Henry George's Land Reform: The Distinction between Private Ownership and Private Possession

Henry George stated that the taxation of land rent would amount to the abolition of the institution of private ownership of land, thereby alienating all those who, whether for economic or ideological reasons, regard the private ownership of land as essential for social order and progress. George believed that under his proposed reform the private ownership of land would be replaced by private possession. But his distinction between ownership and possession appears to have been based on a misconception of the nature of private ownership. His proposed reform could have been more logically described as a conditional, modified, or restricted private ownership of land, rather than as the abolition of private ownership of land.     

Henry George, Emile de Laveleye, and the Issue of Peasant Proprietorship

A bstract .   In Emile de Laveleye's demonstration that communal landholding was universally a characteristic of primitive societies, Henry George saw evidence of a golden age before the development of private ownership of land. Though he agreed with George that unequal access to land was a major cause of the social evil of poverty, de Laveleye did not consider it the sole cause of poverty. Where George would nationalize land rent, de Laveleye would make private ownership more widespread; and he faulted George for giving too little attention to the question of how government would use the revenue from a land tax, and for failing to consider the concentration of capital as a cause of poverty.     

Henry George and Economic Intervention

A bstract . Henry George , the 19th century American economist and social philosopher , was recognized as an individualist. His Single Tax on the value of land and all natural resources would socialize the rent while preserving private ownership and use. His positions on industrial monoplies were not so clear. He urged the abolition of all special privileges but did not see clearly that this would end many such monopolies. He understated the effects of the single land value tax and the abolition of special privileges; they would go a long way toward ending all industrial monopolies.     

Apprehending the Social Philosophy of Henry George

A bstract .   It is the purpose of this essay to consider but three questions regarding the social philosophy of Henry George that have to now received insufficient attention: George's views with respect to the nationalization of land, the efficacy of socialism, and the place of the individual. One may conclude that George is ostensibly an individualist, who nonetheless declares an intent to limit individuality by social restraint; he cherishes the ideals of utopian socialism, while denouncing the directed order; he advocates the nationalization of land, but then is willing to accept private ownership (albeit without aggrandizement). Much is to be done in coming to terms with the fullness of the proposals offered by this social activist and radical philosopher.     

Henry George and the Catholic View of Morality and the Common Good, I

A bstract . On the issuance of the first of the modern social encyclicals, Rerum Novarum , Henry George, the American economist and social philosopher , criticized its author, Pope Leo XIII , for defending a limited right to own land and for limiting the right of private ownership of labor products. George did so by reasoning from Locke's ground that each human has a property right in one's person. George distinguished between possession (and use) and ownership of land on the ground of the common good. That required equality of mutual opportunity , which George would achieve by a Single Tax on all land values. Land reform , he held, would lead to moral reform , and thus to a society based on justice. Pope Leo goes beyond the Schoolmen in stressing a natural right to property, including land, which he asserted must be regarded as sacred. This right, he said, was not absolute, but subject to be used, according to God's Will, for the benefit of others. George looked to a change in the economic structure by reform of land tenure and use to establish a just social order ; Leo to religion and the church , the government, moral individuals and voluntary associations to do so.     

Henry George on Thomas Robert Malthus

A bstract . The present era marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Henry George and the 200th anniversary of the publication of Thomas Robert Malthu's Essay in the Principles of Population. In observance of these historic dates, this paper examines George's critique of the work of Malthus and explores the ideological functions that both men served. George contended that Malthusian population theory served as a means of social control by supporting the landed class and strongly opposing ameliorative public policy. George, on the other hand, lashed out against the private ownership of land and advocated policies of equality and social justice .     

Interest Originating from Invested Rent: Social or Prwate Property?

A bstract Herny George contends that rent , even whten derived from land purchased with the fruits of honest toil, cannot justly be privately appropriated, because land (not being a labor product) can have no clear moral title, and because its value is nto produced by the owner but by society Although he does nto explicity address the ethical propriety of interest earned by capital originating from invested rent, his writings yield the following implieit analysis Even as rent should be returned to the community, abstractjustice also demands that interest on capital that stems from rent should be returned to the community But there is no feasible way in which to implement this demand, since it is scarcely ever possible to separate interest derived indiretly from private rent from interest not so derived however, this poses no real problem if We seek justice for the present and the future instead of reparations for injustice in the past For the socialization of rent would render accumulations of private capital, regardless of how obtained, impssible to sustam (absent special privileges confeired by government) unless directed toward the satisfaction of public de mand as reflected in the marketplace     

Henry George on Land Ownership: A Comment on Pullen

Did George alienate many by presenting his reform program as the institution of a new form of restricted land possession rather than as the retention of traditional ownership with a substantial land tax imposed? It seems doubtful, yet the distinction merits further exploration and the peculiar and hard‐to‐implement nature of the tax and the difficulty of reconciling it with George's distrust of government needs to be stressed. Ideally, George might have preferred complete government ownership of land but his policy proposals were pragmatically adapted to the realities of his own society. The extent of the egalitarianism and aid to the landless implied in his program is questioned.     

Sun Yat-sen and Henry George:

A bstract . Of Sun Yat-sen's "Three Principles of the People," the third principle, namely the People's Livelihood, forms the ultimate goal for social welfare. In this principle Dr. Sun tried to syncretize the economic theories of the West and adapt them within the Chinese context.
The equalization of land ownership through taxation of self-assessed land values, and the land value increment tax are the most essential ingredients of the third principle. Underlying Dr. Sun's concept of equalization of land ownership is the unearned increment theory of Henry George.
Dr. Sun conceived of agrarian reform as basic to the solution of the livelihood problem. Henry George also saw the cause of distress and destitution in the defective land tenure structure and the monopoly of land.     

The Progress and Poverty Centenary: Advocates and Opponents Will Enjoy and Learn from the Papers Given at One Celebration

A bstract . The Committee on Taxation. Resources and Economic Development , a group of American fiscal economists , commemorated the centenary of the publication of Henry George's classic, Progress and Poverty , with a conference reported in the book. Land Value Taxation. It raises, typically from a variety of perspectives, the major issues engendered by George's analysis and policy recommendations. Economists who are at least open-minded on George recognize him as a true progressive , a believer in the distribution of income in accordance with productive contribution and a convincing advocate of the social appropriation of economic rent on scientific and moral grounds. George was fundamentally correct in the idea that some form of land value taxation is an especially suitable mode of financing government, though the notion that this could be the single tax is and was unrealistic. The case for this as a cure for poverty is substantially exaggerated but it would remove one source of economic inequality. George, like Edward Bellamy , in promoting equality of opportunity rallied public support for the long-developing movement for pluralist economic democracy .     

Can Labor-capital Models Predict the Responses of Agrarian Societies to Development?Part II: Alternative Models

SUMMARY. Part II of this article presents a model that accords with the needs stated in Part I which appeared in the previous issue of this Journal. It noted that development efforts and economics have relied upon two-factor, capital and labor neoclassical economic models . FAailures have occurred when they were applied to agrarian societies where the ownership of land rent dictates particular institutional forms that engender resistance to development. It was argued that there is need for a new three-factor development theory which explicitly models land and its rent. Ideas of Smith, Ricardo, George and Samuelson -were assembled as a basis for a computer simulation model that explores landed institutions and the land value flows resulting from different development strategies.     

Henry George and Social Theory

A bstract . It was contended in Part 1 (in the January, 1995 issue) that Henry George should be recognized as an original American social theorist. He was a pioneering postmodern contributor to social theory who criticized the linear idea of progress and anticipated Durkheim's concept of the "collective consciousness."
He recognized the fateful consequences of the separation of political economy into "economics" and "sociology." These include the loss of moral considerations from political economy , and the rise of a sociology that culminates in the proliferation of meaningless abstractions because it is premised on amoral economic assumptions. His theory of speculative land value as the cause of civilizations decline is recapitulated and shown in a larger context. The congruence between the concerns and conceptions of George and Weber is detailed.
Part II concludes by tracing the tragic consequences for modern American social theory, from Spencer to Parsons , that result from confusing the value of commodities with the value of land, of private wealth with social value.     

TAXATION OF ECONOMIC RENTS

Economic rents have long been identified as an efficient tax base. In addition, the recent literature documents that rent income is highly concentrated and that rents are quickly increasing. Rent taxation thus seems attractive for reasons of both efficiency and equity. Nevertheless, rent taxation remains a marginal topic in research and policy making. In a systematic review of the neoclassical literature on different rent types, we find that some types of rents reflect inefficiencies and should thus be minimized, while others reward investments and should be supported in line with social welfare. What remains for taxation are land rents, one of the few true scarcity rents. Land rents have significant potential to improve the efficiency of the tax system. We then begin to develop a comprehensive theory of land rent taxation by identifying relevant efficiency and equity effects. The interaction of many of these effects remains unexplored, which might explain policymakers' hesitation in using land taxes to date.     

Henry George's Political Critics

A bstract .   Twelve political criticisms of George were paramount after he formed his own political party in 1887: (1) his refusal to join with other reformers to link his proposals with theirs, or to absorb theirs into his own campaign; (2) his singular focus on ground rent to the exclusion of other forms of monopoly income, such as that of the railroads, oil and mining trusts; (3) his almost unconditional support of capital, even against labor; (4) his economic individualism rejecting a strong role for government; (5) his opposition to public ownership or subsidy of basic infrastructure; (6) his refusal to acknowledge interest-bearing debt as the twin form of rentier income alongside ground rent; (7) the scant emphasis he placed on urban land and owner-occupied land; (8) his endorsement of the Democratic Party's free-trade platform; (9) his rejection of an academic platform to elaborate rent theory; (10) the narrowness of his theorizing beyond the land question; (11) the alliance of his followers with the right wing of the political spectrum; and (12) the hope that full taxation of ground rent could be achieved gradually rather than requiring a radical confrontation involving a struggle over control of government.     

Henry George and Europe

A bstract . In the eyes of European scholars, publicists and politicians who studied Henry George's work, he, as a social philosopher , had adopted the position of the natural law philosophers of the 18th century. The latter inspired the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights, as well as the poiitical philosophy of Jeffersonian democracy , the ethos of the 18th and 19th century pioneer settlers. George rejected Social Darwinism. He saw natural law as the only true and reliable basis for a just social order. Like Karl Marx he mastered Ricardian economics ; unlike Marx, George made two factors the basis of his system, labor and land. George saw that each person had a natural right —and a natural imperative for survival —to apply his or her productive capacity to the earth –as living space and as storehouse of nutrients and raw materials. The person-land relationship , he discovered, lay at the basis of human culture. And so the land's rent , now monopolized by the few, had to be appropriated to meet the needs of society, most efficiently and justly by a land value tax.     

Henry George

A bstract . It is contended in Part I that Henry George should be recognized as an original American social theorist. He was a pioneering postmodern contributor to social theory who criticized the linear idea of progress and anticipated Durkheim's concept of the "collective consciousness," He recognized the fateful consequences of the separation of political economy into "economics" and "sociology." These include the loss of moral considerations from political economy , and the rise of a sociology that culminates in the proliferation of meaningless abstractions because it is premised on amoral economic assumptions. His theory' of speculative land value as the cause of civilizations' decline is recapitulated and shown in a larger context. The congruence between George's and Weber's concerns and conceptions is detailed. Part 11 (in the April 1995 issue) concludes by tracing the tragic consequences for modern American social theory, from Spencer to Parsons , that result from confusing the value of commodities with the value of land, of private wealth with social value.     

Taxation: The Lost History

Regular, periodic taxation is a function of modern government, a practice that arose only because the rent of land and natural resources was transformed from the traditional source of public revenue in the Middle Ages to private property, starting in the 17th century. In the earlier era, taxes (special exactions on ordinary income and daily necessities) were imposed only under unusual circumstances, usually to fight wars. The French Physiocrats and their student, Adam Smith, proposed that the best form of modern taxation would be based on the same principle as the medieval system—a fee derived entirely from surpluses, not imposed as a burden on production. This was actually what Adam Smith meant by “ability to pay.” Smith's sophisticated understanding of economic rent was, however, simplified and distorted by numerous economists throughout the 19th century, who buried the concept under layers of obfuscation. In particular, the substitution of “Paretian rent” for “Ricardian rent” committed the fallacy of composition by shifting rent from a social concept to a private, unit‐level concept, which caused social surplus to simply “disappear.” Bringing this “lost history” to light permits us to re‐evaluate how modern societies might benefit from Smith's physiocratic concept of taxation. This work not only traces debates about rent—for example, whether rent arises from risk‐taking, or whether a tax on rent raises commodity prices—but also discusses the practical benefits of taxing it today.     

Progress: Poverty or Prosperity?

A bstract . Henry George and Alfred Marshall agreed that prosperity —growth in national income —was necessary but not sufficient to eliminate the poverty both believed impeded the mental and moral development of mankind. This inherent optimism in the potential benefits of economic growth was , however, their only common ground. George asserted that as long as land was privately owned, prosperity would increase poverty; and called for the fiscal remedy of a "single tax" to appropriate land rent. Marshall argued that increased poverty was only a temporary concomitant of growth caused by a population that was too big in numbers but too Low in skills; and advocated "taming" competition by education, charity, thrift , and breeding restraint. This study constructs a joined debate on progress and poverty by aligning the arguments of these two influential authors whose different personalities and personal histories precluded any true communication during their lifetimes.     

Saving the Commons in an Age of Plunder

Land ownership, as commonly understood today, originated with the enclosure movement during the English Tudor era almost four centuries ago. Karl Polanyi referred to this “propertization” of nature as the “great transformation.” That land, water, and air was a social commons is now archaic and forgotten, and with it the classical economic concept of rent, which was, in theory, once paid to royalty as the earth's guardian. Garrett Hardin's article, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” raised alarm about the abuse and loss of this realm, and he recommended constraints and privatization to prevent this. Most people view titles to landed property much as they do their household goods, but Henry George saw that the earth should be seen as a common resource and its value taxed to benefit everyone. This would restore economic equilibrium to market exchanges and pay for government services. The capture of natural resource rents can supplant taxes on wages and capital goods, and it comports with all textbook principles of sound tax theory. This policy can be the modern replacement for the commons, and implementing resource rent capture is both economically and technically feasible.