By Leonard Tooke
As a new member of the Thomas Paine Society, I ventured to suggest that Thomas Paine would have had much in common with Henry George (1839-1897) the American political economist. But I forgot that George is not now very well known. So the point is: was George’s decline due to his faults or due to the faults of others? Alas – it is the latter.
Fame-wise, George was once very famous (not, of course, that this proves anything) and in fact, his name was once as much a household name as Karl Marx’s. George was not just a mild commentator but, in fact, he spoke at packed meetings here and abroad and was very much involved with political matters all over the world, especially Ireland. He did not, incidentally, get his ideas from Paine or Condorcet’s colleagues because at the time he had never heard of them. But, in comparing George with Paine, what people forget is that (thanks to people like Paine) people in Henry George’s day were able to speak their minds a little more openly.
But this was to go against George! When it was realised that they could not destroy his logic by force, the authorities used the only other weapons available to them, conspiracy and misrepresentation.
George’s great superiority over all other political economists was that he properly defined terms. The text-books tell us that the pre-French Revolution economistes’ for example had their errors corrected by Adam Smith. But what the text-books seldom tell us is that Adam Smith had his errors corrected by Henry George.
What were the errors of Smith and others? They were really very obvious – once seen. All wealth comes from land; therefore, as all true capital is wealth, this must come from land as well. What, consequently, people need to correct any faults in employment or wealth acquisition is free access to land. Any differences in land (due to fertility or position) should be confiscated and redistributed, thus making a level ‘playing-field’ for all.
George was right to ignore the past acquisition of wealth. This is because most wealth (including capital) is produced daily; it just is not practical to attempt to recover the loot of past thefts. If this seems harsh, then what we have to remember is that most of this ‘loot’ is not wealth at all – but is a piece of paper allowing thieves to steal future wealth.
A great pity is that ‘name-calling’ played its part in George’s logic; and foremost is the name of ‘socialism’. But, nowadays, we should be more aware. The socialist of old wanted a fairer, more equal, society, and this is exactly what George wanted. But now, especially after taking a look at today’s world, we should realise that ‘socialism’ has to be more than simply ‘taking out of one pocket and putting into another’. The great difference between the old ‘socialists’ and Henry George was that – much more to the point – George pondered: How did wealth get into the wrong pockets in the first place? In the present social conditions of the civilized world, nothing is clearer than that there is some deep and widespread wrong in the distribution, if not the production, of wealth.