Henry George Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Henry George (1839–1897) was an American political economist whose works have influenced social and political theorists of the left and the right and whose books sold in the millions. An opponent of private monopolies in business and state interference in economic matters, George’s primary influence has been on libertarian social theory. He is perhaps best known for his support of a single tax on land or land value tax.

George was particularly concerned about privately controlled resource enterprises, especially mining interests, and land speculators. His analysis suggested that private control over land explained why wealth and poverty under capitalism advanced simultaneously. As population in an area grows, the land also grows in value, thus requiring that those who work it pay more to do so. An opponent of natural monopolies, George called for taxation, regulation, and limited state ownership. He argued for state-operated telegraph services, control of railroad tracks, and municipal control of water supplies.

George’s most influential contribution to economic theory is perhaps his advocacy of a single tax on land. For George, the economic rent gained from land should be shared socially rather than be controlled by private interests. In his best-known work, Progress and Poverty (1879), George argues that a large proportion of the wealth created through social and technological development in a market economy becomes concentrated in the hands of monopolists by way of economic rents, and this is the primary cause of poverty in capitalist economies. Collecting private profit by restricting access to natural resources upon which all depend for survival amounts to a system of theft and slavery. This is made even worse given that productive activity such as industrial works were burdened by taxes while land values were not.

George regarded natural resources as the product of nature rather than human labor or initiative and believed that as such, they should not provide the basis by which individuals acquire revenues. Nature as the common heritage of all humanity must be made a common property of society as a whole. George advocated taxation of unimproved land value as a way to share land wealth socially without employing a policy of land dispossession and nationalization. This single land tax would allow the state to remove taxes on all other, more productive, economic undertakings and transactions. George’s ideas have recently been taken up by environmentalists who view the earth as the common property of all species. Such environmental economists are also seeking to reduce the economic practice of treating ecological damage as an externality in which private interests hold monopoly control over profits while shifting the social and economic burden of ecological harm onto society.

George’s positions also reveal the contradictory nature of much of libertarian theory. His fondness for supposedly free markets did not include labor markets and the free flow of working people in search of employment. George was an active supporter of immigration restrictions, and the articles that brought him his earliest notoriety expressed his opposition to Chinese immigration into the United States. According to George, the willingness of poor immigrants to accept lower wages had the negative effect of driving down wages for all working people. While this argument has been taken up by contemporary conservative opponents of immigration, progressives and labor activists have pointed out that the real issue is one of working-class organization and power within the labor market, including immigrant and domestic workers, rather than immigration itself.

George’s works have influenced generations of social and political theorists, both progressive and conservative. Prominent figures influenced include Fabian socialist and playwright George Bernard Shaw, anarchist author Leo Tolstoy, and Chinese nationalist and revolutionary Sun Yat Sen. American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. took up George’s call for a guaranteed minimum income as a defense against extremes of poverty, while conservative economists such as Milton Friedman praised George’s views on free trade. Contemporary anarchists such as the market anarchists associated with the Molinari Institute claim George as an influence.

Bibliography:

Andelson, Robert V., ed. The Critics of Henry George. New York: WileyBlackwell, 2003.
Barker, Charles Albro. Henry George. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955.
George, Henry. Progress and Poverty. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1912.
Rose, Henry. Henry George: A Biographical, Anecdotal and Critical Sketch. London: William Reeves, 1884.
Wenzer, Kenneth C. Henry George’s Thought. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2006.

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