Georgism is an obscure ideology based around the writings of 19th century economist Henry George, who argued that a host of social problems emerge due to inequalities in the distribution of land and other natural resources, and his solution was to impose a land value tax based on the value of unimproved land. His seminal work, Progress and Poverty, made a couple valid points, including a refutation of Malthusianism and a thesis that technological development could not solve poverty under the current exploitative system, and he popularized the economic concept that later became known as “externalities.” It had a moment where it was hugely popular, and it inspired a lot of Progressive Era and New Deal reformers in the US. However, he was writing around the same time as Marx, and his arguments lacked an understanding of class interests.
George claimed that he had, “united the truth perceived by the school of Smith and Ricardo to the truth perceived by the schools of Proudhon and Lasalle,” and he seemed to believe that it was possible to unite proletariat and bourgeois interests against that of landowners (despite the significant overlap and unity of interests between bourgeoisie and landowners) in order to reform the system. That strategy is the reason why you haven’t heard of it, because Georgists have often resisted cooperation with the left in hopes of appealing to other liberals/capitalists, who generally dismiss them as socialists anyway. And of course, I can point to any number of examples of governments that attempted to reclaim their natural resources for the public good and were overthrown by CIA coups.
Today, it’s popular among weird cranks who want to find a technical policy solution that doesn’t require confronting power directly. Its central thesis, that the proposed reform would fix everything, is also its own refutation - if it fixes the problem, then the interests that benefit from the problem would never allow it to be passed.
Georgism is an obscure ideology based around the writings of 19th century economist Henry George, who argued that a host of social problems emerge due to inequalities in the distribution of land and other natural resources, and his solution was to impose a land value tax based on the value of unimproved land. His seminal work, Progress and Poverty, made a couple valid points, including a refutation of Malthusianism and a thesis that technological development could not solve poverty under the current exploitative system, and he popularized the economic concept that later became known as “externalities.” It had a moment where it was hugely popular, and it inspired a lot of Progressive Era and New Deal reformers in the US. However, he was writing around the same time as Marx, and his arguments lacked an understanding of class interests.
George claimed that he had, “united the truth perceived by the school of Smith and Ricardo to the truth perceived by the schools of Proudhon and Lasalle,” and he seemed to believe that it was possible to unite proletariat and bourgeois interests against that of landowners (despite the significant overlap and unity of interests between bourgeoisie and landowners) in order to reform the system. That strategy is the reason why you haven’t heard of it, because Georgists have often resisted cooperation with the left in hopes of appealing to other liberals/capitalists, who generally dismiss them as socialists anyway. And of course, I can point to any number of examples of governments that attempted to reclaim their natural resources for the public good and were overthrown by CIA coups.
Today, it’s popular among weird cranks who want to find a technical policy solution that doesn’t require confronting power directly. Its central thesis, that the proposed reform would fix everything, is also its own refutation - if it fixes the problem, then the interests that benefit from the problem would never allow it to be passed.