henry george

[edwad]

I've seen his name pop up a lot recently and i know that marx didnt take him seriously but I've started reading his book progress and poverty. I'm not very far in, but I'm not really impressed. my only reasoning for reading his book is that he offered an interesting critique of marxism that is unique in that it goes against contemporary political economy and the austrian school, which is why I'm curious if he ever theorized anything that could be useful for communists. i know a lot of early american socialists considered themselves georgists, which leads me to believe that maybe he can be taken seriously to an extent, and a lot of rightists also accept his ideas, so i guess his theories were useful enough to influence a lot of people with different political baggage.

i plan on finishing the book, but just out of curiosity i was wondering if anyone on here thinks that he said some good things or had some ideas that are useful to us in the way we approach economics and critique capitalism.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

There isn't really a whole lot you can get out of Henry George or Georgism that would be helpful to socialism. George still held firmly to the idea of private property; The only difference was that he believed in instituting a single, uniform land value tax. This wasn't necessarily a unique idea (Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson espoused similar ideas).

Other than that, George was in every way a classical liberal.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The problem with George's thinking from a contemporary perspective is that his definition of "economic rent" looks to be way too narrow, looking only at land value. Modern classical economist Michael Hudson pointed to the broadcast spectrum as another area where economic rent is extracted.