Henry George and Political Ideologies

There's been quite a bit of chatter recently about the extent to which George was or Georgism aligns with various different political ideologies. I'm in the middle of this great book, Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality, that discusses his/his movement's views on various ideologies & related concepts for the role of government. I wanted to share a few quotes here from the book (and including direct quotes from George where possible) to show the cross-cutting appeal of Georgism across these ideologies. I'm deliberately leaving out quotes related to land and rent and exploring more the way and extent to which his ideology fit with others at the time as well as ideologies we recognize today.

  • In his first editorial [at the San Francisco Daily Post], "The Great Work of Reform," George ... proposed "a union of the good men of both parties" to pursue a four-point reform plan: a more economical government, lower taxes, reformed civil service, and a reversal of the general trend toward greater concentration of wealth and power in the hands of industrialists and landowners.
  • [George] offered, in short...: "a middle course between the rocks of cutthroat economic individualism and the shoals of an all-coercive statism." (51)
  • All revenue collected under the single tax would "be equally distributed in public benefits. ... These "public benefits," George wrote, would take the form of "public baths, museums, libraries, gardens, lecture rooms, music and dance halls, theaters, universities, technical schools, shooting galleries, play grounds, gymnasiums," as well as include the public ownership of natural monopolies like the telegraph lines, railroads, and utilities. Therein lay what George considered the genius of his radical solution–a modern industrial society could "realize the dream of socialism," while maintaining the essence, dynamism, and freedom of a market economy. (55)
  • George then declared that the "government would change its character and would become the administration of a great co-operative society. It would become merely the agency by which the common property was administered for the common benefit." (55)
  • American society had to recognize the primacy of equality in the hierarchy of republican values: "Modern civilization owes its superiority to the growth of equality with the growth of association. ... Progress goes on just as society tends toward closer association and greater equality." (58)
  • "I hope it does not sound too socialistic," [George] wrote in his diary. "I am a socialist–to tell the truth." (62)
  • "If I had to choose between Landlordism and Communism," announced [Fr. Edward] McGlynn [a 'zealous convert to Progress and Poverty'], brushing aside the charge of critics that the Land League cause amounted to communism, "I would prefer the latter... There is often a noble inspiration at the bottom of what is called Communism. It is intended for the welfare of the masses." (124)
  • The [Central Labor Union] held weekly Sunday meetings where workers heard many of the foremost radicals and intellectuals in the movement speak about workers' rights, socialism, and land reform. It also sponsored free weekly lectures on labor topics by notables like George, [Robert] Blissert, and [Edward] King, and opened a Free Labor Reading Room that offered works by George and Marx (140)
  • Workers also appreciated George's efforts to wrest the discipline of political economy from conservative scholars defending laissez-faire and employing flawed theories (e.g., the iron law of wages) "against every effort of the working class to increase their wages or decrease their hours of labor." (155)
  • Wealth carried with it enormous political power, twisting "our government by the people [into] ... government by the strong and unscrupulous." The latter, he declared, hid behind the mantras of laissez-fair, that "the gospel of selfishness," and social Darwinism, "the comfortable theory that it is in the nature of things that some should be poor and some should be rich. (160–1)
  • George also emphasized more forcefully the central themes of emerging progressivism, in particular that republican citizenship carried with it not merely political rights, but also economic ones: "The freedom to earn, without fear or favor, a comfortable living ought to go with the freedom to vote." (161–2)
  • George repeatedly expressed admiration for the ideals and goals of socialism. But in doing so, he took care to emphasize that his single tax reform did not threaten the capitalist free market, individualism, and profit-seeking. "Capital is a good; the capitalist a helper, if he is not also a monopolist," wrote George. "We can safely let anyone get as rich as he can if he will not despoil others in doing so." Yet George made it clear that he admired socialism and that he could foresee a time in the future when it would be implemented in the United States. He predicted that "the natural progress of social development is unmistakably toward cooperation, or, if the term be preferred, toward socialism." (162)

It's easy to filter George and Georgism through our own political views. I just wanted to highlight the richness and complexity of his views, especially in ways that might come off as contradictory in contemporary politics. He was pro-free trade and pro-market, but anti-laissez-faire. Pro-capitalist, but deeply sympathetic to socialism. Supported lowering taxes and skeptical of statism, but also articulated a utopian vision for public services provided by the government. These seemingly contradictory views can be reconciled with the central insight of Georgism, that land is special and distinct from capital.

Folks who are new to LVT, who haven't "seen the cat," are probably going to identifying with political ideologies that haven't incorporated this insight – or struggling with their internal tensions. Be nice to them. Capitalists, Marxists, libertarians, socialists should all be welcome here. With that one insight, any of them might join the movement and become Georgists.