50 Years Ago: The taxation of land values (1963)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

In dealing with the question of Taxation of Land Values it must be remembered that the advocates of this measure, from Henry George to Joseph Hyder, always assumed the retention of capitalism in all its other features.

Under such conditions there is no difference in principle between taxing land and taxing lace. Both are cases of the Governmental powers being used to take wealth from members of society for general purposes—as wise old Benjamin Franklin saw.

Taxation is, of course, necessary under capitalism, and the only question is, how shall the “burden” be apportioned among the taxpayers—the capitalist class. The land-owning section are quite sure the “burden” should not be placed on them, while the industrial capitalists are equally certain that they should not be called upon to pay. Hence the minor quarrel between them over taxes.

But under capitalism the joining together of these two sections into a land-owning industrial capitalist group is steadily increasing. For them the problem is solved. From the general capitalist standpoint the portion of wealth best able to bear the “burden” of taxation is land, as it disturbs the production and distribution of commodities— the great factor of capitalism—less than any other method of raising the sum required. Hence large landowners who happen to be still more largely interested in industry, favour taxation of land values, to the great bewilderment of “the man in the street,” who finally explains a landowner being in favour of taxing land by the theory that he is ”a good man.”

Except, then, as an indication of the development of capitalism, and the concentration of both land and industrial capital into fewer hands, taxation of land values, even up to 20s. in the £, no more leads to Socialism than would taxation of toffee. On the contrary, it would merely be one of the steps in the more efficient organisation of capitalism for the benefit of the capitalists.

['The Forum: Taxation of Land Values' by Jack Fitzgerald, December 1913 Socialist Standard.]

Letter: Landlords and capitalists (1949)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

(We have received the following letter from Mr. C. Stowasser, Manchester, who writes on the notepaper of the “Henry George School of Social Science.” Ed. Comm.)

Dear Sir,

In the interesting article of your May issue, “A Budget Secret Revealed,” you made one or two statements which I would like to comment on. In the first place you implied that the subsidy system should have been extended by increases of subsidies on foodstuffs. There are two points to be made on this: (a) subsidies, like taxes, ultimately come for the most part out of the pockets of the workers; (b) subsidies instead of increasing production merely help to increase land rents and are therefore of benefit to the landlords only. In the second place you implied that all incomes should be equalised. Now, although I sympathise strongly with this idea, 1 should like to point out that even if there was a completely equal distribution of wealth in this country it would only raise workers’ wages by about five pounds per annum. So you see the question is really and truly mainly one of production and redistribution. Now what all Socialists fail to see is that full production can only be achieved when we break down that all powerful barrier, the Land Monopoly. As you well know, since there is no tax on the site-value of land, the landowner is able to withhold valuable town land from use and by so doing creates a tremendously high monopoly value of land. Is it any wonder that there is poverty and unemployment when the community must pay a toll, amounting to as much as £500,000 or £600,000 an acre in the case of towns, for the right to use land. If we taxed landowners on the positional value of their land all landowners would be forced either to use their land fully or sell cheap—there would be full employment and plenty of houses—the exploitation of the worker would cease. Your paper shows clearly that autocratic planning does not bring prosperity—why don’t you go one step further and proclaim that true freedom can only come by giving all men access to the land through the taxation of land values.

Yours sincerely,

C. Stowasser, B.A. Comm.

Reply:

Our correspondent reads into the article he criticises (“A Budget Secret Revealed,” Socialist Standard, May) implications that were not suggested or intended, and that were in fact expressly disowned. He assumes that we are in favour of an increase of the subsidies on foodstuffs, and that we “implied that all incomes should be equalised.” He is quite mistaken. The S.P.G.B. stands for the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. We hold that there are no ways in which capitalism can be made to function in the interests of the working class. We do not say that the Labour government in general and Sir Stafford Cripps in particular have followed a wrong budgetary policy and that all would be well if they followed some other policy. As we pointed out in the article,

“Budgets are the financial arrangements made for the conduct of the capitalist state and it is childish muddle-headedness to ask that they be transformed into ‘Socialist’ budgets.”

Having taken on the job of administering capitalism “they are forced within very narrow limits to do those things that capitalism requires.”

On the question of equalising incomes our correspondent is equally wide of the mark. Under capitalism incomes come from wages or from the ownership of property and they vary greatly in amount. Socialism is not a scheme for making them equal. Wages and incomes from property-owning will both disappear under Socialism. The principal way in which Socialism will lessen the labour and increase the consumption of those who under capitalism are the working class will be by cutting out the enormous waste of labour inseparable from capitalism.

Having disposed of one correspondent’s misconceptions about Socialism now let us look at his scheme for reforming capitalism by the levying of “a tax on the site-value of land.” This is not a working-class issue but a hangover of the conflict of interests between landowners and industrial capitalists. It is not even a vital issue to the capitalists any longer. When the land was monopolised by a relatively small number of big landowners the industrial capitalists suffered the mortification of having to give up to the landowners a large part of the proceeds of their exploitation of the workers. They resented it and would have liked to escape that burden. The result, however, would have been to increase the profits of the capitalists; it would not have lessened the exploitation of the workers. But in the past half century landownership has undergone great changes. We read in the Sunday Express (20/3/49) that whereas “less than 50 years ago 2,500 private landlords shared between them over half of Britain, today, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, there are only 469 estates of more than 1,000 acres left.” The government itself, the Local Authorities and the nationalised industries have vastly increased their holdings of land and much land is now owned by farmers: “of Britain’s 370,508 farms, a third are now owner-occupied. ” Also much land is now owned by estate companies and industrial companies and the writer in the Sunday Express states that the Prudential alone owns land valued at £35 million. These changes have taken place but they have not in the least improved the position of the working class.

In a leaflet that our correspondent sends us we arc assured that the scheme he recommends would “provide public revenue without hampering industry,” and that the burden would fall only on the landlord. But nowhere are we told why the working class should object to the landlord receiving part of the proceeds of working class exploitation without also objecting to the industrial, commercial and financial capitalists receiving a much larger part. According to official estimates the receivers of rent from land and buildings took £430 millions in 1948; but the profits of traders and partnerships amounted to £970 millions, and the trading profits of companies were £1,639 millions. In 10 years the percentage of the total national income going to receivers of rent has fallen from 8.5 per cent., to 4.4 per cent., while the other two groups of exploiters have increased their percentage from 21.2 per cent. to 27 per cent. This may please the capitalists but it is no concern of the working class.

The S.P.G.B. urges the workers not to interest themselves in the internal squabble of the exploiters but to work for the abolition of all exploitation.

Ed. Comm.

The economics of the I.L.P. (1928)

From the November 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are hosts of well-meaning busy-bodies who set themselves out to educate the workers in Socialist knowledge, whose sole qualification for so doing is an entire absence of such knowledge. As Socialism is not an idea engendered in the brains of men out of nothing, but arises from the present system itself, a Socialist must have an understanding of the present system; particularly he must understand what is capital.

Strictly speaking, capital is money invested in, say, land, buildings, plant, machinery, tools, raw material, labour power, for the purpose of returning a surplus; and the only source from which this surplus can come is the unpaid labour of the wage worker. Capital, therefore, is wealth used to exploit wage workers.

A self-styled “Socialist,” writing in the “Northern Voice” (September 7th)—a Manchester I.L.P. journal—describes the primitive tools and possessions of savage man as capital. So much for his knowledge. The article is written in praise of Henry George’s “Progress and Poverty,” and the writer has the impudence to foist the old Capitalist proposal, “Taxation of land values,” on his readers as Socialist propaganda, and is apparently very pleased because that staunch supporter of Capitalism, Philip Snowden, “is devoting great efforts and time to the propagation of Henry George’s ideas.”

An article by “Jonkin” criticises a leading article of the “Daily Dispatch,” which apparently represented Socialism as dividing the incomes of the millionaires amongst the poor.

After showing that the editors of Capitalist newspapers write what they are paid to write and not what they think, “Jonkin” treats us to a sample of what he thinks :—

“If the nation is divided into poor and rich, the poor must for ever remain poor unless there is an alteration made in the distribution of the wealth which is produced. The rich are rich because they get a lot. The poor are poor because they get so little. And no power on this earth can remove the poverty of the many until they receive a larger share of the nation’s yearly income.”

Dear, dear ! The rich are rich because they are rich, and the poor are poor because they are poor, and will remain poor until they get more. So now we know all about it !

The Capitalists are rich because they own the means of wealth production, and consequently the resultant product; and the workers are poor because they possess nothing but their labour-power, which they are compelled to sell to the Capitalists in order to live. As the value of labour-power is determined by the cost of its reproduction, that is to say, the necessary food, clothing and shelter to enable the worker to maintain himself in a fit state to do his job, and reproduce his kind, increases in the wealth produced are of benefit, primarily, to the Capitalist class. The beauty of the article is that while the “Daily Dispatch” attacks Socialism as being a scheme for dividing the incomes of the wealthy amongst the poor, “Jonkin” apparently accepts that definition as being correct. Socialism is nothing of the kind.

In the same issue, Mrs. Bruce Glasier has two columns of sentimental twaddle; there is an article criticising the Tory Government for “muddling,” which may be true, but that is the masters’ affair, not ours.

The front page article by “Vox,” is good as a criticism of the “peace” policy of the T.U.C., but it will not prevent the I.L.P. from supporting these same people at the General Election.

The “‘Northern Voice” is simply an agent of Capitalism, side-tracking the workers from the only remedy to the ills they suffer, though the writers are probably unaware of the fact.

J. Lockwood

The Poverty of the Greens (1999)

From the October 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Green Party has recently made significant strides forward—attaining its first seat in a UK Parliament in Scotland, winning numerous seats at local levels, and getting two MEPs in June’s Euro elections, and is currently choosing its candidate for the Mayor of London. But their policies for making things better are doomed to fail to make things better.

The Greens form a part of the rising “left alternative”, political groups moving in to fill in the gaps left by Labour’s lurch rightwards. Indeed, they present a potent radical package, eschewing the political institutional demands for a leader, instead having two “Principal Speakers”; and presenting a platform replete with sweeping reforms to improve society.

That’s just it though. They are reformists, and for all their alleged radicalism, that’s all they will ever be; endlessly promoting their brand of radical Liberalism warmed-up; attempts to breath life into the mummified remains of the two hundred year old political corpse our current political system is built upon. Their campaigning is not based on changing minds, but on appealing to the values of those who feel abandoned by the traditional parties—promising this time they will get it to work.

A simple examination of their policies suffices to show their misguided muddleheadedness, and the doomed, inevitable failure of their programme. For example, their industrial relations policy:

We know that most collective organisation is in trade unions, and value that. (Manifesto for a Sustainable Society, WR104).

This is hardly a ringing endorsement of workers’ militancy, support for workers in their union struggles. It is simply recognition from afar, a nice idea to be viewed from a distance, and valued like an old pet dog. Then again, however, at least it makes a change from the rabid anti-unionism of the “grey parties” (as the Greens call them). It remains though, a very passive support.

Is there, then, a more radical element to it? Of course there is, our Green friends would tell us:

The Green Party is committed to workplace democracy . . . whereby undertakings shall be managed co-operatively through the involvement of those who work in them and the communities they serve (WR105).

This is excellent, they must mean socialising the production process, handing the reigns of power to the people—we socialists should support them! Well, no, actually:

Worker participation improves the industrial process, increases personal satisfaction and gives the community a bigger stake. Workers’ Councils should be set up along the lines of the successful German model (IN617).

Then we must institutionalise yet more corporatist policies in order to be even and fair about removing people’s right to strike.

But, despite their bureaucratic wishy-washiness, surely the Greens have some truly momentous social policies? Erm . . .

A Citizens’ Income scheme, eventually sufficient to cover basic needs, will be introduced in stages as an integrated taxation and benefit system to replace most present social benefits and tax allowances (EC705).

A basic income for every citizen! Of course, how this is to be squared with the wages system is anyone’s guess. As the 18th century agricultural Speenhamland system showed, when people can get a better income without having to work, they (quite sensibly) take it. The policy would be brought in within the lifetime of one Parliament, and over that time there would be a mass exodus of people from shite jobs (the Greens may like that, but I doubt the employers would enjoy it).

Sustainable industrial activity tends to be more labour intensive . . . the introduction of Citizens’ Income would reduce the cost of labour to industry without pushing people into poverty (IN605).

That’s more like it—it’s a pay-off. With this scheme employers could cut wages, and thus industry would be able to become more profitable. Exactly how, then, this would leave workers better off, is up for debate since at most the basic income could only cover the basic cost of living (or less), their real wage wouldn’t actually change.

This agenda continues:

Land Value Taxation. A system of land taxation, to be known as Land Value Taxation (LVT), will be introduced, this will be a tax on the annual value of land (i.e. excluding buildings, machinery etc.). An initial levy of LVT will be made at a fraction of the annual value as determined by preliminary assessment, according to permitted use. Ultimately the full annual value of land will accrue to the community (EC725).

The hobby-horse of the followers of the 19th century American economist Henry George, and an idea that has an old pedigree (back to the 18th century artisan radical Thomas Spence in his journal Pig’s Meat): profit from land is unearned and so is taxable, leaving the true and “fair” earnings duly accrued to Capital and Labour untouched.

Of course, such radicals as Thomas Spence were around at the birth of the idea of the small-holder market economy, which lives on in the minds of the Greens:

Smaller and more democratically structured enterprises are more open to community regulation, ensuring that greater care is taken both of the people who work in them, and of the concerns and needs of the local community and the environment.

There is the myth of Mom & Pop businesses, as if being small makes a business any less dominated by the overriding imperative for profits. With small companies we are to return to the dream of fair economics, freed from the distortions caused by big-business. the one true market redeemed from its despoilers.

Of course, the real enemy of the small capitalist, the banks, will get theirs too:

Under the current banking system, money is created predominantly as interest-bearing debt by commercial banks and the financial institutions. This will gradually be replaced by one in which money is created interest-free for the benefit of the community. The place of the commercial banks in financing enterprise will gradually be taken by mediating, non-profit local community banks providing low-cost finance, both at district and regional levels (EC512).

Pardon me, pray, please, do excuse me, it’s so very hard to type while laughing this hard. So the Greens believe that when a bank wants to make a loan it just creates the money by magicking it out of thin air! And a Green government is going to take over this magical power and use it to make loans free from that evil interest! Actually, to return from the world of Paul Daniels for a moment, only the central government not banks can create money; banks are already what the Greens say they want them to become—”mediating” institutions between lenders and borrowers, making a profit (if only to offset losses from bad loans) out of the difference between the rate of interest they pay to those who lend them money and the rate they charge borrowers.

The Greens have strong convictions, a sense of justice, and a need to care for the environment and the future. However, their policies fail to live up to their values—or even begin to meet the necessary conditions for bringing them about. So long as they remain committed to a generalised community and humanity, neglecting and ignoring class interests in favour of consensus, then effectively they are propping up the capitalist order. Without backing the liberation of the working class, they are continuing our routine enslavement.

The Greens in Germany show us that these reformers will go the way of all reformers, forced by the electoral system, and the dictates of staying in power, to turn their backs on the Party’s pacifism, and support the NATO Balkans war.

The Greens are just the new face of an old Liberalism (“Whigs Astray” as William Morris called it in the 1880s), lost in a wilderness of trying to finally making the market work, failing to meet the real needs of the community, so long as they fail to address ownership of property and the abolition of class.

Pik Smeet

Letter: What capitalism means. (1927)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sir,—-I am taking keen interest in economics and would like to know the exact relation of things and definition concerning what capital means.

I listen to all parties and read all literature of all parties.

G. Peace, a speaker for the “Commonwealth [Land] Party,” speaking in Hanley, said that last year he visited the outcrops in Hanley and saw men working using their own capital, which proved the worker will do without bosses when all the workers followed the example of the men out-cropping.

Now I wish to know if the tools such as unscientific things as old wheels of bicycles, etc., ropes and buckets to draw the coal up from the outcrop comes under the true definition of capital. Seeing that your definition of capital is the means of exploitation or legalised robbery of the workers.

There is another point perhaps you will be good enough to correct me on. Mr. G. Peace also said during his discourse on the outcroppers that he was amazed to learn the outcroppers were charged five shillings for every ton of coal carted away by the owners of the land.

To me, the economic renters, like Mr. G. Peace, under their single tax or economic scheme, would be somewhat similar, but the only difference would be the State officials, would collect the economic rent instead of private or group Capitalist officials; just assuming that we would gain access to the land in the manner the outcroppers did, this would not bring economic security to all, for there would be disorder instead of proper organisation. Plenty of outcroppers would not find a market for their coal and would be forced to leave their outcrops. So it appears to me competition for markets will be in existence under Capitalism, under economic rent, nationalisation, etc.

Of course, I ask for correction on the points raised.

Thanking your in anticipation, 

Yours sincerely.

—Inquirer.

Answer to Inquirer.

Capital is wealth used for the purpose of obtaining a profit. The owner of this wealth —the Capitalist—purchases buildings, plant, machinery, raw materials, etc. Then he purchases labour-power to use the plant and machinery on the raw materials for the purpose of producing commodities, or article for sale. The value of the raw materials and of the portion of the plant and machinery, used up in a given time, form part of the value of the commodities, and pass over unchanged into the latter value.

The value of the labour-power can be represented at any given period by a particular number of hours’ work. If the labourer only worked this particular number of hours each day there would be no surplus produced as the value of the commodities would be equal to the sum of the values of (1) the raw materials used; (2) the portion of plant and machinery worn out; and (3) the labour-power expended. But, by using the whip of hunger, the Capitalist compels the labourer to work for a longer number of hours than is necessary to replace the value of his labour-power. In these extra hours of work is produced the surplus-value which is afterwards split up into various parts. One part may be used to extend the business. Another part may be absorbed in advertising the goods for sale. Still another part may go to pay rates and taxes. The part remaining to the Capitalist after these distributions forms his profit. Surplus-value is thus seen to consist of the products taken by the Capitalist that the labourer has produced in the time during which he works, but for which he has not been paid. In other words, surplus value is based upon the robbery of the worker. Profit is a part of the results of this robbery.

This explanation makes it quite clear that an individual only obtains profit when he robs some worker, or workers. Whatever tools or plant a man employs in working for himself obviously cannot be capital, as he does not obtain a profit because he does not rob anyone. Only when he uses these tools and plant to rob some worker or workers of the values they have produced, do they become capital and he a Capitalist. The fact that the appliances may be out of date or unscientific, does not prevent them becoming capital in the above circumstances —though it certainly places the Capitalist using them at a disadvantage in competition with other Capitalists who are better equipped.

Mr. Peace’s statements are therefore quite inaccurate. The “outcroppers” were not using capital at all. Their few crude appliances were not used to rob anyone, and therefore, in those conditions, could not be capital. Moreover, if the “outcroppers” had to pay five shillings a ton for the coal obtained the landowners were certainly “bosses” of the situation, and so contradicted Mr. Pearce’s other statement that “the outcroppers were doing without in bosses.”

“Inquirer” is quite correct when he says that under the single tax theory the economic rent would go into the Government coffers instead of into those of private or group Capitalists. This would leave the workers just as they are to-day, slaves to the master class, and robbed of the larger portion of the wealth they produce. Only Socialism can end this slavery.

Editorial Committee.

50 Years Ago: Socialists and Malthus (1964)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

From a reply to a Conservative. Mr. G. W. Daw in the Socialist Standard, May 1914

Mr. Daw says that poverty, like disease, “originates from physical causes,” in lofty indifference to the fact that he had previously said it was due to the “innate selfishness of man, etc.” Now it is because “population always increases up to the limits of the means of a bare subsistence.” Later we are told “Socialists as a rule evade this, as they do other fatal objections.”

The statement about increases of population is taken from the parson Malthus' dirty, lying apology for Capitalism called “On Population.” What Mr. Daw is apparently ignorant of is the fact that Godwin—the Utopian Socialist—whom the book was written against, wrote a reply directly after the first edition appeared that tore up every shred of so-called argument Malthus had put forward. Though Malthus lived to edit four or five more editions and in doing so seriously altered his whole position, not once did he attempt to answer Godwin. Later on, Henry George in ”Progress and Poverty,” taking Godwin’s work without acknowledgment as a basis, built up a case with the fuller information the intervening years supplied that crushed Malthus’ book to powder.

We need only emphasize one point. Neither Malthus, nor anyone else, has ever produced a single tittle of evidence, historical or otherwise, that “population always increases up to the limits of bare subsistence.”

In every age since the break-up of the tribal communes mankind has carried an idle luxurious class upon its back. That this could be possible proves there must have been a surplus above subsistence all the time.

Letter: The Single Tax and Socialism. (1927)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Editor,

Sir,—In various articles which appear in the Socialist Standard stress is laid on what the S.P.G.B. declaim a fact, that the working class can expect nothing under capitalism, only their upkeep, i.e., food, clothes and shelter.

It is also claimed by the S.P.G.B. that the standard of living of the working class tends to the downward grade.

This statement is true, but it does not follow that the standard of living cannot be raised instead of sinking. I claim that the single tax will raise the toilers’ living—by taxing the owners of land and compelling them to pay economic rent for land in use or not in use. This would solve the unemployed question, because the land will be open for anyone desirous of using it on conditions of paying the economic rent. The toilers working in factories, etc., could increase their wages, because there would be no competition for jobs. A. MacLaren, M.P. for Burslem, is regarded an expert on the land question, and I have heard him challenge all opposition, either in set debate or by questions, but S.P.G.B.ers have been conspicuous by their absence or silence.

The S.P.G.B. are flippant in abuse of Labour M.P.s and ought to be prepared to defend their position in debate.

Henry George spoke of Socialism as a noble ideal, which was sure to be realised.

I have no desire to write a lengthy letter, because space is needed for your own writers, but perhaps you will be kind enough to print my letter and also your reply.

Thanking you in anticipation,

Single Taxer.

Reply to “Single Taxer.”

The position of the working class in relation to taxes—single or compound—has been dealt with on numerous occasions in the pages of the Socialist Standard, but as our correspondent does not appear to have seen these articles, we may deal with the point again.

“Single Taxer” admits that our statements that the workers only receive, on the average, sufficient for maintenance and reproduction, with the standard of living tending to fall, is correct. But we need to know why this is so to meet “Single Taxer’s” claims.

The various things necessary for producing wealth—land, factories, machines, railways, etc.—are owned by one class in society—the capitalist class. The working class only possess their power to labour. Before they can apply this labour-power to either the land or the instruments of production, they must obtain permission from the capitalist class to do so. The latter class only give this permission when they calculate that they can sell the things produced at a profit. The fact that individual calculations may sometimes be erroneous does not affect the main point. Moreover, the capitalists are not concerned whether the articles are used for necessities, comforts, or even vices. If they can be sold at a profit the uses to which they can be put does not matter.

Another important point to bear in mind is that when the articles are produced they belong to the capitalists—not to the workers. Thus the workers are without any means of living—even after working—until a share of what they have produced is handed back to them in the form of wages. The share left to the capitalists, after paying wages and replacing the value consumed in production, is called surplus-value. Out of this surplus-value various charges such as advertising, rates, taxes, etc., are paid. “Single Taxer’s” theory is that by placing the whole burden of taxes upon the landowner the unemployed problem would be solved, “because the land will be open for anyone desirous of using it on conditions of paying the economic rent.”

The first point to be settled here is what does “Single Taxer” mean by “economic rent”? He does not say. Various definitions are given by different writers, but the one in general use is “the price paid for the use of land apart from any buildings or structures upon it.” How would this rent be fixed? Again, “Single Taxer” does not tell us. Generally single tax theorists claim that it will be settled by competition among those desiring the land. It is easy to see that this is how the bulk of such rent is decided to-day. For instance, a wealthy oil firm bought some land in the City of London a year or two ago upon which they built their offices. Now this land was “open for anyone desirous of using it on conditions of paying the economic rent,” and it may be asked why some labourer, suffering from lack of house room, did not take up this land and use it for himself. The answer would be “he could not pay the economic rent.” It thus is quite evident that the only people who could hire the land under the single tax scheme would be the same as those who hire it to-day— namely, those wealthy enough to pay for it. This would leave the working class exactly where they are now—unemployment and all.

“Single Taxer” may argue that the position would be different because the “economic rent” would be taken by the Government for the purposes of taxation, thus relieving industry of a burden it bears to-day. This may be granted, and from this point of view, the single tax is the ideal form of taxation for the capitalist as it would be placing the tax where it would be the least trouble to him. But “Single Taxer” cannot show how this would alter the position of the workers. They would still remain slaves to the capitalists and still receive, on the average, a maintenance wage. How the capitalists have to divide up the surplus value they have robbed from the workers is of little concern to the latter. Their interest and business is to abolish the robbery by taking control of political power for that purpose.

Editorial Committee.

Socialism and Birth Control. (1924)

From the August 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

   “The New Generation League (formerly Malthusian League) aims at eliminating poverty, unemployment, and other social evils, as well as war, by the simple method of reducing over-population, by enabling married couples to restrict their families to those children for whom they can properly care, and give a reasonable chance for a happy and useful existence.”—(New Generation, June.)

As Socialists, we are not opposed to the teaching of sexual physiology, but welcome any knowledge based upon the facts of life conducive to health or comfort. Our opposition is to the claim that even a general application of such teachings (the use of contraceptive methods of birth control), can remove deep-rooted social evils such as is claimed in the quotation given above.

Working class poverty prevails throughout the Capitalist world irrespective of fiscal systems, forms of government, rising or falling birth rates, etc. It exists because the abundance of wealth produced by the workers is in the hands of the non-producers, the Capitalists, who own the means and results of production. The workers’ share of that wealth is wages, a fraction of the total values they produce. Wealth is produced to-day for markets, which relatively shrink as world competition grows more intense. Labour saving devices increase the number of unemployed, as they reduce the number required for a given amount of production. Wars are fought either to extend or retain markets for the disposal of wealth primarily produced for sale. The propertyless condition of the workers compels them to enter the Labour market in order to meet the owners of their means of living—the buyers of their Labour power—and the effective sale of that labour power is expressed in its price or wage.

As far as the adult male worker is concerned, that wage is based upon the cost of maintaining a family. Those without families gain a small advantage while that difference is maintained.

  “The Neo-Malthusian contention, however, lays chief stress not upon the gain to the individual family from a reduction of its size below its normal, but upon the gain to the labouring classes in general by following a policy which by restricting the supply of labour raises its market price.” (Report of the Commission on The Falling Birth Rate (Chapman & Hall), Page 28, 1916.)

This might be true if other things remained equal, but they never do. The war reduced the working class in numbers, but did its conclusion bring improvement in their conditions? Even the steady reduction of the working population, carried out by whatever means, could never keep pace with the number displaced by the introduction of labour saving devices.

Any tendency for “costs” to increase is a direct incentive for installing wages-saving methods and a shortage of labour would hasten their adoption. To reduce the size of the average family is no remedy, as under the competitive conditions of to-day a general lowering in the cost of living brought about by smaller families would mean lowered wages :—

  “The value of labour power resolves itself into the value of a definite quantity of the means of subsistence. therefore varies with the value of these means, or with the quantity of labour required for their production.” (Capital, Page 151.)

A number of statistics and facts from Henry George (Progress and Poverty) right up to the Commission report on the birth rate mentioned above, bear evidence that high and low fertility are closely related to poverty and comfort respectively. In plant and animal life we observe similar tendencies as a result of the struggle for the food supply. The wealthy are not so because they restrict their families. Their lowered fertility results from their luxurious and comfortable lives.

  “Darwin noted that 19 per cent. of the nobility were sterile.” (“Mulhall’s Dictionary of Statistics,” Page 383.)

The workers, as a class, are not poor because of their larger families. Wealth has increased much faster than population. The workers are born poor, remain poor, single or married, employed or unemployed, abstainers or moppers, with small families or large, and their larger families result from their keen struggle for existence.

   “In fact, not only the number of births and deaths, but the absolute size of the families stand in inverse proportion to the height of wages, and therefore to the amount of means of subsistence of which the different categories of labourers dispose. This law of Capitalist society would sound absurd to savages or even civilised colonists. It calls to. mind the boundless reproduction of animals individually weak and constantly hunted down.” (Capital, Page 658.)

The workers are poor today in the midst of what is termed over-production. Unlike the reformers (birth controllers included) we do, not approach the question of social evils with the assumption that Capitalism is inevitable and eternal. To us those evils have a definite cause, to be sought for in their social epoch. We cannot expect to understand modern war or unemployment by studying ancient society, hence the present population question is essentially a Capitalist one. Its solution is the removal of the system that gives rise to it and other social evils, and the establishment of Socialist society in which the conflicting elements of to-day will cease to exist. While production is limited to the needs of our masters’ markets, while the workers must limit their consumption of wealth to the meagre purchasing power of their wages, while every labour-saving method is, in the control of the Capitalist class, a means to a greater output with a relatively fewer number of workers, while, in short, the present system remains, conditioned as it is by the monopoly of the means of life by the Master class, an ever-increasing number of the workers must go to swell the surplus population of Capitalism—the “over population” of the Birth Controllers. To talk of the lack of means of subsistence to-day is childish; apart from the fact that the workers sustain the wealthy “unemployed” in riotous luxury, those surplus to the production of wealth under the present social system, become such long, long before our powers to produce are utilised to their capacity.

W. E. MacHaffie

A Trio of “Intellectuals.” (1920)

Book Review from the July 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Among the many developments that capitalism has brought to a high degree is the group of employees of the capitalists who carry out the various non-manual functions in modern society. This group comprises the managers, supervisors, lawyers, bankers, stockbrokers, journalists, politicians, in fact all those who love to describe themselves as “intellectuals.”

Being, as a rule, better paid than the rest of the wage slaves, there is considerable competition for these jobs, with the result of an over­-crowding of this particular market. For the moment we are only concerned with the position of two sections of this group.

One endeavours to obtain pay and position from the masters by pointing out the “dangers” of Socialism and so hoping to, more or less, scare the masters into engaging them for the purpose of exposing the “fallacies of Marx,” etc. This section is found, largely, among the jour­nalists and university professors.

The other section, failing in this pursuit, try to obtain a footing in the camp of the “common workers” and offer themselves as “guides,” “leaders,” “experts,” etc. to the “lower orders.”

A good example of a combination among individuals from both these sections has lately come our way.

In March 1883 Marx died. The next month an article was published in Italy purporting to be a biography of Marx Apparently about 1916 this article was reprinted with some alterations and additions, as a pamphlet. This pamphlet was translated into English in 1918 as a great work from a wonderful professor who has made marvellous discoveries in economic and social science, some of whose works have been translated into English. Who is this giant and what are his works? Let the following quotation tell us.

  Marx had hardly died, when Mr. Achille Loria hastily published an article about him in the Nuova Antologia (April, 1883). He starts out with a biography of Marx full of misinformation, and follows it up with a critique of Marx’s public, political and literary activity. He misrepresents the materialist conception of history of Marx and twists it with an assurance which indicates a great purpose. And this purpose was later accomplished. In 1886, the same Mr. Loria published a book entitled La teoria economica delta costituzione politica (The Economic Foundations of Society), in which he announced to his admiring contemporaries that the materialist conception of history, so completely and purposely misrepresented by him in 1883, was his own discovery. True, the Marxian theory is reduced to a rather Philistine level in this book. And the historical illustrations and proofs abound in mistakes which would not be pardoned in a high school boy. But what does that matter? He thinks he has established his claim that the discovery that always and everywhere the political conditions and events are explained by corresponding economic conditions was not made by Marx in 1845, but by Mr. Loria in 1886. At least this is what he has tried to make his countrymen believe, and also some Frenchmen, for his book has been translated into French. And now he can pose in Italy as the author of a new and epoch-making theory of history, until the Italian socialists will find time to strip the illustre Loria of his stolen peacock feathers. 

But this is only an insignificant sample of Mr. Loria’s style of doing things. He assures us that all of Marx’s theories rest on conscious sophistry; that Marx was not above using false logic, even though he knew it to be so, etc. And after thus biasing his readers by a whole series of such contemptible insinuations, in order that they may regard Marx as just such an unprincipled upstart as Loria, accomplishing his effects by the same shameless and foul means as this professor from Padua, he has a very important secret for the readers, and incidentally he touches upon the rate of profit.” (Engels’ Preface to 3rd Volume of “Capital,” pp. 25-26.)

We need not now discuss the highly technical point of the rate of profit. When Marx referred in Volume I. of “Capital” to the detailed working out of this problem in a future volume Mr. Loria stated that the problem was insoluble and that the promised volume would never appear. Yet when the second Volume of “Capital” was published, with Engels’ challenge to the Robertians, Mr. Loria attempted to solve the insoluble by taking up the challenge. Even in this position he is a mere copyist. Another “great professor”—Bohm-Bawerk—had said that Marx had no solution, and that he would never publish the promised volume. Some years after saying so he was constrained to write a book entitled “Karl Marx and the Close of his System” against the volume he had said would never appear.

And in another point is the same practice followed. Mr. Loria takes the Malthusian theory of population and modifying it by taking (without acknowledgement) a part of Herbert Spencer’s ”New Theory of Population,” presents the jumble as his own original discovery.

Of Loria’s criticisms of Marx we need only refer to two statements made on consecutive pages. On page 67 he says :

  It is undeniable that Marx’s thesis of the progressive concentration of wealth into the hands of an ever-diminishing number of owners, and of the correlatively progressive impoverishment of the common people, has not been confirmed. It has indeed been confuted by the most authoritative statistics collected since the publication of the book.

On page 68 he says:

  Again, no one can deny that the contrast between high grade and low grade incomes has of late exhibited an enormous increase ; that banking concentration, and the sway of the banks over industry (a source of increasing disparity in fortunes) has attained in recent years in intensity which even Marx could not foresee; and that subsequently to the publication of Capital and to the death of its author, the social fauna has been enriched by an economic animal of a species previously unknown, the multimillionaire, whose existence undeniably reveals an unprecedented advance in capitalist concentration. Agrarian and industrial concentration attained preposterous proportions such as he had never ventured to predict In the American Union a single landed estate will embrace territories equal to entire provinces, while industrial capital becomes amassed by milliards in the hands of a few despotic trusts so that two-thirds of the entire working population are employed by one-twentieth of all the separate enterprises in the country. 

We are told that this is a free country, so, having paid his half-crown for a ninety page pamphlet, one third of which consists of an introduction by the translators, the reader has full liberty to choose which of the above statements he will accept.

The introduction is worthy of the body of the pamphlet. The translators—Eden and Cedar Paul—are members of the second section of the “intellectuals” referred to above, who have condescended to come down among the common people and teach them how to achieve their emancipation. Possessing all the ignorance of the “educated,” they lack none of their conceit. As an example we find on page 16 that they agree with Karl Pearson when he says:

  “the acceptance of the law discovered by Malthus is an essential of any Socialistic theory which pretends to be scientific.”

What is this “law discovered by Malthus ? Neither law nor discovery of his. Malthus stole certain ideas from Price, Wallace, and others and put them forward as his own. Reduced to a few words the “law” is that population increases in a geometrical ratio (2-4-8-16-32, etc.) while the means of subsistence increase only in’ arithmetical ratio (1-2-3-4-5, etc.) Hence the poverty of the working class is due entirely to there being more at Nature’s table than Nature can feed. Our “intellectuals” say Lafargue, Henry George, and others who have endeavoured to meet the Malthusian difficulty “by a simple denial of the facts” have displayed more zeal than knowledge. The sentence quoted is a “simple” lie. Not simple denial, but complete exposure of the falsity of the so-called facts has been the work of these opponents. How ignorant “intellectuals” can be is shown by the following facts.

Malthus wrote his book partly as a general explanation of the misery prevalent in his day, and partly against Godwin’s book, “Political Justice,” that was an expression of revolt against that misery. Godwin wrote a crushing reply to Malthus entitled “On Population.” Malthus, although he lived to edit five more editions of his work, made no attempt to meet Godwin’s exposure of his fallacies. Henry George in “Progress and Poverty” has taken Godwin’s case and, adding further facts and evidence, discovered since Godwin wrote, has presented a reply that no Malthusian has been able to touch.

Not satisfied with Loria’s falsifications of Marx, the translators try one themselves, though only by suggestion. On page 15 they quote Marx’s criticism of Lassalle’s “Iron Law of Wages” from the Gotha Programme. Marx had pointed out that the “Iron Law of Wages” rested upon the Malthusian theory of population, and said if this “law” were correct then it would be a waste of time to try and overthrow the system of wage labour as the “law” could not be overthrown and would assert itself under any system. He then pointed out that this was exactly the argument used by the hired apologists of the master class, who claimed that Socialism would merely make poverty universal because of this “law.”

Now say our translators, “Does not it almost seem as if Marx by 1875, had, for a moment at least, glimpsed the real difficulty.”

To suggest that Marx “for a moment at least” accepted the truth of the Malthusian “law” whose falsities he had exposed shows not only the conceit of the people making the suggestion, but also their readiness to attempt to mislead those members of the working class who may read their introduction to Loria.

Further exposure of their ignorance is given in their reference to Loria’s remarks on the neglect by Marxists of the great question of technical development. Loria says: “This physiology of industry which is now the least studied and least appreciated of Marx’s labours nevertheless constitutes his most considerable and most enduring contribution to science.”

The answer of the translators to this charge is to refer to William Paul’s slovenly and inac­curate sketch of the State and to Newbold’s journalistic articles as forming a reply. The splendid work of Lafargue, Kautsky, Sanial, and others in this field is evidently unknown to these intellectuals.

The value of the judgement of the translators on current events is dearly shown when on page 30 they refer to Workers’ Committees—dead as a door nail to-day, except under the guise of the capitalist Whitley Councils—and Industrial Unionism, with its idiocy of proposing that unarmed men can beat the Army, as new forms of organisation for the working class.

Apart from the evidence it supplies of the ignorance and conceit of the “intellectuals” who contribute to its pages, the worth of the pam­phlet to students of sociology is measured by the price of waste paper.

Jack Fitzgerald

Enclosing the sea bed (1970)

From the December 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nearly all the land of the Earth has been claimed by one or other of the many States into which the world is divided. The one exception is Antartica which, like the Moon, is governed by an international treaty which bars States and individuals from exercising territorial or property rights over any part of it.

Much of the sea area of the world, however, including the sea bed is still unclaimed. This is now beginning to cause problems as the seabed, especially the various continental shelves, are potentially profitable sources of raw materials like oil, natural gas and minerals. The United Nations Seabed Committee has been meeting in Geneva since August to consider the problem. Various suggestions have been put forward as to who should own the rest of the seabed once the matter of just how far out the territorial waters of coastal States should go has been settled.

The British government has proposed that the seabed outside these limits should be divided amongst all the States of the world, including land-locked ones. The sea would thus, like the land, come to be divided up by frontiers.

Another proposal is that the seabed outside territorial waters should belong to an international agency which could grant licences to States and/or companies to exploit the mineral resources. Royalties might be used to help finance investment in the underdeveloped countries. This proposal is sometimes described, as it was by President Nixon in a message he sent to Congress on 9 July, as one to make the oceans and the seabed “the common heritage of mankind". This is not really accurate but at least this arrangement would avoid the absurdity of drawing frontiers all over the seabed and an international agency would be able to exercise better control over conservation and pollution.

If ownership of the seabed were vested in an international agency this would not make it the common property of mankind, for the agency would be an inter-governmental body responsible to the various capitalist States of the world (including state capitalist Russia) perhaps through the United Nations. It would be an example of common ownership. but by the capitalists of the world rather than by the people of the world.

Individual ownership of land is not essential to capitalism. Indeed landed property is a particularly parasitical form of ownership since the landowner is in a position to extract a tribute as ground rent and royalties from the rest of society, not only without having to work but also without even having to invest any capital. It was this that made landed property unpopular amongst some industrial capitalists in Britain in the last century; they resented the fact that landowners were able to share in the proceeds of their exploitation of the working class without contributing a penny towards it. Various proposals for ending this burden on profits were put forward: estate duty, Henry George's single tax on ground rent, and outright land nationalisation. This last proposal was of course often claimed as one to make the land “the common heritage of the people”. But there was nothing socialist about it as can be judged from the fact that when Labour nationalised the mines in 1948 the coal had already been nationalised previously by the Tories.

Nationalisation of land or of mineral resources is a measure that allows capitalist concerns access on equal terms to these essential materials. The proposal to have the seabed owned by an international agency has the same purpose: some States are afraid that others might deny them access to the resources of the seabed and want some international body set up to ensure that this does not happen.

Something quite different is required to really make these resources “the common heritage of mankind”. This is meaningless unless the land and the manmade instruments of production are also made part of this heritage in a world without frontiers on land as well as under the sea.

Adam Buick

Land monopolists (1991)

Book Review from the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Now The Synthesis: Capitalism, Socialism and the New Social Contract. Edited by Richard Noyes. Shepheard-Walwyn. £14.95.

This collection of articles by a number of British, US and Dutch writers is an application of the ideas of Henry George to today’s world. George, a contemporary of Marx and Engels, argued that the existence of exclusive private property rights over land distorted the workings of laissez-faire capitalism. Abolish private property in land by taxing away its value and capitalism would work for the mutual benefit of capitalists and workers.

Ground rent is indeed a deduction from the surplus value that capitalist firms extract from their workers, but its payment to the state as taxes rather than to land monopolists like the Duke of Westminster, Harry Hyams, Gerald Ronson and the Queen would only benefit the capitalists and not the working class.

For a short while in the 19th century Georgism was a radical doctrine that enjoyed considerable, if misplaced, working class support. Today, as one of the authors documents, Georgist infiltrators have had some influence on the thinking of the Green Party whose “Community Ground Rent" is the tax on land values that George advocated. But Georgism, in preaching that there is nothing wrong with laissez-faire capitalism as such and that “everything would be alright if ground rent were paid to the state", as Marx summed up George’s views (in a letter to Sorge, 20 June 1881), fits in very well with the free-marketeerism that enjoyed a passing revival in the 1980s. Indeed, this seems to be the general point this book seeks to make.

Adam Buick

Cooking the Books: Ground Rents and Coronets (2011)

The Cooking the Books column from the November 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

The slump has led to a revival of long-forgotten nostrums. Last year the Times (10 June) carried an article advocating a single tax on land as a way out of the crisis. This proposal normally associated with Henry George (1839-1897), but Philippe Legrain chose to associate it with Winston Churchill. Hence the subtitle of his article: “Adopting Churchill’s plan would benefit wealth creators at the expense of the idle rich”.

It is true that a hundred years ago, when the Liberal government of the day was in a power struggle with the House of Lords over the budget, Churchill who was then a Liberal did support a tax on land as a way of getting at the landed aristocracy.

Some harsh things were said in the course of this struggle with the likes of the Duke of Westminster and Churchill’s cousin, the Duke of Marlborough, being denounced as “land monopolists” and the “idle rich”. As indeed they were. Those who own a piece of the Earth’s surface are able to extract an income from the rest of society as ground-rent without having to lift a finger; the higher the demand for their land, the higher their income. In capitalist society this has to come out of the surplus value created in capitalist agriculture and industry. Naturally it was resented by the capitalist class who at least have to arrange for their capital to be invested before they can obtain their property income.

Henry George’s idea was to tax away the whole of the ground-rent of landowners and use it to relieve the capitalist class of the need to pay any taxes. Churchill, Lloyd George and the others didn’t want to go that far, but they still wanted to tax the mere ownership of land. Legrain repeats their argument:

‘The country's biggest private landowner, the Duke of Buccleuch, owns 277,000 acres, not because of his talent or industry, but because his ancestors seized vast swaths of Scotland. These "land monopolists" — as Churchill dubbed them — get richer not through their own efforts, but that of others. The Duke of Westminster owns 300 acres of what was once fields and is now London's priciest real estate — Mayfair and Belgravia. And because so many people have established thriving businesses in the capital, that inheritance is now worth billions of pounds. Surely it would be better to tax that windfall gain, rather than the employees and entrepreneurs who generate it?’

The landed aristocracy lost the political battle and in 1911 the House of Lords had its wings clipped. But they kept their property. According to Legrain, in Britain today ‘0.3 percent of population owns 69 per cent of the land.’ The latest Sunday Times Rich List puts the Duke of Westminster as the 4th richest person in Britain with a pile worth £7,000 million. The Duke of Buccleuch is equal 381st with “only” £180 million, but that’s because land in the wilds of Scotland is less in demand than land in central London. Other bluebloods monopolising land in central London are Earl Cadogan (21st with £2,850 million), the Howard de Walden family (33rd with £1,820 million) and Viscount Portman (53rd with £1,200 million).

The Queen, who besides being the figurehead of the British capitalist state is a landed aristocrat in her own right, is equal 257th with £300 million. Other titled landowners with more than her are the Duke of Devonshire, the Duke of Sutherland and the Duke of Northumberland.

Their wealth is obscene and not justifiable even by capitalist standards. But Legrain is mistaken. Taxing away their rents would not benefit the real “wealth creators”, i.e. the wage and salary working class, but only the capitalist class by reducing the tax it has to pay.

Cooking the Books: The Price of a Home (2017)

The Cooking the Books column from the May 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Everybody is supposed to aspire to owning their home. It is true that, in the insecure world that capitalism is, owning where you live does give you a measure of security. But it's pretty expensive and dependent on having regular employment for twenty to thirty years. And the house doesn't become yours till you've completely paid off the loan you took out to buy it; up till then it belongs to the bank or building society you got the loan and they can repossess it if you default. Having a mortgage round your neck also tends to make you less inclined to go on strike; which of course was one of Mrs Thatcher's calculations when she pursued the policy of turning workers from renters into owner-occupiers.

Renting is now increasing as stagnating wages and rising house prices make buying a house too expensive for more and more workers. Actually, it's not the price of houses that is rising, but the price of the land on which they are built. Most of the cost of buying a home is for the land, as can be seen in the difference between what a building is insured for and the price at which it will sell.

Commenting on the financial results of the house-building firms Bovis, the Times (21 February) noted:

'Ultimately, building houses is not rocket science and profits are not driven as much by the cost of supplies or labour as by a company's skill at acquiring land at the right price.'

Hence the phenomenon of 'land banking' where property speculators buy up land and leave it unused while waiting for the most profitable time to develop it.

Land, as it is not the product of work, has no value in the Marxian sense. It has only a price, which is determined solely by demand. Some plots of land have a higher price than others because they are located where firms and people want to use it. Location is all-important. Henry George, the late 19th century land reformer, pointed out that as cities and towns grew the price of the land on which they were built went up to the benefit of those who owned it. The centre of London is still owned by aristocrats such as the Duke of Westminster whose ancestors got fabulously rich without having to lift a finger or invest a penny and still the money rolls in.

This is why pro-capitalist reformers like Henry George proposed a 100 percent tax on increases in land values. Others, equally pro-capitalist, proposed land nationalisation. Today's reformers are less bold. They only propose tinkering to try to bring land prices down. The charity and reformist campaigning group Shelter is proposing:

'greater powers for councils over land in their area. Land would be sold to developers with proposals that most closely meet community needs, rather than selling to the highest bidder alone. Shelter said lower land prices would mean developers did not need to keep house prices “artificially high”' ( i paper, 2 March).

That's assuming that developers are out only to make a normal profit from merely building houses whereas, as the Times article points out, they are also out to make money out of rising land prices. And, do Shelter expect cash-strapped local councils not to get the best deal they can for the land they own or control?

Housing is a good example of the irrational way that capitalism treats meeting a basic need. What in a society geared to meeting people's needs would be a straightforward question of deciding how best to use land and then doing it is complicated under capitalism by such extraneous factors as profits, loan repayments and the price of land.

Winstanley, Marx and Henry George ( 2012)

From the December 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Occupy movement has led to the ideas of these thinkers being discussed again at public meetings.

To mark the first anniversary of the Occupy camp at St Paul’s London Occupy organised a series of ‘New Putney Debates’ in October and November. Some took place in the same church in Putney as the original 1647 debates in Cromwell’s army. Two were devoted to the question of land.

The first, on 1 November on ‘Land and Democracy,’ was billed as:

‘Nearly 400 years ago the Diggers described the Earth as a ‘common storehouse for all’ and objected to land being kept in the hands of a few. Are landowners still oppressing the people today, and how should we respond?’

One response was given by Natalie Bennett, the new Leader of the Green Party, who argued her party’s case for a tax on land values. She quoted Churchill (when he was a Liberal Cabinet minister before WW1) and Henry George as favouring this.

Not being a product of labour, the price of land is determined entirely by demand and can command a higher price the more fertile it is or the more favourably it is situated (for example, in a city centre or near a railway station). Land prices rise whenever the land’s situation becomes more favourable (as when a town expands), the benefit of which is reaped entirely by the landowner without having to lift a finger. The idea of a Land Value Tax (LTV) is to tax away this windfall benefit.

Henry George (1839-1897), author of a widely-read book ‘Progress and Poverty,’ was hugely popular in America and was once nearly elected mayor of New York.  He advocated that a LVT should be the only tax. Hence the other name of the Georgist movement: ‘Single Taxers.’ Natalie Bennett, while favouring a LVT, didn’t go that far. She was challenged by a Liberal Democrat in the audience who said that it was her party’s policy too. She added that it had also been supported by Karl Marx.

This is true. One of the ten immediate measures (the first in fact) advocated in the Communist Manifesto by the Communist League of Germany for implementation had it come to win political control in 1848 was: ‘Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.’ Marx later explained (in a letter to F. A. Sorge in 1881) that, as a separate measure on its own, this was contradictory and criticised Henry George and others for ‘believing that if ground rent were transformed into a state tax all the evils of capitalist production would disappear of themselves’.

In the 1880s and 1890s Georgists and Socialists were rivals for working-class support, the Georgists arguing that to solve working class problems it was enough to tax away the rents of landowners while Socialists argued for the common ownership not just of land but of industry too.

It seems that this rivalry is being revived today, with many in the Occupy movement attracted by ideas of Henry George. This became evident at the second meeting on 9 November entitled: ‘A New Economy.’ The announcement for this started off well enough:

‘The foundations of the New Economy are: the means of life (water, food and housing) for all as a right; land and resources held in common and the benefits share,’

before petering out with ‘alternative currencies to foster greater equality and societal cohesion’.

It soon became clear that the organisers did not envisage ‘land and resources held in common’. What they wanted was a single tax on land values.  According to their handout, one of the ‘alternative currencies’ they had in mind was:

‘land backed interest free currency –spent into the economy to create infrastructure, rental income to fund citizens income and public services.’

In other words, the government would get money by taxing away the rental income, real or notional, of landowners (which these days includes not just the Duke of Westminster but those who own the leasehold or freehold of their homes) and using this to pay everybody a basic income as well as to finance its own expenditure. It is not clear that this is actually an ‘alternative currency’ since the existence of rental incomes to be taxed away assumes that there already is a currency. What they seem to mean is ‘land based interest free government financing,’ which would allow the government to dispense with borrowing money.

Whatever it is, it is not ‘land and resources held in common’. This was, in fact, specifically rejected by the speakers as unnecessary and leading to what happened in China under Mao during the period of the rural communes. This is the standard Georgist position, that common ownership of land would lead to tyranny and dictatorship, so private ownership of land is to continue in their scheme. They are not really opposed to capitalism either. (Henry George certainly wasn’t.) They even defended profit, saying that it was justified in that an element of risk was involved in contrast to interest which was a certain income. They cited Sharia Law as making this distinction too. Basically, what they are against is rent and interest but not profit.

Karl Marx came up at this meeting too when one of the speakers claimed that Marx agreed that landowners exploited both capitalists and workers. Actually, Marx’s position was that the capitalists exploited the workers but then were themselves exploited by the landowners. This is not at all the same, since it means that end exploitation by landowners would benefit only the capitalists and not the workers. Marx also looked forward to the time when: “from the standpoint of a higher socio-economic formation, the private property of particular individuals in the earth will appear just as absurd as the private property of one man in other men” (Capital, volume 3, chapter 46).

It is rather surprising that pro-capitalist ideas should be advocated within the Occupy movement which even the new Lord Mayor of the City of London, Roger Gifford, recognised started off as anti-capitalist. As he told the ‘i’ newspaper (10 November), ‘What they were basically saying was: “We don’t like capitalism as it looks today, we want another system.”’ What the Georgists in the Occupy movement are saying, rather, is, ‘We don’t like capitalism as it looks today. We want to give it a new look.’

What this shows is that it is not enough merely to have an anti-capitalist gut reaction. You need to know what capitalism really is and how it works. Otherwise you are going to be confused and misled, whether by currency cranks or by land reformers.

At the first meeting, Gerrard Winstanley was favourably mentioned many times, even if he was misunderstood as merely advocating setting up agricultural communes. In fact he was far more radical than this, advocating the common ownership both of the land and of products made from it to which everyone would have free access without money –what the announcement for the second meeting called ‘the means of life (water, food and housing) for all as of right; land and resources held in common and the benefits shared’. In this, even though three centuries earlier, he was far in advance of Henry George and his single tax on the rental incomes of land that would be left in private ownership.

It is good that people are discussing the ideas of past thinkers such as Gerrard Winstanley, Karl Marx and even Henry George. It shows that they are looking for an alternative to the capitalist production-for-profit system. It is disappointing, though, that at the moment it is ideas that are not really anti-capitalist which seem to have the upper hand in discussions within the Occupy movement, at least in London.

Adam Buick