Johan Norberg Surprisingly Endorsed Land Reform as a Prerequisite for Prosperity

 

Johan Norberg is perhaps the classical liberal historian most famous for rebutting the fallacious claims about the supposed socialism of the Scandinavian countries around 2015 when such rumors were being spread by Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and before that, as the economist who best broke down why Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine was a very flawed book, built much more on ideology than sound history or political economy. It was, however, with his 2001 book In Defense of Global Capitalism, that he really cut his teeth and it is because of that book that he seems to be much more qualified than most Reason or Cato Institute scholars to talk about issues in a way that can only be described as less ideological. The example of this? The issue of land reform and how it could have stopped economic populist madmen, like Juan Peron in Argentina or Getulio Vargas in Brazil, from rising to power. This must have been especially brazen given the climate that this was happening right before the book was published. In 2000, the Marxist-inspired Robert Mugabe had just started seizing farms without expropriation and was beginning what would be a very long and painful downfall of Zimbabwe, and in particular, their former role as the breadbasket of southern Africa. So how could one defend land reform when such events were transpiring and why was Latin America in the 20^th century in need of it in order to develop a successful economic base that wouldn’t fall prey to strongmen savior-type politicians? Well, the answer there is the same as in all other former colonial countries: the state-backed parceling out of land that happened under the old colonial powers was an injustice that could be corrected on libertarian grounds, as well as the need to have a nation predominantly of individual capitalist farmers, rather than tenants living in a bizarre mix of capitalism and feudalism, in order to have a culture of prosperity and stability.

So, what of this first claim? Surely, not all of the Americas were individually dished out to cronies by former colonial rulers and their descendants were just able to live the easy life as rent-collectors, while everyone else was in perpetual bondage as serfs, right? Well, that was thankfully not the case in places like the United States, Canada, and Australia, but when it came to Latin America, that unfortunately was much of what happened. Argentina would probably be the country most famous for this. They are said to have been totally at the mercy of a landed oligarchy and it was only by Juan Peron’s coming to power that they were brought to heel. This vastly oversimplifies the Argentine land question and even the fact that many immigrants obtained land, but in his 1980 book, The Epic of Latin America, biographer John A. Crow relates the anecdote of a member of the Argentine Congress saying that less than 2,000 people owned more land in the country than what existed in all of Italy, Belgium, Holland, and Denmark combined. Whatever truth this statistic holds is beyond the point. Argentina may be a huge country, but this land concentration created economic problems of its own, as land became a form of status and living off of rents was seen by the elite to be superior to industry and commerce. Unsurprisingly, it was thus mostly only the immigrant communities in pre-Peronist Buenos Aires who got the country’s non-agricultural sector off the ground. Almost everything else was British foreign investment. The average Joe tenant farmer in the Pampas was not going to be granted title to the land that he worked and thus his Argentina was not going to be able to be a nation of capitalist agriculturalists, like New Zealand, Canada, or Norberg’s own Sweden have been and still are to one extent or another, but rather a backwards rentier economy more akin to a banana republic for cattle and wheat that exists due to the force of a former colonial government, rather than any Lockean homesteading. This problem could then be extrapolated to pretty much all of Latin America and one of the regions’ big problem with economic development comes to the fore. It is with this background that Norberg risks perpetual reminders of the existence of Zimbabwe and accusations of not being a real libertarian, where he proposes the unthinkable: that the formerly feudal land grants be broken up and the farmers on this land gain titleship.

Fittingly grounding himself in classical liberal theory, he uses the examples of Latin American countries not just to promote land reform, but at the same time, to denounce the Marxist-inspired dependency theory that did take hold in the country. After writing: that “Land reforms to put an end to centuries of feudalism would have been needed, coupled with a commitment to education and free markets”, he points out how instead of seeing land concentration as the problem, academics responded to the decreased trade from the Great Depression by embracing import-substitution industrialization and turning their backs on trade. All of this greatly contributed to Latin America’s economic backwardness. Putting Latin America aside, it is interesting that a classical liberal could in this day and age call for land reform. Ever since Murray Rothbard rejected the land value tax, it has seemed to be unspeakable to point out the pre-capitalist conditions for much of land ownership in the world today. The current land distribution is seldom considered a problem, regardless of how feudal its roots go. Norberg did not go this far, but it seems taxing away the annual rental value of land is the most realistic and peaceful way to create a nation of farmer entrepreneurs in a formally feudal country. That is, after all, close to how the birthplace of Norberg’s icon, Anders Chyndenius, started down the track to being the modern capitalist nation of Finland that they are today. In order to stop Soviet-influence in the country, feudal tenancy was largely put to an end by the 1930s and the Finns who had once embraced the Bolsheviks were ready to beat back the Red Army in the Winter War. Perhaps with a similar reform in Argentina, the tyranny of Juan Peron and his toxic Kirchnerist legacy would not haunt the country to this day.