Henry George - Legacy

Legacy

In the United Kingdom during 1909, the Liberal Government of the day attempted to implement his ideas as part of the People's Budget. This caused a crisis which resulted indirectly in reform of the House of Lords. George's ideas were also adopted to some degree in Australia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, and Taiwan. In these countries, governments still levy some type of land value tax, albeit with exemptions. In New Zealand George's ideas contributed to the land ownership reforms of the Liberal government in the 1890s and 1900s. In Denmark, the Danmarks Retsforbund (known in English as the Justice Party or Single-Tax Party) was founded in 1919. The party's platform is based upon the land tax principles of Henry George. The party was elected to parliament for the first time in 1926, and they were moderately successful in the post-war period and managed to join a governing coalition with the Social Democrats and the Social Liberal Party from the years 1957-60. In 1960 they dropped out of the parliament. However in the 1973 Danish parliamentary election (the so-called Landslide Election) the party won 5 seats in Folketinget, because of their opposition against Danish membership of the European Economic Community. They were represented until 1981 and also in the European Parliament 1978-79 (by Ib Christensen). The 1970s were followed by a dropoff of party support, and the party ceased to run at a national level in 1990, but in 2005 the party ran together with Minoritetspartiet (the Minority Party), unsuccessfully, however, since the Minority Party only garnered 0.3% of the votes.

Fairhope, Alabama was founded as a colony by a group of George's followers as an experiment to test his concepts. Much of the land around Fairhope is owned by the Fairhope Single Tax Corporation, which leases the land for 99 years (transferable and renewable for another 99 years at transfer).

Although both advocated worker's rights, Henry George and Karl Marx were antagonists. Marx saw the Single Tax platform as a step backwards from the transition to communism. On his part, Henry George predicted that if Marx's ideas were tried, the likely result would be a dictatorship.

Henry George's popularity decreased gradually during the 20th century, and he is little known today. However, there are still many Georgist organizations in existence. Many people who still remain famous were influenced by him. For example, George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy's To The Working People, Sun Yat Sen, Herbert A. Simon, and David Lloyd George. A follower of George, Lizzie Magie, created a board game called The Landlord's Game in 1904 to demonstrate his theories. After further development this game led to the modern board game Monopoly.

J. Frank Colbert, a newspaperman, a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives and later the mayor of Minden, joined the Georgist movement during 1927. During 1932, Colbert addressed the Henry George Congress at Memphis, Tennessee.

Also notable is Silvio Gesell's Freiwirtschaft, in which Gesell combined Henry George's ideas about land ownership and rents with his own theory about the money system and interest rates and his successive development of Freigeld.

In his last book, Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community?, Martin Luther King, Jr referenced Henry George in support of a guaranteed minimum income. George's influence has ranged widely across the political spectrum. Noted progressives such as consumer rights advocate (and U.S. Presidential candidate) Ralph Nader and Congressman Dennis Kucinich have spoken positively about George in campaign platforms and speeches. His ideas have also received praise from conservative journalists William F. Buckley, Jr. and Frank Chodorov, Fred E. Foldvary and Stephen Moore . The libertarian political and social commentator Albert Jay Nock was also an avowed admirer, and wrote extensively on the Georgist economic and social philosophy.

Mason Gaffney, an American economist and a major Georgist critic of neoclassical economics, argued that neoclassical economics was designed and promoted by landowners and their hired economists to divert attention from George's extremely popular philosophy that since land and resources are provided by nature, and their value is given by society, land value — rather than labor or capital — should provide the tax base to fund government and its expenditures.

The Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, an incorporated "operating foundation," also publishes copies of George's work on economic reform and sponsors academic research into his policy proposals .