Race, Poverty and the Inner City -- 40 Years Later

Edward J. Dodson

[Comments posted online to the Bill Moyers Journal website in response to the program evaluating the impact of the Kerner Commission's investigation into the causes of poverty, 7 April, 2008]

This week on the JOURNAL, Bill Moyers spoke with former Senator Fred Harris (D-OK), one of the original members of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, better known as the Kerner Commission. Convened by President Lyndon Johnson in the wake of 1967's riots among inner-city blacks in Detroit and dozens of other cities, the Kerner Commission sought to learn what had happened, why the riots had occurred, and what could be done to prevent similar events from happening again. The resulting (and immediately controversial) 1968 Kerner Report concluded that the riots emerged from severe poverty and limited opportunity in America's urban ghettoes, for which the Report blamed institutional racism.

Strange as this will sound to most readers, the means by which poverty -- and the societal strife associated therewith -- can be permanently eliminated has been known for centuries. A close reading of the works of many of history's most thoughtful writers provides the answers.

Near the end of the 19th century, one writer in particular -- Henry George -- resurrected their insights and embarked on a crusade to change the course of history. Sadly, the momentum his generated dissipated with his death in 1897. Yet, his books and speeches provide us with the keys to a peaceful and sustainable future.

Henry George believed that the most important right of human beings was our equal birthright to the earth. His investigations confirmed that this birthright was denied to the vast majority of people and had been so denied for most of recorded history. His solution was deceptively simple:

"To secure fully the individual right of property in the produce of labor we must treat the elements of nature as common property."

This did not mean that government should own all land natural resources, only that those who did so should compensate the community and society for the privilege enjoyed. Market forces would determine what the propery annual fee (what the political economists called "rent") would be for control over any specific location or tract of land. George went on to argue that government should rely on this rent fund to pay for public goods and services, removing taxes from incomes earned by producing goods and providing services; and, removing taxes from the assets people actually produced (e.g., buildings, machinery, other equipment).

What would be the outcome if we adopted these changes in our societal structure? George offered this:

"Thus the great cause of the present unequal distribution of wealth would be destroyed, and the one-sided competition cease which now deprives men who possess nothing but power to labor of the benefits of advancing civilization, and forces wages to a minimum no matter what the increase of wealth. Labor, free to the natural elements of production, would no longer be incapable of eomploying itself, and competition, acting as fully and freely between employers as between employed, would carry wages up to what is truly their natural rate -- the full value of the produce of labor -- and keep them there."

The tens of thousands of people who rallied to Henry George in the late 19th century faced enormous challenges in the political realm. The power of monopolistic interests can never be overestimated.

George's message was taken up after his death in the U.K. by none other than Winston Churchill, campaigning in the early 1900s as a liberal. In Rusia, Leo Tolstoy did his best to get the Czar to adopt Henry George's program to save Russia from revolution. And, in China, Sun Yat-sen included much of George's ideas in his plan for an independent and united Chinese republic.