The Magna Carta is, on its face, an agreement about power. It’s an outline of obligations on the part of a government, and a yoke that constrains both a sovereign and those who represent them. It’s a conversation about land and how it will be treated and held and disposed of, and by whom. It’s a codification of the privileges of a particular class. And as it navigates the above, the Magna Carta creates a policy statement for the place where power, governmental obligations, land, and privilege intersect: money, and in particular, taxation.
That’s right. I realized this week that to get our arms around what the Magna Carta really meant and why it’s important now, we must have a conversation about taxes. I’ll wait while some of you run for the door.
Our focus here is a current one: what history means to you as a property owner -or not- in this modern moment. Thus, while the particulars of medieval English taxation arrangements are fascinating and culturally important*, our framing for these next two weeks will target taxation more generally. Questions that we could ask, but usually don’t, include:
What are we asked to believe in considering the project of how to raise money for the operations of a nation?
What does it mean to fund governance through the financial contributions of a nation’s residents?
How does taxation occur, in practice? And what are its antecedents—what must be in place and functional for taxation-as-funding-mechanism to work?
Why does taxation happen, both in theory and (as best we can discern) in the cold light of reality?
Are there uses of taxation that are separate from or merely incidental to nation-building?
This is not an exhaustive list, and we can’t cover all of it here (and to be honest, I’m personally unlikely to attempt a comprehensive survey ever; you’re welcome). Suffice it to say, the success of tax regimens in practice is less guaranteed, and their origins more recent, than the “death and taxes” adage would have us believe. It may be guaranteed that everywhere and in all seasons power would like a cut of what you have, and that through carrot or by stick will it invite you to pay up. Whether that invitation resembles or calls itself taxation is another question entirely.
We explored last week some things that the Magna Carta was not (a bill of rights for the common person, a direct throughline to the U.S. Constitution, a guarantee of fairness, an actual negotiated agreement, and, perhaps most notably: enforced). Here is one thing it actually was: an attempted pairing of the paying of taxes with a group’s consent to be governed.
Consent of the governed is tricky because in most ways, it’s false. To be born into a particular place, and unto an existing social hierarchy, is to be dropped into an adhesion contract. Do you agree to this? The average person may live and die without ever being asked this question re: the obligations of belonging, and it’s just as well, because outside of movies about Disney princesses (all of which seem to center this inquiry in a way that life itself mostly does not), it’s a fairly meaningless consideration. Without a meaningful, available alternative, one cannot say “yes” precisely because we cannot say “no.”
And this is what brings the keenest edge—the one that may indeed feel a lot like the point of a sword—to the Magna Carta stipulations. Even in the freest society that exists today (pick whatever example you can), no one asks newborns or 18-year-olds or frankly anyone save for those applying for citizenship from outside if this is what they choose. It’s not like choosing a partner. It’s not like choosing a church. One’s statehood, for nearly anyone who has ever been born, is not a matter of choice at all, and the price of disloyalty or disobedience to one’s state is quite high.
And thus, the barons are taking a real chance here. We agree to fund your government because we agree to belong to you, and therefore/in honor of our agreement, you need to do these things. The ‘otherwise’ is not stated, but of course it’s right there between the lines: otherwise we will no longer agree, and no longer fund, and thus no longer belong. The “Army of God” and march to Runnymede is basically a wildcat strike, but with weapons and one’s right-to-place (both in terms of subjective statehood and of hereditary landholding rights) at stake. That’s risky—there’s only so far negotiations can go with a sovereign backed into a corner. Eventually, Superior Firepower calls your bluff, defines the terms, and that’s that.
What I’m trying to get across here is that “consent of the governed” is a solid theoretical value for envisioning democracy, and it’s simultaneously junk as a basis for actual practice, whether of statehood or of citizenship. You didn’t consent. You don’t consent. Expansive statehood is inherently coercive. And yet you live here, and we live here together, regardless. Perhaps simply accepting these realities could help us confront collective action problems [::cough:: pandemic restrictions] in a more effective and democratically meaningful way.
In short, “consent of the governed” is not the basis for taxation, and the Magna Carta barons definitely knew it. (A clue to this arises well before the negotiation of the charter, in their taking up arms and declaring war against their king rather than simply making a frank refusal to remit coins and grain.) What allows taxation is power; consent of the governed simply changes taxation’s flavor, and vice versa, which in turn allows for different and greater or lesser manifestations of overt force. Thus, what the barons in the Magna Carta are asserting is not actually that they may or may not assent to be governed—it’s that they may or may not enjoy enough power to make their feelings on the matter meaningful. And eventually, they do, and things change . . . but not before all involved pay many thousands more in pounds to the crown via tallage, scutage, gracious aid, etc.
So how and why, then, does taxation happen? And why does it matter for property, for democracy, and in, if you will, the Anthropocene?
Next week, friends, featuring special guests “tort law,” the Swedish tax collection agency, the OECD, and the (modern) Archbishop of Canterbury. Cameos from Keynes, some tax law professors, and one of Margaret Thatcher’s lackeys.
j
*Examples worth a google: The tallage and eventual banishment of England’s Jewish community. The give-and-take (or the trading of hits, Donkey-Kong style) between the crown and the clergy and the resultant ebbs and flows of ecclesiastical tithes and tax collections. The shift from land-based taxation to assessment of moveable property, and the role of the Black Death and subsequent agrarian collapse that cements this change for centuries. I’m happy to provide links if you’re interested; hit me up.