Untitled Document
Originally published as International Journal of Social Economics, Volume 36, Issue 4
Guest editor: Francis K. Peddle
ISSN/ISBN: 978-1-84855-627-0
This Special Issue of the International Journal of Social Economics focuses on the ideas of the nineteenth century American social and economic philosopher, Henry George, (1839-1897). George published Progress and Poverty in 1879 and it very quickly became the most widely read book on economics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This fact will astonish many people today. The historical influence of Progress and Poverty has become obscured, indeed almost obliterated, since the Second World War. George was an autodidact, populist reformer, skilled orator and elegant philosopher of economics, who had a global following which reached its pinnacle in the first decade of the twentieth century. This was a popularity that had substantive political and legislative effects in such diverse places as the United States, England, Australia and Africa. George’s ideas, his corpus of publications and its scholarly commentary, long since relegated to the outermost margins of the academic discipline of economics, are once again finding a renascence. And for good reason.
Contents:
Editor’s Introduction
Francis K. Peddle
Steps to Economic Recovery
John Dewey
The Hidden Taxable Capacity of Land: Enough and to Spare
Mason Gaffney
A tax based on land value is in many ways ideal, but many economists dismiss it by assuming it could not raise enough revenue. Standard sources of data omit much of the potential tax base, and undervalue what they do measure. The purpose of this paper is to present more comprehensive and accurate measures of land rents and values, and several modes of raising revenues from them besides the conventional property tax.
George, Wicksell and Gaffney: A Three-Factor Model of the Boom and Bust Cycle
Mary M. Cleveland
The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast three-factor models of boom and bust from Henry George, Knut Wicksell and Mason Gaffney
Benjamin Franklin’s Principles of Political Economy: A Speculative Enquiry
Edward J. Dodson
The purpose of this paper is To examine the extent to which Benjamin Franklin’s understanding of political economy was shaped by his association with the French school of writers known as physiocrats
Justice and Mr. George: What Henry George Knew, What the Neoclassicists Forgot, and Why it Matters
John C. Medaille
Henry George was acclaimed by the general public and disdained by the professional economists, largely for the same reasons. For the general public, Progress and Poverty seemed to go to the heart of the matter, treating economics as a question of justice. But for the professionals, George was often regarded as a dangerous radical, even though he reasoned within the tradition of Smith, Ricardo, and Mill. However, he conducted his studies at the precise moment of the marginalist revolution, just as the profession was undergoing a transition from political economy to economics. For the former, economic science was embedded in particular political and cultural systems, while the latter aspired to be a pure science with its own mathematics. While some of the marginalists, such as Walras and Marshall, could maintain a commitment to justice, many others found the whole question superfluous. The purpose of this paper is to argue, however, that without some notion of justice, and especially justice in property relations, a complete description of an economy is impossible.
Henry George, John Rae, and the Theory of Capital in a Rapidly Transforming Economy
William S. Pierce
This paper establishes a historical context for the often maligned capital theory of Henry George within a North American frontier tradition that includes John Rae.
World Ownership, Self-Ownership, and Equality in Georgist Philospophy
Darrel Moellendorf
This paper evaluates the accounts of self- and world ownership in the social philosophy of Henry George, and a Georgist social theorist Nicolaus Tideman
The Case for Geoliberalism: A Reply to Moellendorf
Nicolaus Tideman
This paper explains the virtues (despite Darryl Moellendorf’s criticisms) of the Geoliberal framework of social justice, which assumes that people have rights to themselves and that all people have equal rights to natural opportunities.
About International Journal of Social Economics
International Journal of Social Economics aims to provide its readers with a unique forum for the exchange and sharing of information in this complex area of economics. The journal will present the social-economic problems, as expressed by economists, philosophers, political scientists, historians and business academics, with their consequent ethical considerations.
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