Henry George on Property Rights: Reply to John Pullen

John Pullen argues that Henry George's proposal to "make land common property" is inconsistent with his proposal to tax rent. This reply argues that George's two formulations are consistent, and that Pullen has confused common property with state property. On the other hand, Pullen's conception of property as composed of a "basket of rights" focuses attention on the question of whether, as trustee of the common property, a Georgist regime should be understood to have certain rights (and obligations) to constrain private land use decisions.     

Henry George and Europe

A bstract . Adolf Damaschke , a Berlin schoolteacher, played a'fateful' role in developing a large land reform constituency in Wilhelmian Germany. By chance he heard a lecture by Michael Flürscheim , Henry George's follower. And by accident he was won to the movement. He built the Union of German Land Reformers into an active organization of 100,000 dedicated members from all classes. For tactical reasons what Damaschke pushed was his version of the' Single Tax Limited,' though he never lost sight of George's philosophy of freedom. There was a "German Fatherland" emphasis in his advocacy. Yet he despaired of building a mass constituency for that philosophy.     

Henry George and Classical Growth Theory: A Significant Contribution to Modeling Scale Economies

It is widely recognized that the analysis of economic growth in Henry George's Progress and Poverty was considerably influenced by the British classical tradition, especially the writings of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill. What has been less clearly perceived is that George made significant extensions to the classical theory. This paper's aim is to provide an interpretation, and to some extent a "rational reconstruction," of George's positive analysis, largely leaving aside the striking normative lessons he drew from it. George's unsatisfactory treatment of capital is disposed of in Section I, while Section II—the core of the paper—follows George's lead in aggregating capital and labor into a single productive factor which is employed in a given natural environment. Section III adds the complication of improvement in the arts of production, and Section IV deals briefly with George's views on land speculation. Section V assesses, comparing George with his contemporary Alfred Marshall.     

Getting Results—Or Not

A BSTRACT . I support ideas based on Henry George's writings but not as utopian. Reducing taxes that impede capital formation actually helps communities prosper. Furthermore, adopting a "two-rate" property tax has always seemed sensible. The academic's role is to point to achievable benefits. Professor Samuels's paper helps us understand how the plurality of aspects and concerns of Georgism has diffused the attention of the Georgists away from a more modest but substantial point.     

A Property Rights Paradox: George and Rothbard on the Conservation of Environmental Resources

A bstract . Murray N. Rothbard is recognized as one of the most articulate modern critics of Henry George's land value tax. A leading libertarian thinker, Rothbard condemns George's recommendation that government act to affect private transactions in land, arguing that such interventions infringe on previously defined private property rights. However, Rothbard's social system has no explicit mechanism for accommodating the emergence of tradeable property rights to newly recognized environmental resources. In effect, Rothbard calls for controls on such resources—no trading. Henry George, on the other hand, provides for the evolution of new property rights and their emergence into private markets. The paradox here is that George's solution to the property rights question might accommodate the social yearnings of one of his most severe critics, Murray N. Rothbard.     

Henry George and Europe

A bstract . The basic ideas of Henry George , 19th century American economist and social philosopher, were not novel in Denmark , which had a tradition of land value taxation and free trade. But they had special appeal for its smallholder farmers. They demanded that George's principles be applied more fully, getting all tax revenues from the land 's unimproved value, so that taxes on buildings, personal property and wages could be abolished. Viggo Ullman 's Danish-Norwegian translation of Progress and Poverty won the commitment of folk school movement leaders and the intelligentsia. In 1903 large landowners gained control of the Liberal Party and proceeded to abolish the traditional land tax, producer of up to 50 percent of State revenues. The Radical Liberals split and took over, to some extent carrying out George's taxation principles. In 1919 a Georgist party, the "Retsforbundet" was founded; it won the balance of power in 1957. But lack of finances and organizing ability and growing voter apathy ended its progress.     

Selected Elements of Henry George's Legitimacy as an Economist

A bstract . Henry George's legitimacy as an economist has been denied in much of the literature of the history of economic thought and by some economists who were his approximate contemporaries. These denials have shaped the prevailing negative view of George's economics. An examination of selected representative evidence from George's work fails to support the negative view. George's positions on "The Study of Political Economy," eloquently presented in his 1877 speech to the faculty at the University of California, ate consistent with (and predate) "accepted,""orthodox,""legitimate" views of political economy expressed a decade and more later by J. Laurence Laughlin and Charles F. Dunbar in early classic articles that signified the emergence of economics as an identifiable profession in the United States. Other evidence reveals that George avoided the Ricardian error of failing to understand the role of factor and product substitution in the process of market equilibrium adjustments.     

Comments on Four Papers on Economics and Human Heterogeneity

A bstract .   These comments focus on some issues raised in the papers by Dimand, Peart and Levy, Cot, and Leonard. These papers are fascinating, but not without weaknesses. It is argued that Dimand's presentation of what he calls the "general principle" of classical economics is misconceived. There is a confusion in this paper between the classical view of equal capacity and the much newer concept of equally rational actual performance. Peart and Levy discuss the idea of unequal capacity for pleasure in Edgeworth, but do not draw a link back to the idea in J. S. Mill of different qualities of pleasure. Cot and Leonard provide informative accounts of the American eugenic movement and its links to progressivism, but with an insufficient degree of distinction between the various positions and agendas that were concerned.     

Seeking Institutionalist Signposts in The Work of Henry George

A bstract . When one seeks institutionalist signposts in works published before the time of Thorstein Veblen, Henry George is often overlooked. This oversight on the part of institutionalists is understandable given George's emphasis on " natural laws," individualism, religious teachings and his defense of the market system. Orthodox economists have also ignored these signposts as a result of their rejection of institutionalism. They have rejected George's work in general because of his attack on the economics profession and his challenge to the status quo. While George is usually not classified an institutionalist, there are, however, definite institutionalist signposts to be found in his work. George recognized the ceremonial and pecuniary nature of the economics profession and analyzed the institutional foundation of property. Furthermore, George was a social reformer and understood the discretionary and normative nature of the economy.     

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 .     

Henry George and Organized Labor:

A bstract . Henry George supported labor unions and was proud of his membership in the Printers' Union. But he did not regard them as the final solution of labor exploitation. He championed labor as one of the producing classes. His foray into politics as the candidate of organized labor's third party was characteristic; he had had much involvement in politics earlier. Although he supported labor's immediate demands, he sought mainly to use his candidacy to build a constituency for the single tax. Samuel Gompers , then head of the American Federation of Labor , at first worked for George's election but came to the belief that the unions alone should direct and control their political efforts. This view prevailed, though he and George remained good friends. But it is now a question whether Gompers' policy, at this time, serves labor's best interests.     

Henry George Under the Microscope: Comments on "Henry George's Political Critics"

The annual supplement of the AJES for 2008 titled Henry George: Political Ideologue, Social Philosopher, and Economic Theorist had as its first and longest essay "Henry George's Political Critics" by Professor Michael Hudson. It offered a multitude of criticisms, most of which Prof. Hudson seemed to agree with. All purported to be criticisms of George as a political strategist, though some seem more to originate from Hudson's disagreement with theoretical positions George was bound to take. The purpose of this short paper is to show that Professor Hudson's long article fails to do what it seems intended to do. That is, it fails to show that trade unionists and especially socialists were "natural allies" of the Georgist movement, that it was George's fault that that they were not, and that George "allied" his movement irrevocably to "capital," rejecting its "natural allies."     

Henry George and Europe

A bstract . The progressive democratic social philosophy of a 19th century American economist, Henrys George , has had a far-reaching effect on some European intellectual and political leaders. Not all adopted his practical proposal, the single land value tax as a substitute for other taxes. But the British Liberal party , a section of the British Labor party and Danish smallholders did. George's ideas were absorbed into the long standing European land reform tradition and he became the initiator and theoretical founder of the modern movement there, as Heinrich Erman , the German legal scholar, held. It is a mistake to say that the French Physiocrats anticipated George; their produit net was a tax on output, not highest potential use and was aimed to achieve stability , not development. Europeans see George and Georgism the same as Americans but in a different context, that of Natural rights.     

Henry George's Labor Theory of Value: He Saw the Entrepreneurs and Workers as Employers of Capital and Land, and Not the Reverse

A bstract . Henry George , the 19th century American economist and social philosopher , saw the problem of protecting the working peoples' wages and Jobs one of distributive justice. He attacked as fallacious the idea that equality of opportunity to work was a "privilege" accorded to labor. The protectionist system , he held, was based on the antidemocratic notion that "the many are called to serve and the few to rule." The paternalism of protection, whether in the domestic or the world economy , is "the pretense of tyranny," he argued. He holds that labor, including workers and entrepreneurs, and not landholders, or owners of capital, is the source of all economic value. Labor, he reasoned, "employs capital," and not the reverse. George's theory of value was an improvement on Adam Smith's , putting into it a greater emphasis on the importance of land in the analysis of the distribution of wealth. But it was a production cost theory, with all its problems and advantages.     

Henry George and Nineteenth-Century Economics

A bstract . Despite Henry George's great gifts as an economist and a social critic, he failed to take into account the momentous changes that were underway. As a result, his quaint faith in a combination of land reform and competition was unwarranted.     

The Sufficiency of Single Tax Revenue:

A bstract . Statements claiming that the single tax would raise insufficient revenue to support modern governments have been damaging to Henry George's proposal to tax the rent of land. It is argued that these claims are a misleading way of assessing George's proposal. Firstly, it is shown that estimates of rent usually understate the revenue that would have been raised under the single tax. Secondly, the idea of a counterfactual proposition is used to show that government expenditure would have been lower subsequently had George's proposal been adopted. The conclusion is that there are generally errors of omission in estimating the sufficiency of single tax revenue.     

Henry George and 'Rerum Novarum'

A bstract . Students of the life and thought of Henry George have accepted too readily his own opinion, expressed in the Open Letter that he addressed to Pope Leo XIII in 1891, that the Pope's epoch making encyclical Rerum novarum was aimed at Georgism The disposition of the Open Letter in Vatican circles remains obscure, perhaps because the Holy Office had so recently decided that George's works were deserving of condemnation. But there is documentary support for only an allusion to George's views on property in the encyclical. Nor can the reinstatement of Father Edward McGlynn and the reappraisal of George that it signaled be attributed to the Open Letter. George's views may have had significant indirect influence, however, through (1) national land reform movements insofar as they affected the course of Catholic social thought , and (2) the discussion of Georgism as a form of socialism. These possibilities need to be investigated.     

Henry George and George Bernard Shaw: Comparison and Contrast

A bstract . Henry George , the American economist and social philosopher , and George Bernard Shaw , the British playwright and social reformer , were two famous personalities of the last quarter of the 19th century, each a prophet in his own way. The two men probably never met, though Shaw credited George's oratory as well as his classic. Progress and Poverty , with awakening his interest in economic issues, and to his last days acknowledged his debt to George. Both were deeply committed to ending poverty. But there the similarity ended—George was devoted to ethical democracy, Shaw to socialist dictatorship. George saw cooperative individualism as the goal of social reconstruction; Shaw dreamed of a Superman, and fancied himself a supporter of the Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, and of Soviet Russian'communism.'Shaw saw the purpose of life as "being used for a (mighty) purpose;" George saw it as blazing a trail for'progressive humanity,'cooperating with the Creator in creating a moral world.     

A. R. Prest's Investigation of the Case for Site Value Taxation

A bstract . Urban site value taxation —an application to one of the several types of land and natural resources of Henry George's proposals for recapturing for the public's benefit the value its presence and activities accord to land—has been investigated by a leading British fiscal economist, A. R. Prest. He finds that the taxation of urban land is badly in need of reform. Considering the options available, he declares: "With site value rating (land value taxation ) there surely is a very strong case for further experimentation." Professor Prest surveys the whole literature of the question in a strictly objective fashion.     

An Economics Classic and Plutology

A bstract . Henry George's Progress and Poverty , published a century ago, laid the foundation for a theory that attracted a worldwide following. He emphasized that political economy investigates the way a community produces wealth and the proportions in which that wealth will be distributed between individuals. In our day that has been called 'plutology' , a subdiscipline of political economy. Many of George's critics, then and now, act as apologists of the status quo, in society and in the academy. But the science's purview must be broader than plutology. Economics , to be relevant, must be useful in the solution of economic and social problems. In redirecting economists to their basic responsibility, George made a lasting contribution to economic science. He also was a perennial influence on economic scholar, even on some of his most antagonistic critics. But George is neglected because his doctrines were and are a threat to various establishments. However, by force of logic and through clarity of expression, he is a goad to the consciences of all folk of good will.