The Essence of Georgism

Oscar B. Johannsen

[Reprinted from Fragments, July-September 1967]

GEORGISM. WHAT is it? Is it a wild nightmare of madmen, is it the last hope of the capitalists as Karl Marx sneered, or is it a beautiful but hopeless dream of visionaries?

Let us see.

- Two, and only two, fundamentals exist - man and the universe (land). The union of the two - man laboring on the land - gives birth to wealth, those material things which man needs and desires not only to exist but to help make life a magnificently fascinating experience.

- All men have equal rights to life. (Who can tell the king from the peasant when they are naked?)

- Land is of unequal quality. (Succulent fruit-bearing land exists side by side with worthless deserts.)

- Land is freely given to all men. (When did Mother Nature give a title deed to the land, or portion thereof, to any man, no matter how exalted?)

- Two men cannot occupy the same portion of the earth at the same time.

The contradictions here posed create a problem which men must solve if harmony is to prevail. Men need land on which and from which to live, but land is of unequal opportunity. At the same time, while all are equally entitled to any portion of the land, no two men can occupy the same portion at the same time. So, man has the problem of dividing up the unequal opportunities of the land among the equal claimants to them with justice to all.

The solution is readily apparent if one is not afraid to abandon old habits of thought. The principle involved is the same as that used in apportioning the seats in a theatre where the best seats in a theatre go to the highest bidders. All the people need do is to act collectively in small groups, as New England Town Governments do and publicly auction the land among themselves periodically - annually, biennially, or for whatever time-period is desired. The land will thus be divided according to the people's willingness and ability to pay the rent, with the best land going to those paying the most rent.

This rent belongs to all the people, for only the people justly own the land - not those now called the owners. (Neither man nor land can ever justly be treated as private property. Everything else, that is, everything which human beings make, is private property, whether it be a simple spade or a mighty blast furnace or skyscraper.) As the rent belongs to all, the Town Hall Governments need only divide it among the inhabitants in their areas on a per capita basis.

To recapitulate: If men act in concert to lease the land to those desiring it, and will then disburse the rent equally among themselves, they will have realized the condition of land which is freely available to all, taking into account the fact that two things cannot occupy the same place at the same time and that land is of unequal opportunity. The individual renting a piece of land compensates all other men for their claims to it through his payment of the rent to the community. As all have an equal opportunity to bid for it and willingly forego their claims to this highest bidder, justice is maintained.

With the rent going into a common kitty, which is then divided equally among all the people, everyone is recompensed for permitting some men actually to have control over the use of the land for a stated period of time.

In its broadest sense, land represents not merely access to the gifts of Nature, but the opportunity to utilize one's capacities. Only a relatively few would actually want control of land, but as long as it is all freely available, it represents an irreducible minimum to which anyone can resort, if necessary.

With the man-made barrier of private property in land eliminated, the primary industries, as agriculture and mining, tend to produce at the maximum men desire. This causes increased production in the secondary industries, as manufacturing and transportation, and also requires increased services from the financial and banking fields, as well as from the arts and sciences. With production and services tending to a maximum, employment opportunities will be so numerous that people will readily find the type best suited to their capacities.

The twin cancers which have afflicted all societies down through the ages have been private property in man and in land. When either or both evils exist, society eventually crumbles for justice will not tolerate evil.

Georgism naturally is anti-statist. However, it recognizes that the anarchist is in error, for man does need government. But he needs it not for protection, road building or education for these are all functions of private enterprise. He needs government for one reason, and one reason only - to divide up the land among the equal claimants to it with justice to all. Government is founded on two laws of Nature, one physical, the other ethical. The physical law is that two things cannot occupy the same place at the same time while the ethical law is that all men have equal rights to the land. It is for the resolution of this contradiction that men must create government.

But Georgism, while recognizing the need for government, also is cognizant of the fact that men cannot act together collectively and still maintain justice if the number of men is large, or the extent of land too great. Government must be barely above the family level - on the order of the New England Town Hall Governments, with the land area small enough so that all members of the community can be acquainted with it. To put it simply, Georgism recognizes that men live in an ordered universe. For them to live in harmony with one another freedom is the great desideratum - freedom from those corruptions of government called States; freedom for all men to do as they please as long as they do not interfere with one another's equal rights.

Man - laborer - is the father. Land - opportunity - is the mother. The union of the two under the milieu of justice enables man to give birth to myraid creations of his individuality; and for those creations to be the highest to which he dare aspire, both man himself and the land must be free.