Henry George,Jane Jacobs,and Free Trade

Henry George and Jane Jacobs were both journalists and made a contribution to economics based on their commitment to the original version of free trade, as understood by 19^th‐century liberals, rather than the late 20^th‐century version. The distinctive concept of free trade, as originally understood, was as an instrument for small‐scale producers to break up entrenched monopolies and serve the interests of the ordinary citizen. That was how Cobden used it in the debates over the Corn Laws in the 1840s, and how Ruskin, Gesell, Chesterton, and other critics conceived of economic liberation. In debates over free trade in recent decades, that term has come to mean a defense of power and privilege, the exact opposite of the intent of 19^th‐century liberals. George and Jacobs sought to restore the original meaning by developing theories of development and distribution that would enable the market system to benefit everyone.     

Henry George and Jane Jacobs on the Sources of Economic Growth

Henry George and Jane Jacobs shared a remarkably similar vision of the economic functioning of cities and of the sources of the economic growth of cities, despite having differing primary objectives. George wrote Progress and Poverty and subsequent works to persuade the public of the equity and efficiency of public capture of economic rents of land and other natural resources and elimination of taxes on labor and capital. Jacobs acquired fame for The Death and Life of Great American Cities in which she challenged the prevailing orthodoxy of the urban planning profession. Both saw the density and diversity of economic and cultural activities in cities as a facilitator of innovation and entrepreneurship in all aspects of civilization. Both also recognized the power of the price system in coordinating the activities of independent decision makers and the importance of trade for economic growth.     

Curing Slums: The Jane Jacobs Way and the Henry George Way

Henry George and Jane Jacobs were both self‐taught public figures who shared an appreciation of the density, productivity, diversity, and cultural creativity of big cities. A century separated them, during which architects and planners designed cities according to abstract principles, but George and Jacobs expected the creative potential of a city to emerge from its inhabitants, not from a central planner. Although the interests and concerns of George and Jacobs overlapped on only a few topics, they both believed that slum dwellers could solve their own problems, given the right tools. For Jacobs, the solution to dilapidated housing lay not in bulldozing neighborhoods, but in rehabilitating them through a process she called “unslumming,” a gradual process of self‐improvement that has at times been accused of being gentrification. Henry George offered a different solution, involving taxation of land values, one that did not focus on particular neighborhoods and thus avoided the paradox that local improvements would raise the price of real estate too high for local residents to stay. An example is given of how George's solution actually worked in the Rosslyn neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia. In this case, no change in tax policy was needed to bring about a local economic renaissance in the 1960s, merely the realignment of property assessments that correctly reflected the actual value of land.     

The DNA of Enterprise: Jane Jacobs and Henry George on Innovation and Development Through Spin‐Offs

The main training grounds for entrepreneurial, technical, and business capacities are existing businesses. There are two ways that this training can lead to new growth—just as there are two ways that existing biological DNA can lead to the growth of bio‐mass, namely, (1) existing organisms getting bigger or (2) by spinning out offspring who in turn can spin out more offspring. Where growth has been vibrant, e.g., Silicon Valley, it has followed the second route, growth by offspring. This is also the biological principle of plenitude. Conventional ownership structures lessen the incentives for spin‐offs since managers do not want to reduce the “empire” under their control. The biological principle of plenitude is best implemented with employee‐owned or cooperative firms (e.g., as in the Mondragon cooperative group). Inspired by ideas first proposed by Henry George and Jane Jacobs, this article explores the social benefits of applying the biological principle of plenitude by encouraging the proliferation of enterprises. This poses a conundrum for societies organized around the private business model: How can the social benefits of spin‐offs be realized when managers do not have an incentive to foster new businesses? We conclude with ways to address this problem.     

The Social,Spatial, and Economic Roots of Urban Inequality in Africa: Contextualizing Jane Jacobs and Henry George

Unravelling the social and economic roots of urban inequality in Africa has remained a thorny issue in African political economy. Stripped to its bare essentials, the critical questions are who causes urban inequality, what causes it, and how it is caused? While all different, the questions are interrelated. Answering the “who causes inequality” question requires a related analysis of what and why, and that is connected to the how question. Indeed, the how question has two parts—how inequality is caused and how it can be addressed. Both are connected to the why question and to its resolution. Unfortunately, while studies about urban inequality abound, they tend to hive off one aspect or another of the tripartite questions on inequality and, even worse, they study the three questions separately. This article tries to overcome the existing atomistic and piecemeal approach to the study of urban inequality in Africa by contextualizing the work of Jane Jacobs and Henry George, who took a holistic view of urban inequality. It argues that Jacobsianism and Georgism have much to offer in terms of understanding urban inequality in Africa, but neither analysis goes far enough to be able to serve as a solid foundation for policy. Ultimately, it is in their approach to urban analysis—the emphasis on context, on actual urban problems, inductivism, and some of their mechanisms for change such as George's land tax and cautious abstraction, in that order, along with their combined vision—which I call “diversity in equality”—that can add to the insights of postcolonialism in understanding and transforming urban inequality in Africa.     

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.     

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 and Europe

Abstract . Michael Flürscheim, an industrialist, sought in 1885 to organize in Germany a society of land reformers. Only 20 responded to his call. Soon afterwards two journalists, did respond and organized a group called the Land League. It disbanded in 1887. A. T. Stamm, who had previously tried to start an organization he called “The Society for Humanism,” then sought to form a society, “The All-Weal Union.” These efforts came to naught until Flürscheim launched in Frankfort the “German Union for Land Ownership Reform.” It gained 600 members. It was called by a government official, Wilhelm Schrameier, himself a land reformer, “a small sect.” But these educational efforts convinced officials of the imperial government and navy of the usefulness of the land value tax for ending land speculation and provided for 16 years a practical demonstration of that in a large colonial territory, Kiaochow, China.     

Henry George and Immigration

Henry George's opposition to free immigration may be surprising in light of his positions on other aspects of economic theory and policy. This essay reviews George's statements on immigration policy, discusses inconsistencies of these statements with his positions on free trade and Malthusian population theory, compares George's views with the neoclassical economic perspective on immigration, and suggests that implementation of George's policy of taxing land values would share the gains from immigration in a manner that might reduce opposition to open borders.     

Henry George and Europe

A bstract . The kingdom of Hungary still faced an unsolved land question as the 20th century dawned. More than half the land belonged to latifundia , large estates, archaically mismanaged with sweated labor. Unrest among the 6 million rural poor , a third of the population, brought forth embryonic land reform aspirations. The founder of the first farmers'party, Andras Achim, sought their expropriation and parcelling out. Publication of Henry George's writings in Hungarian by the sociologist Robert Braun and especially the activities of the physician and statistician Julius J. Pikler made the Georgist proposals known. In 1917 and 1918, Dr. Pikler's ingenious lobbying succeeded in winning over the city councils of Budapest and eight other Hungarian towns. The leaders of the 1918 republican revolution included land value taxation in their program. But the turmoil of 1919, Horthy's counter-revolution and torrential currency inflation destroyed the Georgist advance.     

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 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.     

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 and Europe

Abstract . Henry George's land reform ideas became known in Germany not through his writing or speaking but through the efforts of Michael Flürscheim, an industrialist and pioneer social reformer, who first presented those ideas to the public. The American's idea that the land value tax was the only legitimate source of government revenue as the only economic surplus had found no acceptance among German socialist leaders. It was a capitalist, Flürscheim, who was inspired by George's theories and wrote and spoke about them. Flürscheim brought about the foundation of the first German land reform organization. Though it failed, a successor became the largest such association in the world.     

Henry George:

ABSTRACT While generally known today for his famous proposal for a Single Tax, Henry George has not been widely recognized as one of the first economists to write about the possibility of political market failure. Based on his appreciation for the allocational efficiency of markets and his suspicion of government intervention, George was an early advocate of public choice ideas who repeatedly warned of the dangers of rent seeking.     

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.     

Henry George and Europe:

A bstract Henry George played a tremendous role in the development and growth of the British Liberal party and of British Liberalism, one no less significant than his role in that of British non-Marxian socialism One of the Liberal leaders who gained a place in history, Joseph Chamberlain, had already been a land reformer before he learned about Georgism Chamberlain used the Georgist analysis, but he and the other 19th century Radical Liberals worked up a program for a broader distribution of landed property, not for the abolition of the private land monopoly. The same tactic in Ireland entrenched private land monopoly thereby making many renters small holders But George also supplied the analysis and the context of the Liberal campaign And later Liberal leaders–notably David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill (as well as Liberals in the Labour Party. Philip Snowden, Herbert Morrison, Ramsay MacDonald and Josiah Wedgwood) –came close to making the taxation of land values the law of the kingdom     

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.