An Appreciation of Henry George
John Dewey
[Written in October 1927. Reprinted from the book,
Significant Paragraphs from Henry George's Progress and Poverty,
published by the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, 1928]
It was a happy thought of Professor Brown to select and arrange
passages from Henry George's immortal work that give the gist of his
contribution to political economy and social philosophy, while the
pages which follow show that the task has been executed with a skill
equal to the idea. The fact that Henry George has an ardent group of
disciples who have a practical program for reform of taxation has
tended to obscure from the recognition of students of social theory
that his is one of the great names among the world's social
philosophers. It would require less than the fingers of the two hands
to enumerate those who from Plato down rank with him. Were he a native
of some European country, it is safe to assert that he would long ago
have taken the place upon the roll of the world's thinkers which
belongs to him, irrespective, moreover, of adherence to his practical
plan. But for some reason we Americans are slow to perceive and
celebrate intellectual claims in comparison with the merits of
inventors, political leaders and great industrialists. In the case of
the author of "Progress and Poverty" the failure has
doubtless been accentuated in academic circles by the fact that Henry
George thought, wrote, and worked outside of them. And in the world at
large, in spite of the fact that no works on political economy have
had the circulation and reading obtained by his writings, discussion
of the practical merits of his plan of reform of taxation has actually
tended to blur his outstanding position as a thinker. This has been
the case because the enormous inertia of social habit and the force of
tremendous vested interests have depreciated his intellectual claims
in order to strengthen opposition to his practical measures.
I do not say these things in order to vaunt his place as a thinker in
contrast with the merits of his proposals for a change in methods of
distributing the burdens of taxation. To my mind the two things go
together. His clear intellectual insight into social conditions, his
passionate feeling for the remediable ills from which humanity
suffers, find their logical conclusion in his plan for liberating
labor and capital from the shackles which now bind them. But I am
especially concerned in connection with Professor Brown's clear and
well-ordered summary, to point out the claims which his social theory
has upon the attention of students. No man, no graduate of a higher
educational institution, has a right to regard himself as an educated
man in social thought unless he has some first-hand acquaintance with
the theoretical contribution of this great American thinker.
This is not the time and place, nor is there need, to dwell upon the
nature of this contribution. Henry George is as clear as he is
eloquent. But I cannot refrain from pointing out one feature of his
thought which is too often ignored -his emphasis upon ideal factors of
life, upon what are sometimes called the imponderables. It is a poor
version of his ideas which insists only upon the material effect of
increase of population in producing the material or monetary increment
in the value of land. One has only to read the third section of these
extracts to note that Henry George puts even greater stress upon the
fact that community life increases land value because it opens "a
wider, fuller, and more varied life," so that the desire to share
in the higher values which the community brings with it is a decisive
factor in raising the rental value of land. And it is because the
present system not only depresses the material status of the mass of
the population, but especially because it renders one-sided and
inequitable the people's share in these higher values that we find in
"Progress and Poverty" the analysis of the scientist
combined with the sympathies and aspirations of a great lover of
mankind. There have been economists of great repute who in their
pretension to be scientific have ignored the most significant elements
in human nature. There have been others who were emotionally stirred
by social ills and who proposed glowing schemes of betterment, but who
passed lightly over facts. It is the thorough fusion of insight into
actual facts and forces, with recognition of their bearing upon what
makes human life worth living, that constitutes Henry George one of
the world's great social philosophers.
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