Progress and Poverty - edited and abridged for modern readers by Bob Drake

344 Pages·2006·1.55 MB·English

by  Henry George

Progress
and Poverty

Henry George
Progress
and
Poverty
Why there are recessions
and poverty amid plenty
— and what to do about it!
Edited and abridged
for modern readers by Bob Drake
Robert Schalkenbach Foundation
Henry George
Progress and Poverty
Why there are recessions, and poverty amid plenty
— and what to do about it!
Edited and abridged for modern readers by Bob Drake
Book and cover design by Lindy Davies
ISBN 0-911312-98-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2006928337
First Edition
Copyright © 2006 by the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation
149 Madison Avenue, Suite 601
New York NY 10016
Contents
Publisher’s Foreword by Cliff Cobb............................... IX
Editor’s Preface by Bob Drake.......................................XII
Author’s Preface to the Fourth Edition .......................XV
Introduction: The Problem of Poverty Amid Progress....1
First Part: Wages and Capital
1. Why Traditional Theories of Wages are Wrong........8
2. Defining Terms........................................................17
3. Wages Are Produced By Labor, Not Drawn From
Capital...................................................................28
4. Workers Not Supported By Capital.........................41
5. The True Functions of Capital.................................46
Second Part: Population and Subsistence
6. The Theory of Population According to Malthus ...51
7. Malthus vs. Facts......................................................57
8. Malthus vs. Analogies..............................................69
9. Malthusian Theory Disproved.................................75
Third Part: The Laws of Distribution
10. Necessary Relation of the Laws of Distribution......83
11. The Law Of Rent ..................................................89
12. The Cause of Interest.............................................95
13. False Interest........................................................102
14. The Law Of Interest............................................106
15. The Law Of Wages..............................................111
16. Correlating The Laws of Distribution.................120
17. The Problem Explained .......................................123
Fourth Part: The Effect of Material Progress
on the Distribution of Wealth
18. Dynamic Forces Not Yet Explored ......................126
19. Population Growth and Distribution of Wealth ...128
20. Technology and the Distribution of Wealth........137
21. Speculation...........................................................142
Fifth Part: The Problem Solved
22. The Root Cause of Recessions.............................145
23. The Persistence of Poverty
Despite Increasing Wealth ..................................155
Sixth Part: The Remedy
24. Ineffective Remedies............................................165
25. The True Remedy ................................................180
Seventh Part: Justice of the Remedy
26. The Injustice of Private Property In Land...........182
27. The Enslavement of Labor ..................................192
28. Are Landowners Entitled to Compensation?......198
29. History of Land as Private Property....................203
30. History of Property in Land in the US................211
Eighth Part: Application of the Remedy
31. Private Property in Land is Inconsistent
with the Best Use of Land...................................219
32. Securing Equal Rights To Land ..........................223
33. The Canons of Taxation.......................................226
34. Endorsements And Objections............................236
Ninth Part: Effects of the Remedy
35. The Effect on Production ....................................242
36. The Effect on The Distribution of Wealth..........246
37. The Effect on Individuals and Classes.................250
38. Changes in Society...............................................254
Tenth Part: The Law of Human Progress
39. The Cause of Human Progress............................263
40. Differences in Civilizations..................................270
41. The Law of Human Progress...............................275
42. How Modern Civilization May Decline .............287
43. The Central Truth................................................295
44. Conclusion: The Individual Life..........................300
Afterword: Who Was Henry George?
by Agnes George de Mille ......................................304
Index..........................................................................311

Publisher’s Foreword (cid:141) IX
Publisher’s Foreword
WE OWE Bob Drake a debt of gratitude for this meticu-
lous condensation and modernization of Henry George’s
great work. The original version had an elegance that
evoked a passion for social justice among millions of read-
ers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. How-
ever, by the beginning of the twenty-first century, George’s
complex prose stood in the way of that intention for large
numbers of people. Now his ideas can once again be widely
accessible.
What were those ideas and why are they still impor-
tant today? When Progress and Poverty was published in
1879, it was aimed in part at discrediting Social Darwin-
ism, the idea that “survival of the fittest” should serve as a
social philosophy. That ideology, developed by Herbert
Spencer, William Graham Sumner, and others, provided
the intellectual basis for 1) American imperialism against
Mexico and the Philippines, 2) tax policies designed to
reduce burdens on the rich by shifting them onto the poor
and middle class, 3) the ascendancy of the concept of ab-
solute property rights, unmitigated by any social claims
on property, 4) welfare programs that treat the poor as
failures and misfits, 5) racial segregation in education and
housing, and 6) eugenics programs to promote the “supe-
rior” race. The intellectual defense of racism is in abey-
ance, but the economic and political instruments of
domination have changed little. The renewed defense of
X (cid:141) Progress and Poverty
taxing wages and consumer goods rather than property
holdings, expanded intellectual property rights, and vast
imperial ambitions are indications that Social Darwinism
is back in full force.
The revival of Social Darwinism continues to justify
social disparities on the basis of natural superiority or
fitness. Progress and Poverty, by contrast, reveals that those
disparities derive from special privileges. Many econo-
mists and politicians foster the illusion that great for-
tunes and poverty stem from the presence or absence of
individual skill and risk-taking. Henry George, by con-
trast, showed that the wealth gap occurs because a few
people are allowed to monopolize natural opportunities
and deny them to others. If we deprived social elites of
those monopolies, the whole facade of their greater “fit-
ness” would come tumbling down. George did not advo-
cate equality of income, the forcible redistribution of
wealth, or government management of the economy. He
simply believed that in a society not burdened by the
demands of a privileged elite, a full and satisfying life
would be attainable by everyone.
Henry George is best remembered as an advocate of
the “single tax” on location values. (I say “location” rather
than “land” to avoid the common confusion that George
was primarily interested in rural land. In fact his attention
was focused on the tens of trillions of dollars worth of
urban land that derives its value from location.) Yet, for
George, wise tax policy was merely a vehicle to break the
stranglehold of speculative ownership that effectively limits
the opportunity to earn an decent living and participate in
public life.
Perhaps the image that best captures George’s ultimate
intention is the final scene in a popular science fiction