Is Henry George Back?
Henry George back in the nineteenth century and he was once America’s most internationally famous authors whose books sold millions of copies. And he ran for New York City Mayor twice. Is it time to again to look at Henry George? Apparently, some people in Brooklyn think so.
By Dan La Botz
A few months ago, I began to notice that mail boxes in my neighborhood — Crown Heights, Brooklyn — had been covered with posters that mentioned the name ofHenry George or his economic philosophy known as Georgism. Among the first posters I saw were this pair, “Morals: Equal Rights for All” and “See the Cat: Georgism: Share the Rents. Own Your Labor & Time; Make Everyone Rich;Prevent Climate Change.”
Some bore George’s portrait. One said, “Space Ship Earth: Wealth, Liberty, Justicefor All.” Some posters turned aspects of George’s philosophy into contemporaryslogans like “Rent is too damn high.”
It’s not surprising that at a time when the cost of buying a home has become impossible for so many and when rising rents have made forced others out of their apartments, that Henry George’s philosophy would once again be of interest.George, if you’re not familiar with him, was a nineteenth century American political economist whose most important book was Progress and Poverty (1879), a best seller, with many editions and millions of copies sold around the world.
The full title of the book is Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth: The Remedy. We might call it George’s Das Kapital (1867) because like Karl Marx’s Capital, it asked the fundamental question of our society for the last few hundred years: Why do some get rich while others get poor? While do some control vast wealth, while others have so little? Marx’s answer to the question, of course, was that the exploitation of labor made it possible for the bourgeoisie to accumulate capital and then use that capital to dominate the state so that they could continue to exploit and accumulate. George’s answer, in short, was that inordinate wealth and poverty derived from the monopolization of land and the landowner’s accumulation of wealth from rents. Landowners hoarded or speculated in land. Their property values — even if they made no improvements — increased because of social progress, but society as a whole did not benefit from such rising property values.
Marx’s answer to the question, of course, was that the exploitation of labor made it possible for the bourgeoisie, the class of property owners, particularly factory owners, to accumulate capital and then use that capital to dominate the state so that they could continue to exploit and accumulate. George’s answer, in short, was that inordinate wealth and poverty derived from the monopolization of land and the landowner’s accumulation of wealth from rents. Landowners hoarded or speculated in land. Their property values — even if they made no improvements — increased because of social progress, but society as a whole did not benefit from such rising property values.
While Marx and George held different theories about the roots of society’s problems, they shared some ideas about how to solve them. While he was not opposed to capitalism, George did call for the socialization of land. Land, he argued, must become common property. George argued that rents (mortgages payments and rents) should be collected by the society for the benefit of all. He called for a single tax on land to benefit both capital and labor.
George became enormously popular with working people and the poor. He was not only their advocate against the wealthy, but also stood for women’s suffrage. Karl Marx thought that George’s economic theory was ridiculous and he regretted that it had not been adopted by groups such as the Knights of Labor, the rapidly growing American labor union of the era. In 1886 the United Labor Party put George forward as their candidate for mayor. He was defeated by the candidate of the Democratic Party machine of Tammany Hall, Abram Hewitt, who won 41 percent of the vote, but George received 31 percent and came in several thousand votes ahead of the Republican, Theodore Roosevelt. In 1897, George ran for mayor as the candidate of the Jefferson Democracy Party, was defeated again, and died that same year.
I don’t know who’s putting up the posters and the diagrams about Henry George in Crown Heights, but I wish them well. We certainly need to criticize and landlords, though they are tied to the real estate companies, and to the big banks, and to understand all of that, we will need the other major social critic of that era: Karl Marx.