Preface to the Book
The Economics of Henry George: History's Rehabilitation of
America's Greatest Early Economist
Phillip J. Bryson
[Published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2012]
A copy of Henry George's Progress and Poverty was in the
library of my parents. It was part of a set of classical books
acquired by my mother, who loved to read. It was a remnant from a time
when many people read Henry George, although the public of his day was
not generally more interested in books on economics than they are
today. I didn't actually read the book for another forty or fifty
years, for my interest in and introduction to economics did not happen
to be based on George's masterpiece. Still, I ultimately came back to
him when an opportunity arose to devote some time to his book.
As an academic, I could not write about George's writings simply to
praise them. Any work of economics endowed with inherent worth must be
reviewed, analyzed, understood, and appreciated first. Then, if
praiseworthy, it should be praised. Since my training and professional
trajectory were established long before I came to George, I cannot
properly be described as a Georgist, a term and a type that is
discussed in the book. Yet I do not hesitate to say that my admiration
of the man and of his economics is great indeed. But I wrote the book
for another reason. I would like to provide interested readers a
single source that addresses the man, the analysis, the nature and
impact of his work and its role not only in the era between the Civil
and the Great Wars, but also today at the beginning of the 21st
century.
By searching on line, one can find numerous brief descriptions of
Henry George's life and the reasons for his fame in the late 1800s and
early 1900s. To find a more detailed and historically valuable
biography of him, one must turn to the work of his son, Henry George,
Jr. That book is long and detailed, so that important information
about George's life, essential to gain an appreciation of his economic
analysis and policy views, is not readily obtained. This book provides
a review of the methodology by which George thought economic analysis
should be produced. It also reviews more general aspects of his life
and work, and how they were informed by his Weltanschauung and
formal economic analysis. This is done with the hope that it will
assist the reader in coming to understand George himself, his thought
and his policy proposals.
An attempt is then made to explicate the analysis that led to the
publication of George's most famous work, Progress and Poverty.
George presents to the world in this work his theory of economic
distribution, which fits neatly into the rubrics of classical
economics. As George presented his theory to the world, classical
theory was already doing its best to slip quietly into the dustbins of
history. Alfred Marshall, several other famous European economists,
John Bates Clark and other American economists were developing or in
the process of presenting theories that would move the world from the
classical to the neo-classical era of economics. Nevertheless, the
world at large was unconcerned about the history of economic analysis
and George's theory, presented in a rich and competent English, spread
rapidly in several other languages among the literate classes of the
economically developed countries.
Professional economists were sometimes jealous of George's success
and they were sometimes concerned that he did not clothe his thoughts
in more modern economic methodologies. In any case, they seemed
uniformly opposed, sometimes vehemently so, to George's explanation of
the simultaneous phenomena in contemporary societies of progress and
poverty. The book therefore addresses the key elements of George's
analysis and how they fit into the economics of his time, as well as
in the eras before and after.
A very important part of George's analysis, that dealing with the
timelessly relevant and controversial issue of free trade vs.
protection, remains of special significance today. Since free trade
seems often to be of interest only to professional economists, the
public discussion having largely been given over in the last few years
in the United States as a sacrificial lamb to the domain of populist
politics, it is of great worth to review George's clear and persuasive
arguments for free trade from the perspective of our time. This book
undertakes that review.
It will likewise prove to be of great interest to examine George's
treatment of the economic resource of land, the national land policies
of his time, and the significance of his work for the issues of land,
urban economics and urban development in our own time. It is in this
area that George's influence is apparently the most direct and
durable. His legacy in this area is significant not only in academic
terms, but in terms of the policies that are guiding efforts made to
rationalize these national concerns both in the United States and in
numerous other countries around the world.
The timeliness of George's analysis in the area of land and land
policy brings us quite naturally to the final topic of the book. It is
implicitly a tribute to George to review the influence that he has had
on the profession of economics as a whole. Our discussion will
conclude, therefore, with a review of the influence Henry George has
had on economic analysis and policy developments in our time.
I am deeply grateful to the Marriott School of Brigham Young
University for its support of this research. The School's Dean, Gary
Cornia, has demonstrated interest in and support for the project from
its inception several years ago. Cornia had not yet become Dean at
that time, but he encouraged me to pursue my interest in Henry George
and connected me with the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy in Boston,
which provided financial support to get the study launched. The
Institute certainly cannot be blamed for any inadequacies in this
work, for its support did not extend beyond the inauguration of the
project, and after a slow start reflecting my involvement in several
other projects, this one remained a back-burner effort for several
years. I appreciate both Dean Cornia and the Lincoln Institute for
having gotten me started on this research. I also owe gratitude for
the cooperative and collegial helpfulness of Mark A. Sullivan at the
Schalkenbach Foundation for permission to reprint the Andelson article
which appears as the appendix to Chapter 6.
Finally, I am grateful to my parents, especially my mother, for
having shown me at a tender age the joy of reading good books. I
express gratitude for my own life's companion, Pat, for teaching the
same thing to our children and grandchildren while supporting me in
the production of a few scholarly books. I accept without rancor the
large likelihood that those have contributed somewhat less joy to
readers.
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