Henry George and the Contemporary Debate over Industrial Protectionism

Abstract . The central question of Henry George's 1886 book. Protection or Free Trade, commemorated now after a century, was: do protectionist policies help or hinder the working man Have George's concerns in 1886 since become outdated or anachronistic? If not, what are some historic trends toward protectionism since that time? Some of the formal arguments for and against protectionism are examined. George contended that protectionism threatens labor unions and reduces workers’wages. An apparent counterexample is provided by the International Ladies’Garment Workers’Union, which now actively lobbies for protectionist legislation. Its arguments have merit when protectionism is viewed instrumentally, but one must recognize that there are substantive objections to protectionism as a comprehensive national policy. George linked protectionism to paternalism; his theory of economic value as well as his model of the rational economic man are derived from basic democratic principles which stand at sharp odds with the implicit paternalism of tariff policies.     

Was George a Dreamer or a Realist?

Abstract . The republication of Steven Cord's Henry George: Dreamer or Realist? makes available once more a work which dealt with insight and depth of analysis with the misconceptions, factual inaccuracies and offhand dismissals of the American economist and social philosopher's theories. Although he alienated many in the academic community, George attracted many leading scholars in it to significant research on basic problems of our times.     

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.     

Corporate punishment: A proposal

Corporate Punishment: A Proposal is an exercise in logic and creative thinking. I shall argue that no good reasons exist for the supposition that corporations have rights independent of the rights and interests of the persons they serve and that the error of treating corporations as though they do have autonomous rights derives from a sloppy argument from analogy. I shall further argue that the analogy of corporations to citizens, though pushed too far by some courts and lawmakers, remains a useful analogy if its logical relations can be cleaned up and clarified. Finally, I shall conclude this essay by employing the refurbished analogy in such a way that it yields a proposal for more effective criminal punishment for corporate wrongdoing. Robert J. Rafalko received an A.B. in philosophy from the University of Scranton, Scranton, PA, an M.A. in philosophy from Tufts University, Medford, MA., and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. in 1984. He was the owner and operator of a retail bookstore. In 1982, Dr. Rafalko was the nominee of a major political party for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 10th Congressional District, Pennsylvania. Dr. Rafalko has taught philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. In 1988, he accepted an appointment at California State University, Bakersfield, CA, where he is currently teaching logic, political philosophy and business ethics. Dr. Rafalko is the author of an introductory logic textbook, Logic for an Overcast Tuesday, to be published by Wadsworth Publishing Co. in the winter of 1989–1990.