No.391424
Thoughts on the ideas of Henry George? Seems pretty based to me. Marx was critical of his ideas, agreeing with them in some basic respects but viewing it as a limp half-measure. I disagree with Marx here. George does not have the stigma Marx carries, and his idea is simple and utterly agreeable to all but the most hardened of porkies: people keep the value earned from everything they produce and unearned income from the ownership of land is all that is to be taxed. No sort of wishy-washy neoliberalist critique that taxing land would disincentivize development, land is a necessity and will be developed in more proactive ways if land speculation is impracticable because simply sitting on it will not yield a profit. As this would be a tax on "unimproved land value."
The masses, right or left, except porky would ultimately get behind this idea had it any currency in modern political discourse. As capitalism has curdled over in recent decades and porky has tightened his grip on the levers of power, unearned income is taxed more favorably than earned income.
Georgism is a great hedge between capitalism and socialism. Had Marx saw it more clearly, it could be a viable and massively popular intermediate stage between capitalism and socialism. No income or sales tax? Who would say no to that?
It's clear that unlike an idealistic, huge change such as a massive revolution, popular, uncontroversial practical concrete steps to tip the scales and erode porky's power have a much better chance of putting the first foot forward.
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No.391594
As a former Georgist, George quite literally doesn't go far enough, and this argument that it's viable as a "stepping stone" is just SocDem rhetoric that inevitably goes nowhere. It also lacks a far broader understanding of rent itself in the context of capitalist relations, and how the development towards capitalist commodity production literally involved the initial practice of usury itself. And revolution isn't idealistic, it's a necessity. Whats idealistic is expecting the bourgeoisie state at this venture to implement reforms which pose any kind of meaningful risk to the ruling class, much of which profits off of it's larger investments into real estate and the pursuit of rent-seeking. Your whole argument buys into the liberal conception of the state rather then the Marxist one. That is to say, you see it as a legitimate body of representative governance, as opposed to a tool of class rule. The people who pass and enforce the laws of society as it is have no interest in what you state.
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No.391598
Georgism is an interesting idea, but severely lacking. it feels like an offshoot of physiocracy, with all the same problems
>people keep the value earned from everything they produce and unearned income from the ownership of land is all that is to be taxed
exploitation still happens under Georgism. so no, people do not keep the value they produce. also, what of rent on other things such as housing?
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No.391600
Henry George was popular in the big cities in the late 19th century. He represented a unique part of the left wing movement, or the broader working class movement that was taking form in the US. Engels talks about him in his notes on Conditions of the Working Class in England. He speaks of where the American working class movement is at by the late 1880s and he talks of the Knights of Labor and the Henry George movement we’re the biggest then. The socialist party wasn’t so popular since it was made up of mostly German immigrants who brought all their experience from 4 decades of class struggle in Europe but had not much experience with it in the US.
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No.391624
It's interesting how Georgist ideas have almost completely fallen out of favor these days. His book Progress and Poverty was one of the most popular books in US history.
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No.391897
>>391594>it's viable as a "stepping stone" is just SocDem rhetoricGeorge's idea is in the Communist Manifesto. Although you might not think of it as a stepping stone, it does challenge the way people think and leads to people thinking about radical politics, like yourself.
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No.391931
>his idea is simple and utterly agreeable to all but the most hardened of porkies
DOA.
Porkies will never settle for anything less of the absolute most they can get away with squeezing out of the proletariat. FDR enacted critical labour reforms that directed some of porky's surplus labour profits back the working class to temporarily save capitalism and the American economy during the great depression and Porky called him a communist and made plans to kill him and instate a corporate dictatorship. When the communists won in Cuba, the American state made plans to terror bomb and massacre thousands of their own citizens to blame on the Cubans, in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. Georgism does not work for the same reason social democracy could never work: Porky will never settle with the proletariat, unless the proletariat is strong enough to take much more by force. Once the militant working class is pacified, porky will sink his fangs in once more.
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No.391948
>>391931>Porkies will never settle for anything less of the absolute most they can get away with squeezing out of the proletariat.But landlordism also squeezes Porkies. There's a reason Winston Churchill of all people ran around saying incredibly based things about the parasitism of landlords. They screw over businessmen just as surely as they screw over workingmen.
(Nominally, at least. With modern finance-capitalism it's quite easy to come to an analysis that the situation has shifted as part of the general split of finance and industrial capital, with industrial capital left holding the can or moving to countries which were smart enough to do a bit of the ol' landlord ""classicide"", but it's worth remembering that fundamentally landlordism is a feudal holdover.)