Henry George re-visited

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The,  Nov, 2005  

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Re-visiting Henry George is a curious experience. His voluminous writings are a kaleidoscopic canvas, and attempting a highly abbreviated distillation is fraught with risk. A century later, however, much of the content can be discarded. Partly because it is no longer necessary to refute anachronistic theories prevalent in the 1880s (or contest the "wages fund" concept cherished by employer organisations); and marginal utility theory and even Ricardo's law of rent are not strictly relevant to George's basic argument. Partly also because his vigorous refutation of Malthus is an unnecessary digression that, like other needlessly overstated assertions, provoked a great deal of diversionary debate. Whether Malthus--seen in the context of 1879--was right is irrelevant. Malthusian theory simply provided George with a convenient opportunity to argue that food production was not limited "naturally" but by the man-caused withholding of land from productive use in order to profit from its increased value. As a debating point, a valid enough argument in 1879. And still valid today, although even if all suitable land were brought into production, and allowing for scientific discoveries that are yet to materialise, it seems barely conceivable that the planet's capacity to feed its inhabitants is not, ultimately, limited. However, the focus of Neo-Malthusian debate has changed. In relation to food production, population growth is not an accelerating crisis. (3) There is less scope for theological disputation. The focus now is more properly on environmental sustainability and, as argued earlier (in Chapter 4), on the demographic implications of structural unemployment. In respect of the latter, Georgism would increase access to land for productive use (as well as for individual subsistence), assuming there was a market for the products of labour. (But the scope for employing an increasing population would be limited if the lifestyle aspirations of society's economically dominant elite continued to be better met by capital-intensive labourdisplacing technology.)

None of these Malthusian considerations, however, has any real bearing upon the validity of the basic Georgist proposition.

Again, whether or not poverty in America was increasing in 1879, as George implied, is beside the point. And the notion of land rental sufficing as a "single tax" for all public revenue needs is an unnecessary over-simplification (admittedly more commonly propagated subsequently by others than by George himself). Issues such as these were bound to generate disagreement and obfuscation, particularly since neither George nor his contemporary detractors chose to adduce statistical evidence.

Progress and Poverty provoked voluminous international and interdisciplinary reaction ranging from enthusiastic endorsement to vituperative opposition and dismissal. George was condemned variously as an agrarian socialist, as an apologist for capitalism, and as an agent of the devil. Reviewing his ideas in 1909, Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy warned: "The danger of these opinions has become more apparent as time goes on."