The Power of Land: Georgism 101
Discusses importance of common ownership of land and natural resources
Georgism is not particularly a leftist tendency.
Commodification of land is only one kind of commodification that is commonly criticized.
Georgism advocates for more general preservation of private ownership for assets used by others in residency and production. As such, it is generally criticized for not offering any credible or comprehensive solution to the structural inequities bound to the relations of private property.
Georgism can be combined with other policies such as democratizing the workplace. Sure, not every Georgist is a leftist. The point is every leftist should be a Georgist. I personally know Georgists that are anti-capitalist.
The labor theory of property, a negative application of which is the justification of Georgism, also provides a strong argument for workers’ self-management and critique of capitalist property relations
Georgism offers no criticism against housing commodification, nor even against the home of one household being controlled by another who lives elsewhere.
It also offers no criticism against business owners controlling enterprise though the wage system.
If the assets developed on land were controlled by the public, then Georgism would satisfy no demand still unresolved.
If land simply were rented by the public, yet under private control, then the assets on it would remain privately controlled, and the public would never achieve control over housing or enterprise.
Not every policy is implemented to solve every problem. So listing all the things georgism doesn’t solve is a moot point.
No matter what, the state needs a source of income. And georgism is to my knowledge the least bad of all options, all of which are bad.
The rules on who can own what land for what purpose, private or personal is independent of the rules on how tax is collected.
Georgism tends not to augment leftist theory or objectives, if it even offers compatibility.
Georgians want landlords and business owners to be taxed such that their profits from control over land is offset by the ideal that land is natural and should benefit everyone equally.
Leftists want to abolish profit, and to restore control of housing and enterprise directly to the public, to be managed cooperatively.
Georgism tends not to augment leftist theory or objectives
And like I already said, not every policy is implemented to solve every problem.
Georgians want landlords and business owners to be taxed such that …
And this is a sweeping generalization. Not all georgians agree on every aspect of georgism. There are georgians that want to keep a pure “free market” capitalism, there are those that want a mixed economy, and those that want socialism or communism in addition to georgism.
It’s not a one size fits all camp.
ideal that land is natural and should benefit everyone equally.
Do you disagree with this?
Leftists want to abolish profit
This is also just a sweeping generalization. Just as with georgism, leftism isn’t something that can be defined by a simplified, sweeping generalization. Leftists are a diverse group.
You’re not talking about policy, which is where the actual conversation is at.
The generalizations were not intended as asserting rules for association with a label, as much as for questioning the meaningful overlap of principles.
Leftism engages class struggle.
Georgism seeks codification to moderate the class antagonism, without addressing how it would be achieved against the power of the ruling class, or why it should he resolved as a final objective for the working class.
There is an overlap of principles though. A Georgist basis for common ownership of land and natural resources is a negative application of the labor theory of property. A positive application of the labor theory of property provides an argument for workers’ self-management. See: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/column-the-case-for-employee-owned-companies
Georgism is 1 policy. Georgism itself leaves doesn’t specify what the rest of the economy looks like
If you’re not going to answer my questions that I don’t see the need to respond to your statements.
Georgism is about 1 policy that can be combined with other policies.
A level of private control by workers’ collectives is actually a prerequisite of having workers’ self-management. If the public decides every aspect of property’s management that would violate the inalienable right to workplace democracy.
Some strands of anti-capitalist thought overemphasize centralized democratic control rather than decentralization.
In terms of housing, Georgist land rent should fund a UBI
Regardless of how you are understanding “workplace democracy”, no conflict occurs between the public controlling land usage and the public controlling enterprise.
Georgism simply advocates that lands would be rented from the public by private entities, some of which may be private enterprise or rented housing. The general understanding is that private profits would be partially recovered by the public to compensate for private use of land. It expresses no support for the abolition of profit.
If the public controlled enterprise and housing, then it would of course control land usage. There is no particularly clear case for any problem in leftist tendencies being solved by Georgism.
The democratic principle is that the people that are governed in or by an organization should have ultimate positive control rights over that organization. In an enterprise, management governs the people that actually work in the enterprise. Management does not govern the people outside the enterprise. Workplace democracy thus means that the people that work in the enterprise should hold all the positive control rights over the enterprise
You seem to be using the term “workplace democracy” to erase any control that he public might assert of the overall management of land.
Yet, the land itself demands to be controlled by no particular faction among the public, but rather by the public as a whole.
The interest of everyone is not only in controlling the enterprise in which oneself is a participant, but also the broader practices over how land is managed and enterprise is interrelated.
If an enterprise seeks use of lands and buildings, then the public has an interest in regulating the particular access to them by the enterprise.
Public regulation is compatible with Georgism. Sure, in that sense, the public can and should have some negative control rights on the overall management of land.
The public’s control cannot extend to complete control without hollowing out the notion of workplace democracy. Workers’ collectives have to have some partial rights to control land relevant to their operations as well for there to be workers’ self-management
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Georgism is 1 policy. It can be combined with other policies such worker democracy and common ownership of the means of production.
The labor theory of property actually supplies one of the strongest arguments for workers’ self-management. The negative application of which is an ethical basis of Georgism
It only taxes the land based on what they do with the land and the value of things near that land, seems pretty short sighted. Tech company “x” makes a billion dollars. But what they do in the building matters not, because the value of the land isn’t really affected much so they add very little to society. So inequity continues. Also in #capitalism those with the capital make the rules. They just alter the rules in their favor. You need structural change #eattherich
Georgism can be combined with anti-capitalist policies such as democratizing the workplace etc. The rich’s control over the rules can be significantly reduced with campaign finance reform with quadratic funding. Quadratic funding is a mechanism that results in campaigns that receive small contributions from many supporters getting greater funding than campaigns that receive large contributions from a few donors
