A Little Psychoanalysis
May Do Us Some Good

Luke Bentley

[Reprinted from the International Union Newsletter, November, 1969]


Aren't we Georgists too ready to assume that our failings are more attributable to baleful outside influents than to our own weaknesses and attitudes?

The stock view is that vested interests are the main cause of our lack of. support with popular inertia the secondary cause. Perhaps we should risk seeming amateurishly psychoanalytical and look nearer home for the cause of our troubles.

The world is crowded with failed movements. Each of them originally set out with great ideals to benefit mankind in some manner, gathered great support and yet somewhere along the line the followers dwindled away so that today only a shell is left, supported by its earlier investments and with a nucleus of followers who repeat all the well-worn phrases. Occasionally they get new converts but barely enough to replace the aging old guard.

We all know of some such movement and we know that its sales story is more or less the same as it was originally - but has not the emphasis changed a little? What seems a tiny change in emphasis to the fervent believer can make a world of difference to the reception accorded his sales story by a critical outside world. The "re-arranged"l top-seller in the world of pop music rarely has the impact of the original. The "faithful copy" of a work of art lacks something.

In accusing vested interests are we saying that they have become much stronger and much better organized since Henry George's day? Then why have not we? And if the vested interests of private monopoly have become so strong how is it that communism increases? And again, why is it then that we are less successful than the communists in propagating our ideas?

The stock answer to that last question is rather sad: "Only we are clever enough to comprehend LVT. The rest of the world has insufficient intelligence." Could any answer be more pitiful? Yet it is apparently accepted by the faithful and is doubtless one more nail in the coffin of LVT. The desire to retain our self-respect has become greater then our desire to spread the message. It is likely that all pioneering movements tend to founder on this rock of pseudo-respectability. The leaders under cloth caps secretly yearn for the approbation of the Establishment and so the sales story continues gradually to alter its emphasis.

Dissident elements within the Georgist movement claim that the continuing necessity for state welfare was acknowledged by George but that now Georgists reject it. Is this a minor, unimportant re-arrangement of the original sales story or would it seem to the critical outsider a major change of emphasis? Has it made the original sales story clearer or has it lost us many potential converts? It is very difficult .to pin down the facts about our own actions and easy to blame vested interests.

As for the secondary cause of our lack of success, popular inertia, current events show that large numbers of people are protesting most vigorously against unsatisfactory living conditions ail over the world. There is nothing inert about these people. RENT is an extremely important word in the vocabulary of Western protest although it is to our discredit that it remains a reference to housing rent only. LAND is even more important in the vocabulary of the underdeveloped nations from South America through Korea and Vietnam to India - where "Gramdan," the land revolution, stressed not the ownership of land but the access to its use and is now reported to be controlling the use of millions of acres. In the face of such activity it is hardly fitting that we should use the word inertia. People and events are moving world-wide and we have not delivered our message to them.

Are we able, clearly and concisely, to relate our message of land and taxation to the disturbances in Vietnam, Biafra, France, U.S.A., Northern Ireland and so on? Very little of this appears in our literature. Is it that we regard the non-Georgist world as those "others,"' the outsiders, not of the true faith and barely worth reporting? One of England's greatest living propagandists has already described us as a minority religious sect of which he knows very little.

It may be that we are adopting a "holier than thou" attitude in which the outsider is assumed to be a child, unlearned, ignorant of the world, who needs to be impressed with the importance of ourselves as individuals.

Needless to say the outsider is no child. He .knows perhaps more than we ourselves of what is going on and has a good deal to teach us. To a large extent he is impatient of verbosity -- he already gets more than he wants from the politicians -- and recognizes and avoids it like the plague.

Perhaps we should consciously adopt principles of salesmanship such as:

• Get the customer to do most of the talking.
• Listen - and comprehend what he says.
• Relate our story to his point of view -- use the word You, not I or We.
• Stress not the mechanics of our product but the benefits it will bring him.

It is extremely difficult for reformers to allow any one else to do the talking or the writing but it is necessary if only to keep ourselves fully aware of our own relative insignificance as a group.

An interesting exercise is to contact a "failed" group, whether religious, political or social - any group which fails to expand -- and observe through confrontation and discussion just why that ostensibly well-meaning group has repelled so many ordinary citizens to the point of incurring their active dislike. This may well be the most important answer non-Georgists have for us as to why we do not expand.