10 Rae: a journalist out of his depth - Part II: nineteenth-century British and continental critics

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The,  Nov, 2003  by Aaron B. Fuller

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In part three Rae rejects George's proposals for land-rent taxation and denies the optimistic results that George claims for their adoption. Rae is more on his own ground here, using his literary talents to counter the rhetorical exaggerations that George attached to his practical policy proposals. But in addition to pouncing on George's hyperbole, Rae attempted some analytical comments on land rent, the nature of land as a unique economic commodity, and property rights, and because these comments are contradictory and inconsistent Rae introduced additional elements of confusion into his critique.

Rae's three-part critical examination of George's ideas is presented much like a set of "even-if" arguments encountered in the formal argumentation of a legal brief. He first rejects George's ideas because they are inconsistent with the empirical evidence--poverty is not increasing with progress. But, he contended, even if poverty were increasing, a second reason to reject George's ideas, independent of the empirical evidence, is George's alleged theoretical error and confusion. Finally, he maintained that even if the empirical evidence and the analytical arguments were on George's side, a third independent reason to reject George is that his solutions to the problems he identifies are either incorrect or inadequate. Such a scattered array of independent arguments is sometimes called the "shotgun" approach to argumentation. Potentially deadly at the close quarters of journalistic and legal persuasion where the form of the argument may be more important than its contents, it is less effective at the longer range of analytical scholarship where logical and factual consistency weigh more heavily than persuasiveness. Rae's journalistic shotgun approach to criticism, composed of scattered independent arguments, did little serious analytical damage to George's analyses. But serious analytical damage may not have been Rae's intent; instead, he may have been trying to persuade his readers that George was a dangerous agitator who, like the socialists discussed elsewhere in Contemporary Socialism, threatened to disrupt British institutions.

In what follows we shall examine Rae's specific criticisms of George's vision of poverty, his economic analysis, and his land taxation proposals.

On George's Perception of Poverty

Rae challenged and denied George's fundamental proposition that poverty increases with progress. He cited empirical evidence that, to him, proved the error of George's claim. There are three assessments that are relevant here: First, was Rae's criticism unique? Second, was Rae correct about the empirical evidence? Third, was Rae's criticism related to George's fundamental proposition? Let us examine each in turn.

Rae's denial of George's proposition that poverty accompanies progress was a commonplace criticism of George during the late nineteenth century. Perhaps the two leading critics among professional economists were Arnold Toynbee and Alfred Marshall. Both denied George's assertion of poverty's accompanying progress as part of their more general denials of the claims of socialists, radicals, and others that growing poverty was an inherent concomitant of expanding industrial capitalism. Marshall began a series of lectures on Henry George in 1883 with the judgment that Progress and Poverty "is the last outcome of the feeling that we ought not to be content with our progress as long as there is so much suffering in the world." (12) He admits that "Mr. George's book is the latest outcome of this yearning after a better state of things," but rhetorically asks if "we are sure that with the increase of wealth want has actually increased?" (13) Citing historical evidence, Marshall answers his own query in the negative. Among his examples to disprove increasing poverty he cites increasing agricultural wages over the prior thirty years, rising per capita income among the working classes, and better food in the diets of the working population.