Henry George's Influence
on the Christian Socialists

Peter d'A. Jones

[Excerpted from the book The Christian Socialist Revival 1877-1914,
published by Princeton University Press, 1968]

The disagreement between [P.J.B.] Buchez and Saint-Simon is not unlike the later debate between the American reformer Henry George and the English socialists (Fabians and Marxists): George saw land ownership as the root of all social evil and wished to destroy it (peacefully, by rent appropriation through a single Tax on the increment of land values); but the socialists of the 1880's could not understand why George stopped short at land rents - why not go on to tax the unearned interest on capital too? Henry George thought that capitalists performed an important and productive economic function; the socialists either denied this function (as Buchez did) or, recognizing the function itself, demanded that the State should perform it. Insofar as some British Christian socialists of the 1880's and 1890's followed George rather than the Fabians or Marx, they failed to catch up with Buchez, their spiritual founder.[p.17]

STUART HEADLAM

To the early influence of Thomas Wodehouse was not added that of the American Henry George. We have seen that Progress and Poverty was published in England in 1880 and that George became a personal friend of Headlam's during the six hectic visits to Britain in the 1880's. Headlam remained faithful to George's Single Tax on land values; it remained his main economic goal at all times. Yet he allowed himself a wide margin of politically useful ambiguity, since most of his socialist colleagues had passed beyond the Single Tax and on to other things. Stewart Headlam became a leading member of the Georgeist Land Reform Union at its inception in 1883, but was also a leading Fabian socialist for thirty-eight years (from December 1886 until his death). He served on the Committee of Fifteen which drew up the "Basis" of the Fabian Society in 1887, wrote an important Fabian Tract, served on the Fabian executive in 1890-1891 and for the ten years from 1901 to 1911, and frequently presided and lectured at Fabian debates.[p.103]

In April 1884 at a farewell banquet for Henry George, Headlam declared private property in land to be in ethical opposition both to the Ten Commandments and to the teaching and life of Jesus Christ.[p.116]

Meanwhile Headlam had not been idle. His Fabian Tract No. 42, Christian Socialism, was read to the Society on 8 January 1892 and published in that year. …The argument throughout was crystal clear and a good summary of the sacramental socialist position; but the policy directive - the Single Tax - must have disappointed the Fabians of 1892. It was misleading that Headlam claimed to speak for all Christian socialists, because the majority of them were not in fact satisfied with Henry George's theory. Nonetheless, Headlam alleged in his Trct of 1892 that "The main plank in the platform of the Christian socialist, the chief political reform at which he aims, … is summed up in the resolution moved by the English Land Restoration League in Trafalgar Square …" and followed this with a full exposition of Henry George's Single Tax: "We Christian socialists then, maintain that this is the most far-reaching reform … [and] that morality is impossible without it." There were in existence at this time the Christian Social Union, the Labour church, and the Christian socialist Society, none of which accepted the Single Tax, besides countless individual, unorganized Christian socialists.[p.137]

HENRY CAREY SHUTTLEWORTH

…Shuttleworth was an admirer of Henry George and was elected to the Committee of the English Land Restoration League … in May 1884, with Headlam and W.E. Moll, when that society was formed out of the previous Land Reform Union. He knew George personally, but did not limit his own political aims to the Single Tax. No one scheme, he felt, could save England.[p.121]

JOHN ELLIOTSON SYMES

Economically, Symes defended the principle of private property in capital, and was prepared to attack monopoly only in land. He was a Henry Georgeist who simply never got beyond the state of land-value taxation. Having met George in 1882, Symes subsequently joined the Land Reform Union and was elected to its General Committee. He heard in advance of George's second visit to Britain, and wrote in 1883 inviting him to speak at Nottingham: "Things have been moving since then [1882]. Your book more than any other has made the cry of the poor heard. The more strictly economic parts have made hundreds of converts and yet have not made anything like the mark they should with scientific economists or with amateurs.

To remedy this failing, Symes's own economics textbook when it appeared was heavily loaded in favor of the Single Tax. In January 1884 he spoke at a Georgeist "clerical conference" at the Claring Cross Hotel (with Headlam in the chair), warning "socialists who speak as if capital was of no assistance to labour" that they would end up by "driving capital abroad." The Christian Socialist vigorously repudiated this standard conservative argument as an "old bug-bear," and four years later Headlam found it necessary to censure his former ally for publishing an "obselete" economics textbook "on the old pre-Ruskinian lines, …which ignores the existence of 'illth' side by side with wealth." Symes's Political Economy, he said with disgust, "is hardly worthy of the clergyman who so boldly advocated socialism by taxation some years ago in London. …We shall be glad to see what our scientific socialist friends have to say … especially on Mr. Symes's extraordinary admiration for employers." This particular criticism is curious, coming from an ardent Georgeist like Headlam, and perfectly illustrates the basic ambiguity of Headlam's position in the Single Tax movement; his own interests were much wider than any single tax or measure.[pp.106-107]