the morality of going to jail

One reason why going to jail seems to be the most honorable and reasonable course of action is the issue of land injustice. This reason naturally presented itself to me since it concerns my, and every individual’s, life and subsistence in this world. And wishing to get my living in a simple, respectable way, such as farming, I was surprised to find how complex this matter really is and how obvious (yet often ignored) the injustice around it is. As Henry George says: “How can a man be said to have a country where he has no right to a square inch of soil; where he has nothing but his hands, and, urged by starvation, must bid against his fellows for the privilege of using them?” Especially the part “...must bid against his fellows...”, this is something which I cannot in good conscience do since obviously my gain will be someone else’s loss.

This puts each of us in a bind where we feel like we either have to go along with this corruption and compete against each other, or die. The root cause of poverty and economic injustice (which is responsible for the majority of social ills) revolves around this issue of the land not being fairly handled. Strange that this problem has gone on for so long that it no longer seems a problem or an injustice to many, but seems quite natural and seems to be the way things have to be. They will say at most “I see that it is an injustice, but reform in this area is hopelessly impractical”.

I agree that this problem has been neglected for so long that nobody thinks about it anymore, but this does not change the injustice of it, and this ignoring of the problem and fighting more easily won battles for social justice, could be seen as treating the symptoms of a disease without treating the cause. And wouldn’t the only truly practical course of action be to treat the cause first. However it will be justly argued that the cause of this injustice is even deeper than this, and lies in the lack of a moral/religious sentiment among the general population. And how better to speak to this than with both actions and words? And since I am only responsible for my actions and beliefs, I cannot ignore this land issue as it presents itself to me. I have no delusions about this problem being fixed within any certain time frame, as effort and inspiration will no doubt be the rate limiting factors, nor can I know for certain whether I can change anyone’s mind about it, as open-mindedness is the main factor, but is it not our duty to try? I will ask, what else are we to do, ignore it?

Several possible objections and their answers:

Doing this would be wasting your life.

In fact doing anything else would be wasting my life. If I care about living honestly, and not conveniently ignoring this injustice after my attention has already been brought to the matter, it would seem cowardly not to act accordingly.

I know you are trying not to be a burden on others, but going to jail you will be a burden on society.

This would be true, if I wanted their support (via taxes). I do not want others to burden themselves with paying for me to do anything, I would like them to do the same thing I would be doing, and also not cooperate with an unjust government. Just because they choose to pay their taxes (which mostly go to fund war), does not mean that I want them to. I believe that everyone would be better off if they didn’t.

Why don’t you move away to somewhere where you wouldn’t have to “bid” against anyone and work on a farm or doing something that needed workers?

To do this I would have to ignore this injustice and implicitly comply with the injustice by going off to be nothing less than an indentured servant to whoever “owned” the land. It would be his or her favor to me to let me work on his or her land and why would I set up any kind of living arrangement, (say build a house), when I could be ordered off the land at any time? You are essentially a slave to whoever’s land you are on, no matter how well they treat you, and if they wanted to they could cut off your sustenance, and would feel that they had the right to do so under our current land laws. Also I was born here, so I do feel a responsibility to the land where I was born not to abandon it and let the corruption grow worse. Running away and doing nothing about this problem would again be cowardly.

What are you suggesting instead of the current land laws and their injustice?

There have been several more fair solutions brought up for the people who like legislation. However I’m not very interested in solving problems through legislation, since I believe that when people are good enough to change the laws they will be good enough to abide by them on their own. As they say, “good people don’t need laws and bad people don’t obey them”. I only know that I should be guided by my conscience and if I will share the land with others and work in a cooperative way, then I know there are others who will too, but this can’t be done until land injustice is corrected and this comes from public awareness and consensus. Again I don’t expect this to happen within any given time frame, but this doesn’t change my duty regarding being part of the solution rather than part of the problem, so as to speed up this progress anyway I can.

Why don’t you wait for the majority of people to go along with these ideas? Vote for a good candidate in the next election, take this route rather than the impossible one.

First of all, how is the majority to even become aware of this injustice, if people aren’t willing to self-sacrifice a little for it? Think of all the people who had to self-sacrifice before slavery was finally abolished. Think of how many people had to be jailed before that injustice was rectified. Regarding voting for the “good” candidate, Ammon Hennacy says it best “A good man is worse than a bad man for he finds a good reason for doing a bad thing that a bad man couldn’t figure out, so he lends his goodness to evil. The devil doesn’t have horns, he has a halo as big as a hoop....A good man cannot get any legislation passed or enforced unless he plays ball with the bad men who have a head start on him and surround him”. Also this is not touching the source of the problem, because our political leaders are only representatives of the aggregate moral sentiment of the people, and so the people must change first before we can expect their representatives to change. I would encourage everyone not to vote for the lesser of two evils, but to stand up for justice.

Supplementary Quotes:

“The intelligence required for the solving of social problems is not a thing of the mere intellect. It must be animated with the religious sentiment and warm with sympathy for human suffering. It must stretch out beyond self-interest, whether it be the self-interest of the few or of the many. It must seek justice. For at the bottom of every social problem we will find a social wrong.” –Henry George

"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison...the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor. If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the state, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error..." --Thoreau

“What is Man? In the first place he is an animal, a land animal who cannot live without land. All that man produces comes from land; all productive labor, in the final analysis, consists in working up land or materials drawn from land, into such forms as fit them for the satisfaction of human wants and desires. Why, man's very body is drawn from the land. Children of the soil, we come from the land, and to the land we must return. Take away from man all that belongs to the land, and what have you but a disembodied spirit? Therefore he who holds the land on which and from which another man must live, is that man's master; and the man is his slave. The man who holds the land on which I must live can command me to life or to death just as absolutely as though I were his chattel. Talk about abolishing slavery-- we have not abolished slavery-- we have only abolished one rude form of it, chattel slavery. There is a deeper and a more insidious form, a more cursed form yet before us to abolish, in this industrial slavery that makes a virtual slave, while taunting him and mocking him with the name of freedom.” –Henry George

“Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.” –Henri Emiel

"Many there are, too depressed, too embruted with hard toil and the struggle for animal existence, to think for themselves. Therefore the obligation devolves with all the more force on those who can. If thinking men are few, they are for that reason all the more powerful. Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power" –Henry George

“A government that is evil has no room for good men and women except in its prisons.” --Gandhi

"It must be remembered, however, that the slavery that results from the appropriation of land does not come suddenly, but insidiously and progressively. Where population is sparse and land of little value, the institution of private property in land may exist without its effects being much felt. As it becomes more and more difficult to get land, so will the virtual enslavement of the laboring-classes go on. As the value of the bare land rises, more and more of the earnings of labor will be demanded for the use of land, until finally nothing is left to laborers but the wages of slavery--a bare living.” –Henry George

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.--Thoreau

"Unable to employ themselves, the nominally free laborers are forced by their competition with each other to pay as rent all their earnings above a bare living, or to sell their labor for wages which give but a bare living; and as landowners the ex-slaveholders are enabled as before, to appropriate to themselves the labor or the produce of the labor of their former chattels....They no longer have to drive their slaves to work; want and the fear of want do that more effectually than the lash. They no longer have the trouble of looking out for their employment of hiring out their labor, or the expense of keeping them when they cannot work. That is thrown upon the slaves. The tribute that they still wring from labor seems like voluntary payment. In fact, they take it as their honest share of the rewards of production--since they furnish the land! And they find so-called political economists, to say nothing of so-called preachers of Christianity, to tell them it is so....” --Henry George

“I do not mean to say that even after you had set right this fundamental injustice, there would not be many things to do; but this I do mean to say, that our treatment of land lies at the bottom of all social questions. This I do mean to say, that, do what you please, reform as you may, you never can get rid of wide-spread poverty so long as the element on which and from which all men must live is made the private property of some men. It is utterly impossible. Reform government--get taxes down to the minimum¬ build railroads; institute co-operative stores; divide profits, if you choose, between employers and employed-and what will be the result? The result will be that the land will increase in value--that will be the result--that and nothing else. Experience shows this. Do not all improvements simply increase the value of land--the price that some must pay others for the privilege of living?” –Henry George

“Is it not a self-evident truth, as Thomas Jefferson said, that the land belongs in usufruct to the living, and that they who have died have left it, and have no power to say how it shall be disposed of? Title to land Where can a man get any title which makes the earth his property? There is a sacred right to property--sacred because ordained by the laws of nature, that is to say, by the laws of God, and necessary to social order and civilisation. That is the right of property in things produced by labour; it rests on the right of a man to himself. That which a man produces, that is his against all the world, to give or to keep, to lend, to sell or to bequeath; but how can he get such a right to land when it was here before he came? Individual claims to land rest only on appropriation. –Henry George

Though his titles have been acquiesced in by generation after generation, to the landed estates of the Duke of Westminster the poorest child that is born in London to-day has as much right as has his eldest son. Though the sovereign people of the state of New York consent to the landed possessions of the Astors, the puniest infant that comes wailing into the world in the squalidest room of the most miserable tenement house, becomes at that moment seized of an equal right with the millionaires. And it is robbed if the right is denied.” –Henry George

Actual questions and comments, addressed:

Saying that there must be an suitable alternative for the people, before they will embrace change in this regard, is like saying “we must provide an alternative to the slave owners that will suit them; some kind of compensation for setting their slaves free”. The only humane compensation for them is a feeling that they are doing the right thing. There should be no reward for correcting a terrible injustice other than the inevitable benefit of justice. And people will do this when motivated by a moral sentiment, which is the real obstacle to overcome, not, not having a pleasant worldly alternative in place.

This seems to be the lazy way out, since you won’t have a job. (I almost included this comment in the above section, but it seemed just too ridiculous)

Besides the fact that even in prison people work, how could going to jail for your beliefs and principles ever be considered lazy? In prison people get brutalized, and I don’t have to go into all the horrors involved, many people get killed in prison...and yet still I hear someone talk about how this is the convenient (ie lazy) route to take. If I were to be truly lazy and do just what society wants me to do, getting a “good job” and making a comfortable living, then I would likely be praised as being industrious, no matter how much damage I did in the process (for example, bidding against my fellow workers, driving wages down to a bare minimum, cooperating with injustice, having taxes withheld to fund war, living off the labor of others, etc). In order for a person to go to jail for their beliefs, they would have to be willing to suffer, and in ways that most would admittingly not have the strength to do, but in order to justify their own lack of strength they say this is the “lazy” route. Like I said, it is almost too ridiculous to even respond to this accusation.

I don’t see how going to jail would do anything about the war, or prison reform.

I am just one person and can do very little. You can see though that if you and enough other people would take the action I’m proposing, for any of these three injustices mentioned, that it would be the end of that injustice. Of course I don’t expect the majority to go along with me, but again why not be part of the solution rather than the problem. If you are waiting for a timely opportunity (such as for the majority to agree), your life will certainly be over before this happens, and not to mention how does this majority get formed if not one dedicated person at a time. If the majority says as they do now “I’m going to wait until the majority acts”, then obviously this time cannot come, and indeed this is why this injustice has gone on so incredibly long. If you are asking “Who will hear your voice, if you’re in prison?”, you, my family, everyone I have talked to about this, and everyone I will talk to about this. I will ask you “Who is really hearing my voice as it is? Will actions not speak louder than words, how else can I testify to the importance of this injustice before you, my family, friends, etc?

Why don’t you try to form a group, or join a group of like-minded people?

I would love to, but this starts with you. And why would you be suggesting I spread these ideas if you do not believe in them yourself? If you think these ideas are flawed, then point out the error, I will be very grateful. As Gandhi says “The highest honor that my friends can do me is to enforce in their own lives the program I stand for or resist me to their utmost if they do not believe in it.” Land injustice and the economic slavery that results from it is no more a matter of opinion than the injustice of physical slavery, however it is a more subtle or less obvious form. Understanding it in a complete and unbiased way naturally leads you to becoming part of this “group” that speaks out against it. If you think I am in error about this, please show me where I am mistaken. And if there is any aspect of the case I propose, that you suspect I may have overlooked (or simply not thought enough about), I hope you will call it to my attention.

[end]

The Morality of Going to Jail

Several possible objections and their answers:

Supplementary Quotes:

Actual questions and comments, addressed: