What Henry George Proposed

Louis F. Post

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, November-December 1927]

HAVING found the economic answer to the riddle of the Sphinx "Why does poverty persist with progress?" having found it rooted in land monopoly (whether feudalistic, or capitalistic in form would make no essential difference), Henry George's Progress and Poverty proposes the obvious remedy. It is to abolish land monopoly.

But as a practical proposal, abolition of land monopoly would have been altogether too vague. Few there are who would not assent cordially to it in the abstract, yet assail it uncompromisingly in almost any particular application. So Progress and Poverty stated the remedy in particular form. Whenever society has advanced very far beyond primitive conditions the institution of private ownership of land gives advantages to landowning interests and imposes corresponding disadvantages upon land-using interests. Therefore whenever advanced social conditions exist, as in our civilization they do, private monopoly of land and private ownership of land are virtually the same. "Land monopoly" is the indefinite abstract term for what "land ownership" definitely expresses. Accordingly Progress and Poverty proposed to make land common property.

There was nothing novel in this proposal. From the day of Roman Cornelia's "jewels" down to Henry George's time, from the revolt of Moses in Egypt to the experiments of Owen in the United States, the doctrine of communism in land had been advocated in varied settings and practiced in numerous Utopian ways. But this ancient remedy for involuntary poverty, this fundamental suggestion for an orderly social state, is discussed and defended in Progress and Poverty with unexampled thoroughness. Its expediency, its efficacy, its conformity to the natural laws of social life, its harmony with the moral law of justice, are there disclosed with a brilliancy of rhetoric, a richness of diction, a novelty and charm of style, a power of popular appeal, a cogency of argument, an abundance of apt illustration, and a resistless marshalling of the facts that count, which surpass every effort ever before brought to the service of the old doctrine that society must in some way make land common property.

But the way? Secondary though this problem is, the long history of disappointing colony experiments in land communism prove it to be vital. So the secondary problem too is discussed in Progress and Poverty, and its solution demonstrated.

The result is a practical method for making land common property in effect, without assumption of titles, or revolutionary disturbance, or a risk of reaction, or any extension of the functions of government, or any dubious and dangerous experimentation. To quote from the volume itself,[1] it seemed to its author that "we should satisfy the law of justice, we should meet all economic requirements, by at one stroke abolishing all private titles, declaring all land public property, and letting it out to the highest bidders in lots to suit, under such conditions as would sacredly guard the private right to improvements." Henry George thought that we should thereby "secure, in a more complex state of society, the same equality of rights that in a ruder state were secured by equal partitions of the soil." He believed that by thus " giving the use of the land to who ever could procure the most from it, we should secure the greatest production." And he held this leasing method to be "perfectly feasible."

But he did not think it in all respects as good a method as the one he had to propose. To him it seemed that the restoration of the land itself "would involve a needless shock to present customs and habits of thought, which is to be avoided;" and "would involve a needless extension of governmental machinery, which is to be avoided." For "it is an axiom of statesmanship," he wrote, "which the successful founders of tyranny have understood and acted upon, that great changes can best be brought about under old forms;" and "we, who would free men, should heed the same truth."

He therefore proposed, not to confiscate land but "to confiscate rent."

Inasmuch as we already take some land rent in taxation, he proposed the slight administrative changes in our taxing methods that would be necessary to take it all in that way thus leaving landowning interests in possession, but taxed approximately the full amount of the ground rent they get or might get from land-using interests.

Yet the immediate practical proposal of Progress and Poverty fell short of that; it was merely to "abolish all taxation save that upon land values."

This, however, was a proposal to begin with, not to end with. To abolish all taxation save that upon land values is just, as a mere fiscal measure, and as a fiscal measure it is also sound scientifically. A just and expedient reform in taxation, it can be advocated and adopted simply as such without reference to its effect on land monopoly; and to the full extent of the formula, or in lesser degree, according to political opportunity and other circumstances. The rest would be only a matter of keeping on. In that character, then, Progress and Poverty puts the fiscal formula forth, and expounds and defends it.

This use of the word "confiscate" has afforded opportunity for some superficial criticism. Since the word has disagreeable connotations in common use, a better one for the purpose might possibly have been chosen. But it is doubtful if any other would have been as appropriate in denotation. This word comes from the same root as "fiscal," and alludes to public revenues. Its unpleasant significance is due to historical seizures of private property for public revenues unjustly, or by way of penalty. But Henry George's proposal is to turn ground rent regularly into the public treasury, not as a penalty nor an aggression, but because that is where ground rent justly belongs.

But in itself this formula, though so fully carried out as to take public revenues from land values alone, might in the long run be of no effect in abolishing involuntary poverty with social progress. Precisely as increase of population, industrial inventions, governmental efficiency and economy, and other modes of social progress tend to increase the wealth of landowning interests without increasing that of land-using interests, so would land value taxation, if levied so lightly as to leave a large and widening margin between land value taxes and land values. Not at first, indeed, might it do so in fact; but the tendency would become manifest increasingly if land tax exactions were to remain far below ground rent possibilities.

While, then, Progress and Poverty proposes the substitution for all other taxation of a single tax on land values, advocating it on its merits as a tax reform, the author did not allow the book to stop with that proposal. His practical plan was designed to be progressive. It contemplates any step, however timid, for the reduction of taxes on industrial processes, and increasing them on land monopoly. But only as a beginning. This is but a means to an end, the end being the extreme of abolishing approximately all profit in landowning as distinguished from land using.

Since the taxation of land values " must necessarily be increased just as we abolish other taxes," says Progress and Poverty, we set out practically with the proposal to "abolish all taxation save that upon land values," leaving the extension of the system to the future. For, the argument continues, "when the common right to land is so far appreciated that all taxes are abolished save those which fall upon rent, there is no danger of much more than is necessary to induce them to collect the public revenues, being left to individual landholders."

It was with reference to this initial proposal in practical statesmanship for recovery of "the land for the people," this proposal that "all taxation save that upon land values" be abolished, that the words Single Tax grew into use in the English-speaking world. In Great Britain the name is now nearly superseded by Taxation of Land Values. Neither name may bear a very rigid logical test, or close etymological inspection. The former came into vogue without design, and the latter gained strength from the quite peculiar relations of the British taxes to British land values. But names of social movements, like names of persons, are seldom very accurate in description. Nor need they be. Their function is not so much to describe, as conveniently to identify. Whatever be the name of a cause, it will be cherished affectionately by friends of the cause and be scorned by its enemies; and substitutions of names will not weaken the affection of the one nor turn the scorn of the other aside.

Be the name "Single Tax," then, or "Taxation of Land Values," it will serve well enough, as long as it "sticks" (which is the sole test of appropriateness in a name), just as other names have served and others may hereafter, to distinguish that forward movement, "back to the land," for which Progress and Poverty maps out the way.


1. Progress and Poverty,/i>, book viii, chapter ii.