IMPLEMENTING GEORGISM

It was Henry George himself who first obtained a charitable status for the movement he begun (the Hutchins Legacy, 1889).   From that we may know that he thought the purpose of the movement was educational.  

Confirmation of this comes from Social Problems (1883) “The great work of the present for every man, and every organization of men, who would improve social conditions, is the work of education – the propagation of ideas” (p.243).

But some in the movement believe that its object is political, to enact legislation.   Many of these believe that the movement is obstructed by its charitable status.   Some have worked long and hard to destroy that status.   Thus, the matter is deserving of some attention.  

A Philosophy not a Tax Reform

Georgism is a philosophy not a tax reform.    Once again, let Henry George say it.     Writing to Pope Leo XIII in 1891 he said

“Your Holiness will see from the explanation I have given that the reform we propose, like all true reforms, has both an ethical and an economic side.   By ignoring the ethical side, and pushing our proposal merely as a reform of taxation, we would avoid the objections that arise by confounding ownership with possession … To put our proposals in this way would be to urge them merely as a matter of wise public expediency.

“There are indeed many single-tax men who do put our proposals in this way; who seeing the beauty of our plan from a fiscal standpoint do not concern themselves further.   But to those who think as I do, the ethical is the more important side.   Not only do we not wish to evade the question of private property in land, but to us it seems that the beneficent and far-reaching revolution we aim at is too great a thing to be accomplished by ‘intelligent self-interest’, and can be carried by nothing less than the religious conscience” (The Condition of Labour, pp.21-2)

Mr George was of course indirectly referring to the view of Thomas Gaskell Shearman that the most rapid way forward for the movement was to avoid the abstract and controversial elements in the founder’s ideas and, rather, to urge free trade and the superiority of land values taxation over other taxation.   

Those who have inherited the legacy left by Thomas Shearman (not Henry George) have found it profoundly frustrating that Henry George left no extensive writing on the mechanics for implementing his ‘single tax’.   Over ensuing decades many have repaired his ‘oversight’ by untold numbers of implementation plans.

They were right.  Henry George wrote nothing systematic about enacting legislation.   He never spelt out the mechanics of assessment and collection of the ‘single tax’.     Beyond seeming to be in favour of some gradual shift of taxes toward the ‘single tax’ the closest he ever got to the subject was a pretty discursive comment in The Standard in 1889 about how much rent could be taken by taxation. 

Why was he so remiss?   Again let Henry George explain.  Even of this issue of how much “tax” from land values might be collected he admitted “This is a point on which I have never been clear”.    It was he said “now only purely a theoretical question”.   More complete consideration to such questions lay in the distant future when it became “a practical question”.    In the meantime he said the “road stretches before for a long distance clear and plain”.      That “clear and plain” road was as he put it in Social Problems “the work of education – the propagation of ideas”.

Lessons of History

Mr George’s instincts were perfectly sound.    Social movements are pretty well always begun by some outstanding teacher.   They begin as ideas and propagate over an extended period of time simply by the force of the ideas of that teacher.   Social movements are nothing more than a network of groups that discuss, interpret, educate about and promote those ideas.

When a critical mass of public opinion is reached there usually arises a co-incidence of a charismatic representative leader and some crisis which gives an opportunity to bring about some significant historical event.

Henry George refused to form a political party though, at the invitation of the labour movement, he stood three times for public office.    As he said they were a way he might bring his ideas before the public and excite discussion.

But what if the movement were blighted at the start?    What if another leader arose who perverted the movement so that its followers without knowing it stopped propagating the core ideas and the ethos of the original teacher?    Some in the movement complain about the lack of success of the movement.   But can anything else happen in the circumstance where an alien object and an alien method has taken over the movement?

Conclusion

The “clear and plain road” of education has not failed.  It is too little education that is failing.   We are failing to initiate discussion concerning the basis of ‘the reform’.   We waste our time inventing vapid implementation plans that assume a degree of influence that the movement does not have.  These plans or policy initiatives are prefaced on circumstances that do not exist!

Even if, by the greatest of luck, one of these plans succeeded, it would be as ephemeral as a blade of grass.   That of course is always assuming that it was really about social justice, that is, the relief of involuntary poverty and not about some imported issue.

While education or discussion can take a myriad forms, teaching (really the systematic presentation of key principles) is important because it is the kind of discussion that brings everyone into the closest and most fruitful contact with the philosophical and economic principles that underlie the movement.     

Henry George considered the principles he enunciated to be either self-evident or possible to establish by the most ordinary observation. What he wanted was that those ideas be discussed so that they led somewhere. Discussion was one of favourite words of Mr George.

While inductive research and highlighting the merits of land tax can temporarily arouse public attention, the most salutary lesson about  premature political activity comes from the early history of the movement in the US where during the first decade of the C20  a vast fortune of more than $US300,000 donated by Joseph Fels was wasted to achieve little more than public animosity.