The Land – Enrique Flores Magón (1917)

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From ‘Regeneración’, English Section, Feb. 24, 1917, Los Angeles, edited by Enrique Flores Magón

The land is a natural product the use of which must be free to all human beings, as free must be the air, the light of day, the warmth of the sun, water and all that has been created by natural forces and which is of indispensable use to the human species.

Human beings have their organisms constituted in such way that they cannot exist and develop fully and freely without the free use of the land, which they cause to produce, thru work and ingenuity, all that they need for their own existence and development.

To deprive human beings from the use of the land is, therefore, an attempt upon their lives; it is on a par with depriving them of the use of the air, without which they would asphyxiate.

To appropriate the land and cast the rest of human beings from it is a crime, not only because it is to despoil them of the common heritage, but because it is to condemn them to death or, what is worse, to drag out a miserable and painful existence.

The land being a natural product, nobody has a right to monopolize it to the injury of others; and he who does that is not only a bandit, but a criminal of the worst type.

It so happens today that the possession of the earth is concentrated in a reduced number of hands; to which circumstance it is due that while there exists a reduced number of persons who wallow in abundance, that of the possessors of the earth, there also be an immense majority of human beings who, despoiled of their common heritage, die of hunger and want, notwithstanding that there is land in abundance, the products of which, were they not gobbled up by the actual “owners” of the earth, would be sufficient to support a population several times larger than that inhabiting this planet.

From such inequality in the possession of the earth, which being a natural product should be the common property of all, not only is born the social inequality that divides the human species between the poor and the rich, but it is also the source of all the ills that afflict us, such as crimes, vice and degeneration.

It follows, in consequence, that the remedy for the numerous ills that afflict humanity lies in the abolition of the social inequality that has its source in the monopoly of land, which is the fountain of all social wealth, and converting it from private to common property; that is, that instead of the land being in the hands of a few rascals, that it become the property of all human beings, regardless of sex, race or color, so that all, having free access to the land, may produce in it and extract from it all they may need for their own existence, development and comfort.

But it happens that the landgrabbers, mentally perverted by atavisms, education and the environment in which they live, not only refuse to allow that the land be for all, but to protect their ill-gotten right of private property over it, which in itself is a crime, they resort to greater crimes, even to that of drowning in blood the just and natural aspirations of the popular masses to emancipate themselves.

The rich, in order to defend their ill-gotten privileges, make use of violence in all its forms; they suppress the right of free speech and free press, jail those who protest and even murder the strikers en-masse.

In the face of such attitude of the usurpers of the social wealth and as a logical answer to their acts of violence, it becomes imperative that the disinherited also make use of violence to restore what belongs to them as a natural heritage of all human beings, and to conquer in this way their right to live.

The salvation of the human species lies in the armed revolution of the proletariat against the usurpers of the social wealth.

For that reason, in the case of Mexico, if we want its present Revolution to benefit all the despoiled, we must fight to the end that the land remain in the hands of all the inhabitants of that region, as their own common property, regardless of sex, race or color.

Let us prevent that there be any peace so long as the land, which is the fountain of all social wealth, does not remain as the common property of all.

March on!