century, A.D.; and the particular causes which led to its appearance are well known. This kind of community was, therefore, neither general nor ancient. M. de Laveleye also mentions a village community in Italy; but it is one which was only created in 1263. A certain estate of about 5000 acres had till that date belonged to a private owner; that is, it had been precisely the opposite of common property. In 1263 the owner, who happened to be a bishop, gave it to the tenants, on condition that they held it in common. Can a few isolated facts like this prove that mankind used to hold land in common in primitive times?
6. M. de Laveleye’s theory would be incomplete and insecure if he did not manage to bring in the Greeks and Romans. He does little more than repeat the authorities used by M. de Viollet. Like him, he believes that the legend of a golden age—of an age, that is, when man did not till the soil (for this is the distinctive and essential point in all these legends),—is a proof that nations held land in common at a period when they did till the soil; he even adds that “he is forced to arrive at the conclusion that the ancient poets depicted in the golden age a state of civilisation (sic) of which the recollection had been handed down to later times.”[234] Like M. Viollet, he quotes the passages from Virgil, Tibullus and Trogus Pompeius without looking to see whether these passages describe a condition of civilisation or one of barbarism. He tells us what Porphyrus says about the 2000 disciples gathered together by Pythagoras in his phalanstery. He quotes the sentence from Diodorus about the Lipari isles; without seeing that it distinctly describes the institution of private property. Trusting in M. Viollet, he borrows his pages on the copis and the Spartan συσσίτια; for, like him, he believes that these common meals, from which Aristotle tells us that the poorer Spartans were excluded, were “a communistic institution.”[235]
M. de Laveleye also believes that the division of land at the founding of each city implies an earlier stage in which the city cultivated the land in common. He does not notice that this division, taking place at the very moment when the city is founded, is not the result of an earlier state of communism. It is the earliest fact to which we can go back. So soon as a band of emigrants have made themselves masters of a territory, they parcel it out in lots with complete and hereditary ownership. With very rare exceptions, a Greek city did not hold or cultivate land in common for a single year.
These lots were called κλῆρος in Greek, sortes in Latin, because they were originally drawn by lot. M. de Laveleye, noticing these two words, at once concludes that the drawing by lot took place every year (p. 85). This is a mistake. Out of all the cases where you find mention of a partition, you will not find one in which it was annual or periodical. In every case the division referred to takes place once and for all, in perpetuity.[236] Each portion is henceforward hereditary in the family to which it has fallen by lot; and this is the reason why κλῆρος had the meaning of inheritance and sors signified patrimony.
The prohibition against selling the land, i.e., against separating it from the family in order to transfer it to another family or even to bestow it on the State, appears to M. de Laveleye a proof that the land belonged to the State (p. 166). It is merely a proof that according to the ideas of the ancients it ought always to belong to the same family. M. de Laveleye reproaches me with having, in the Cité Antique, attributed this prohibition of sale “to the influence of ancient religion.” The phrase gives an incorrect idea of my meaning. What I showed was that family property was closely bound up with family religion. Sale outside the family was not permitted because ancient law and ancient belief connected the land with the family. The land belonged to the family, not to the individual. It was the same, in my opinion, amongst the ancient Germans and the Slavs; and hence it was that amongst all these nations ancient law did not permit the sale of land.