Henry George and the Economists
Charles B. Fillebrown
[Reprinted from the book, Natural Taxation,
published 1917.
Part I / The Authorities / Chapter 13]
The mutual attitude of single taxers and professors today may not be
easy to define, but the topic would furnish to those concerned what
Horace Greeley was wont to call "mighty interestin' readin'."
Unquestionably, there has been among the professional economists a
tendency not so much to attack as perhaps to ignore the single taxers.
Among the various causes for this attitude one might be assigned as a
certain pronounced air of bumptiousness often observable on the part
of single-tax advocates. To this extent, without doubt, single taxers
themselves will confess it to be their own fault if the professors are
not enamored of them. Jealous for their champion and sharing his
sensitiveness to the indifference of the professors, single taxers
have allowed themselves even in scattered times and places to generate
and foster a spirit of animosity sufficient to keep the opposing lines
well-defined. The following letter from Harold C. Goddard, Professor
of English literature in Swarthmore College, is to the point.
"I have long been interested in Henry George and
the single tax, and I have come to the conclusion that one of the
greatest obstacles in the path of this proposed reform is the single
taxer who regards the single tax as a panacea, a scheme which, could
it be adopted, would automatically solve the principal problems of
humanity. This type of single taxer is generally a man of
intolerably dogmatic and doctrinaire spirit; and since the
doctrinaire spirit is the very antithesis of the scientific and
creative spirits, upon which we must rely for both national and
international harmony, any reform which such a man supports runs the
risk of encountering the skepticism of the wise. When there are
fewer of these doctrinaires, no one will be more surprised than the
single taxers themselves by the sudden accession to their ranks of
hundreds who, long since convinced of the truth of nine-tenths of
the single-tax platform, have shrunk from wearing the label "single
taxer," lest the inference be drawn by the public that, because
they believe in the single tax, they are no longer free to believe
in anything else."
It cannot be denied, as reports have shown, that single taxers
frequently have been inconsiderate of the feelings of the professors.
On the other hand, who is there that can furnish any consequential
list of professors who have attacked with any degree of asperity Henry
George or his particular theory of taxation?
Militancy is not without distinguished apologists. There are people
believe that whatever is good in the world should be fought for.
Peaceful people hold that in a fight the thing fought for it is apt to
be lost sight of, and that the truth conquers in spite of the
fighting. In most fields of reform, however, there are plenty of
fighters who can be trusted to live the gospel they profess. Indeed,
reformers as a class esteem it the natural course to fight the common
enemy, often to fight among themselves. Single taxers are no
exception. All their official organs and their advocates, with few
exceptions, are heralded to "fight" for the cause, and they
do it.
It would be interesting to know if there be any considerable number
of the many public lecturers and speakers for the single tax will have
not at sometimes spoken slightingly of an economist or of his
profession, or what single tax organs have not frequently or
infrequently written disparagingly of the professor of political
economy.
Scholastic discussions, unless carefully guarded, are likely to leave
a bad taste in the mouth. By a hasty or inconsiderate word a battle of
principles may degenerate at once into undignified personalities. For
example, and in a notable foreign instance, a certain professor is
confronted by the complementary statement that "the teachings of
modern economists begin and end nowhere;" that his own teachings "all
through showed a decided intellectual incapacity to stand by any
positive statement;" that his views "illustrate the folly of
rushing into a controversy without preparation or knowledge;" and
that "he must still be considered a tyro both in economics and
ethics." Yet this delinquent economist "approved of taxation
of land values twenty shillings in the pound" and gently
remonstrated, "Is it really worth while to spend so much time and
space in attacking those who want the same thing you want? Is not such
conduct an example of the perversity and futility into which these men
of one idea, whom the world bluntly calls cranks, so often fall?"
Not only are flagrant examples of offensive insinuation frequent, but
there is a supercilious, patronizing style of writing that violates
good taste, instances of which might easily be multiplied. For
example, notwithstanding the declaration of a professor that if
government had started with single tax we should have had from the
first a practically burdenless tax, and that the land user today is
paying to a private individual all that he would pay to the
government, besides direct, indirect, and monopoly taxes, which the
single tax would abolish, yet, because it is thought that this
professor "falls down" before "full single tax,"
he is reminded, after the honeyed compliment that he is better posted
than most of his university brethren, that he "owes it to those
who look to one in his position for a clearer exposition of the
principles of political economy, to revise his argument." Is this
species of veiled affront likely to win the leading economists, their
brethren, and their following to our reform?
This backward survey may well begin with a notable gathering of
economists and single taxers at the conference of the American Social
Sciences Association, Saratoga New York, Sept. 5th 1890. Though not
without its note of discord, this was a distinguished occasion,
bringing together a company of truly representative men, many of them
today men of distinction. The conference was devoted entirely to a
discussion of the single tax. Besides Mr. George, Messrs. S. B. Clark,
Louis F. Post, William Lloyd Garrison, and James R. Carret spoke in
support of his views. Professors J. B. Clark and E. R. A. Seligman,
both now of Columbia University, Dr. William T. Harris, United States
Commissioner of Education, President E. Benjamin Andrews, then of
Brown University, Professor Thomas Davidson of New York, and professor
E. J. James, then of the University of Pennsylvania, took opposite
grounds. Mr. George was accorded every courtesy of debate by the
professors. Regarding the general harmony of this occasion, the
secretary testifies that in the records of the Conference "no
word was expunged nor was there any but the most cordial feelings
toward Mr. George." Professors Seligman, while indulging in
dignified resentment and Mr. George's insinuation of hypocrisy in the
ranks of the professors, said in their defense:
"It is grossly unjust to ascribe to the professors
of political economy a truckling or even an unconscious subservience
to the powers that be. All history disproves this. ....No one is
more desirous of attaining social peace, no one has today a deeper
sympathy with the unhappy lot of the toilers, no one is more anxious
to seek out the true harmony of social interests, than the student
of political economy. If we thought that you had solved the problem,
we would enthrone you high on our council seats; we would reverently
bend the knee and acknowledge in you a master, a prophet."
The next important public utterance of Mr. George after the Saratoga
Conference Was A Perplexed Philosopher, wherein he arraigned
Mr. Spencer in unsparing turns for recantation of what he, Mr. George,
considered fundamental truths. In 1850 Mr. Spencer had announced that
private property in land was wrong. In 1882 he announced that private
property in land was not wrong. Mr. George vigorously assailed the
soundness and the motive of this change of views. As between
condemnation and argument in this critique, the former would seemed at
first glance to preponderate. It was a grievance to Mr. George that
Mr. Spencer chose to ignore the former's book and his work, not so
much is deigning to read Progress and Poverty, referring to it
as "a work which I closed after a few minutes, on finding how
visionary were its qualities." Also, Mr. Spencer believed in
materialism and evolution; Mr. George did not. Mr. George had once met
and abruptly parted from Mr. Spencer at a private dinner. Indeed, as a
resultant of mutual mental hostility these two gentlemen were so
little enamored of one another that one could hardly expect to find in
A Perplexed Philosopher a sympathetic review of Herbert
Spencer.
The beginning of the controversy between George and Spencer may be
traced back to January, 1883, when the Edinburgh Review, in an
article entitled "The Nationalization of Land," gave a fair
review of Progress and Poverty, in which were coupled the
names of George and Spencer, both as associated with communism. The
latter, having little or no knowledge of the former's ideas, shrank
like a sensitive plant from being classed with him, just as hosts of
sensible people will tell you today that they can affiliate with the
single tax but not with the fads and fancies of many single taxers.
Mr. Spencer was also sensitive that the reviewers should have
neglected his synthetic pretensions until their attention was called
to his Social Statics, a book 30 years old, and even then only
in connection with the book of another man. Mr. Spencer stated his
position in a letter to the St. James Gazette of London, which
called forth replies and rejoinders from Huxley, Tyndall, John Morley,
John Laidley, and others. Thus was opened up controversy which from
the first exhibited in ample proportions the free solution of
testiness. Finally, in A Perplexed Philosopher, Mr. George
somewhat irrelevantly made analytical disposal of Mr. Spencer's pet
synthetic labors of a lifetime, his evolution and his materialism. The
following isolated passages show the deflected judgment under which he
treated the alleged recantation:
"I do not regard this as controversy. It is rather
exposure. In turning his back on all he has said before, Mr. Spencer
has not argued, and no explanation is possible that does not impute
motives. ...Instead of manfully defending the truth he had uttered,
or straightforwardly recanting it, Mr. Spencer sought to shelter
himself behind ifs and lots, perhapses and it-may-bes, and the
implication of untruths. ...Mr. Spencer has had much to say of the
unfairness of his critics, but this reply is not merely unfair; it
is dishonest, and that in a way that makes flat falsehood seemed
manly. ...This letter [Mr. Spencer's] is merely an attempt to avoid
responsibility and to placate by subterfuge the powerful landed
interests now aroused to anger. ... Social Statics has been
disemboweled, stuffed, mummified, and then set up in the gardens of
the Spencerian philosophy, where it may be viewed with entire
complacency by Sir John and his Grace. ...Mr. Spencer is thus
untruthful in regard to what he has taught in Social Statics;
he is equally untruthful in regard to his suppression of that book.
...This treatment of land, or of the surface of the earth, as but
one of the natural media, is in the highest degree unphilosophic,
and could be adopted only for the purpose of confusion. ...By aid of
double barreled-ethics and philosophic legerdemain, Mr. Spencer
evidently hopes to keep some reputation for consistency and yet
uphold private property in land. ...They have their choice between
intellectual incapacity and intellectual dishonesty. ...He, Mr.
Spencer, stands ready to sacrifice to his new masters not only his
moral honesty, but even what the morally depraved often cling to --
the pretense of intellectual honesty. ...In this chapter "Justice"
on "The Right to Land," he [Mr. Spencer] proves himself
alike a traitor to all that he once held and to all that he now
holds -- a conscious and deliberate traitor, who assumes the place
of the philosopher, the office of the judge, only to darken truth
and to deny justice; to sell out the right of the wronged, and to
prostitute his powers in the defense of the wronger. ...Is it a
wonder that intellectually, as morally, this chapter is beneath
contempt? ...That part of our examination which crosses what is now
his distinctive philosophy shows him to be as a philosopher
ridiculous, as a man contemptible -- a fawning Vicar of Bray,
clothing in pompous phraseology and arrogant assumption logical
confusions so absurd as to be comical."
Reviewing the whole controversy today, it is not easy to see how the
rules of polemics justified the severe language of Mr. George in which
he made his isolated arraignment of the great apostle of evolution.
Today a student of Spencer would be amazed to find his revision of
1882 of his views of 1850 made the target of such unmeasured censure
and detraction. And what is this offense of Mr. Spencer's that so
smells to heaven? Simply this, and nothing more: in Social Statics
he said that private property in land was wrong; in Justice,
40 years later he said that private property in land was not wrong.
The initial error was in the lack of a clear definition of the point
at issue. The tenet of the wrong of private property in land is in
itself generally conceded to be false and untenable. But George and
Spencer appeared to have conceived themselves constrained to this
belief by the false logic of an inverted argument, to wit: Since all
have a common right to the rent of land, the product of their
collective labor in expenditure, therefore all must have a common
right to the land itself, the gift of nature. Had the issue been
framed in two propositions, instead of one, as follows: (1) All have
an equal right to the surface of the earth in its original state,
because it is the gift of nature; (2) All have a common or joint right
to the artificial rent of land, because it is a common creation --
there might never have arisen the barren and profitless discussion
that is now being considered here, for then the two protagonists might
conceivably have come to an agreement that the second of these
propositions is sound, while the first is crude and false.
In order to show that Mr. Spencer was culpable in this recantation it
is needful for Mr. George to establish the position that Spencer was
right in saying in 1850 that "the right of mankind at large to
the earth's surface is still valid; all deeds, customs, and laws
notwithstanding." This leads to a survey and criticism of
George's argument of 1891 as compared with Spencer's on the same point
in 1850.
Henry George wrote, in Our Land in Land Policy, in 1872 as
follows:
"It by no means follows that there should be no such
thing as property in land, but merely that there should be no
monopolization -- no standing between the man who is willing to work
and the field which nature offers for his labor. For while it is
true that the land of a country is the free gift of the Creator to
all the people of that country, to the enjoyment of which each has
an equal natural right, it is also true that the recognition of
private ownership of land is necessary to its proper use -- is, in
fact, a condition of civilization."
This statement of George can suffer no contradiction. Its truth is
grounded in reason, science, and fact. Conceding individual title to
land, he demanded the socialization of rent by taxation. Title to the
land itself, stable tenure, estate in land, ownership of land in
severalty, whether its value is one dollar or a million dollars, is
necessary to security of improvements. Title to the annual value of
land -- ground rent -- is not necessary to the security of
improvements, which would be equally secure whether one-quarter or
three-quarters of ground rent be taken in taxation. Neither in private
more than in public ownership of land is there any moral or economic
wrong.
There is a persistent though not inexcusable tendency among
economists to confuse the single tax and land nationalization.
Professor Seligman, in the 8th edition of his Essays in Taxation,
thinks himself justified in laying before his 200,000 students and
emulators in the United States colleges and universities the following
version of the single-tax belief:
"Land is the creation of God. ...Therefore no one
has a right to own land. ...When the change advocated is a direct
reversal of the progress of centuries, and a reversion to primitive
conditions away from which all history has traveled, the necessity
for its absolute proof becomes far stronger. The nationalization of
land is a demand which in order to win general acceptance must be
based on theories independent of the doctrine of equal right."
And lo! from whom does such a rapier thrust come but from a gracious
professor to whom single taxers are gratefully indebted for courtesies
and hospitalities, who has journeyed to promote its discussions, and
who at Saratoga forestalled by a generation the single taxers
themselves in the inestimable service of blocking out of keystone to
the single tax arch, demonstrating fully a proposition previously
recognized but not effectively utilized, viz., that the new purchaser
of land, buying as he does free of tax, escapes all tax burdens.
Professor Ely of the University of Wisconsin also has been favoring
English farmers with his views, in the following language:
"I have no sympathy whatsoever with the single tax
or in this country were any other country. ...No civilization has
been built up in modern times upon anything else than the private
ownership of the land; and if you remove that, as the single taxer
proposes to do, it seems to me that you would remove the solid,
substantial foundation of modern civilization."
But what has this to do with the single tax? It was George's special
triumph over Spencer, that in distinctly conceding the legal
ownership, individual tenure of or estate in the land itself, the very
principle the truth of which forced from Spencer his recantation, he
corrected and advanced the issue from the common right to the use of
the earth to the joint right to the enjoyment of rent, making clear
the distinction that land is one thing and rent of land another and
different thing -- that to take in taxation the rent of land is not
necessary to take the land itself. The nationalization of land, with
its incidental enlargement of government functions, formed no part of
George's program. We appeal to the brotherhood of economists at the
present stage of the art of taxation to forgive us for expostulating
lustily against such a travesty of the single tax as that it implies
the abolition of the institution of private property in land.
Is it, on the other hand, complimentary to the keepers of the single
tax ark, and variegated expositors of its doctrine, that after thirty
years of discussion and disputation nearly every "objector"
down to this very day is spending the half of his ammunition upon
deserted earthworks, viz., that the single tax means the overthrow of
the institution of private property in land, and that Henry George
stood for the nationalization of land. If Henry George had gone so far
even as to have put himself under the dominance of a "steering
committee" chosen from his enemies the professors, he could
hardly have fared worse than he has done at the hands of his friends.
Listen to the remarks of a well-known disciple at a Henry George
Memorial Meeting, the like of which subtly do incalculable damage to
any great cause, because subject to misunderstanding:
"I believe we are in a revolutionary movement. If I
did not think so I wouldn't be interested in it. We are in a
movement which aims to let the poor and the disinherited own the
earth, and that movement is sweeping over the entire civilized
world."
If it be granted, however, as many of his professed followers
maintain, that Henry George did really believe that individual
permanent title, tenure, or estate in land is wrong, then when Spencer
in 1882 recanted the first six sections of his original Social
Statics (1850), the championship of this barren doctrine was left
practically to Henry George alone, as no other economists of note can
be now recalled to share the honors with him.
After all, have we not haggled long enough about what Mr. George said
or meant? What is wanted is a science of obtaining the normal revenue
of a community. The immense forward strides in the development of
economic science in general ought to make it possible to determine the
truth regarding of his system, even independent of what he said forty
years ago. If this reconciliation is not possible, why not
discharge the single tax at once of this incubus and handicap of "common"
property in land, wash off the slate, and strike out de novo
for a science of natural revenue, if needs be, sans Spencer,
sans George, sans theories, sans speculations?
|
