Georgism

[HellaGoose]

I've recently been reading about Georgism and Land Value Taxes...I know that Marx was critical of it, but how do different divisions of the rev left view it? Are there any real examples of it in practice, and how if so how did it work?

Thanks!

[PhoenixAsh]

I don't understand the concept of having a tax system in a communist society...so Georgism isn't revolutionary.

It doesn't change the mode of production and it basically just deals with the question of private ownership of land as the basis of the taxation by the state. It leaves private ownership of everything else alone and still allows for wealth accumulation through exploitation.

[Red Commissar]

Well, it probably doesn't count but there's a board game, "The Landlord's Game" which is believed to have been at the very least the inspiration for the better known Monopoly board game that came later if not its precursor. The creator of that game, Elizabeth Magie, created it on Georgist principles to show the way rents were manipulative and exploitative. I do not know if she felt that it was successful in that respect, and unfortunately much of what she had done along with the board game is lost to history.

Beyond the attempts of some Georgists to try and bring this about through participation in elections much like the social democrats of the late 1800s, I do not know of any active attempts by a Georgists to put this into practice.

There were some utopian-type collectives founded by groups who ran it on Georgist principles, though they weren't very widespread- by the time Henry George's book was published it was after the once common occurrence for utopian communities to be founded in remote areas to try and implement these practices.

The two most well-known were in Arden, Delaware and Rose Valley, Pennsylvania. Rose Valley as far as I can tell was not as successfully compared to Arden. Arden was founded by individuals who were inspired by Georgist principles on land ownership, the Arts and Crafts ideas of William Morris, and some concepts from Kropotkin. Land in Arden was owned in common and parceled out to its residents, with the tax on land use being the only one levied by the city. Among some of its residents were Upton Sinclair (author of the Jungle) and Ella Bloor, an early figure in American communism. Looking at wikipedia Arden inspired similar attempts elsewhere in Delaware, though only two major towns came out of this. It seems that Arden is still being run on this system to some extent, but it should be noted it is a fairly small town (a bit over 400) and that the other towns that were inspired by it no longer run on the system.