Tax Farming, Talmudic Agriculture | Winston Smith Ministry of Truth Archive

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Tax Farming, Talmudic Agriculture

Henry Ford once offered in his editorial column, a $1000 reward to anyone who could furnish him with an example of a Jewish farmer. Ford insisted that Jews avoided honest labour, favouring criminal activity in the financial industry.

Mr. Ford must of been unfamiliar with Tax Farming, as the Jews had been controlling that form of agriculture, all around the globe, for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Below is an explanation of Tax Farming, followed by several examples of how Jews thrived in it.

As Israeli scholar Israel Shahak alluded to, this was undoubtedly a huge contributing factor to most of the "pogroms," expulsions, and "blood libels" over the centuries.

Tax Farming

Revenue farming means contracting out the collection of state income, taxes or revenue from state-owned monopolies and enterprises, to private bidders. It attempts to maximize revenue through competitive bidding, in which bidders undertake to supply an agreed-upon sum regardless of the actual yield of the revenue source. It transfers risk and effort from the government to the tax farmer, who is not only burdened with the labor of collection but is responsible (often in advance) for the full sum contracted for, even if the revenue source fails to yield it. On the other hand, if the revenue yield is higher than the contracted amount, the tax farmer benefits from the discrepancy, which in certain circumstances can be considerable. Tax farming is a high-risk, high-yield investment. ... Revenue farming was known to the ancient world and was widely employed in both east and west down to the development of modern bureaucracy. Its use was on the rise in early modern Europe as monarchs expanded their standing armies, gained tighter control over their kingdoms, and sought to increase their revenues. By contracting revenue collection to private persons, ambitious rulers employing small numbers of officials could exploit wide territories for their own benefit rather than delegating control to others. In addition, granting tax farms became a means of bestowing privilege and rewarding loyalty and service in a fashion that did not deplete crown lands or royal treasure. Besides monetarizing and potentially increasing the yield, tax farming also made delivery of money to the treasury more predictable and more secure.

Darling, Linda T., Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy: Tax Collection and Finance Administration in the Ottoman Empire, 1560-1660. E. J. Brill; Leiden, NL. 1996. p.119-121.
[full original article can be read through Google Books if Googling the quote with quotation marks:
"Revenue farming means contracting out the collection of state income, taxes or revenue from state-owned monopolies and enterprises"]

Spain and Portugal

ooo

Belgian Jew, Abraham Leon, real name Wejnstok (1918 - 1944), Trotskyite, ex-Zionist, sent to Auschwitz in June 1944, apparently he was killed there in September 1944.

Written during WW2, Leon's book The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation was posthumously published in 1946 in French, and then in English in 1950:

From the book (see link for the sources, or lack of them, he's quoted from):

The cortes of Portugal complain of Jewish usury in 1361 as becoming an increasingly unbearable yoke upon the population.

(c.1650) In total, 63 percent of the tax farming business in Brazil was in Jewish hands."In the circles of the Spanish nobility and rich patrician class the Jews were hated because of their state functions, where they showed themselves to be servile instruments of royalty, as well as because of the great tax and impost farming by which the Jewish magnates unceasingly augmented their fortunes."

"In 1469 the cortes protest against the admission of Jews to tax farming and against the protection with which the kings surround them. Ritual trials and massacres come to the support of the pressures exerted by, the nobility upon royalty."

Sometimes the Jews also go over to the offensive. In 1376 the banker Jekl employs bands of mercenaries against noble debtors who have refused to pay their debts. His son engages mercenaries with a view to launching an attack against Nuremburg, the council of this city having confiscated his houses.

Leon, Abram. The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation. Originally published in French in 1946. First English edition: Ediciones Pioneras, Mexico City 1950.

The Entire Ottoman Empire
ooo

Having become an important segment of Ottoman society, the Jewish community occupied since the fifteenth century a particularly influential position in tax farming and in interregional and international trade. ...

Extensively applied in the Ottoman Empire even at this early period, tax farming was one of the most profitable economic activities for those who had accumulated cash capital. Short of steady and regular cash resources to meet current needs, and lacking the complex tax collection system of a modern state, the Ottoman government generally depended on cash advances from individuals who had accumulated capital through commercial activities. The registers of tax farming, the so-called mukata's defterleri, from the second half of the fifteenth century contain many names of Jewish "capitalists" serving as tax farmers.

... We find Jews undertaking all kinds of tax farms everywhere in the empire, particularly in the big cities and at important sea ports, but also in many smaller towns in the Balkans and Anatolia. ...

Because of its crucial importance for state finances, the tax farm of the Istanbul customs house conferred on its holders a great deal of influence in affairs of state. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, this position was quite often held by Jews. ... By the second half of the sixteenth century, Jewish bankers and tax farmers had gained a predominant place in Ottoman finances and long distance trade. ...

International trade, tax farming, and banking operations were all interconnected at this time.

Levy, Avigdor. Jews, Turks, Ottomans: A Shared History, Fifteenth Through the Twentieth Century. Syracuse University Press. 2002. p.8-11.

Brazil
ooo

(c.1650) In total, 63 percent of the tax farming business in Brazil was in Jewish hands.

Jacobs, Jaap. The Colony of New Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-Century America. Cornell University Press. 2009. p.200.

Poland, Russia, Ukraine
ooo

A source from the mid-seventeenth century states: "Tax farming was the cutomary occupation of most Jews in the kingdom of Little Russia [the Ukraine] for they ruled in every part of Little Russia." Travelers and other observers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries often pointed out that all the innkeepers in small urban settlements and villages were Jews. ... According to the partial 1764 census, tax farming, leasing of estates, innkeeping, and the sale of hard liquor in urban settlements ... in the Polish kindom as a whole (including the Ukraine) some 85—90 percent of the Jews were employed in these occupations.

Weinryb, Bernard Dov. The Jews of Poland: A Social and Economic History of the Jewish Community in Poland From 1100 to 1800. Jewish Publication Society. 1976. p.139.

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