Henry George and Europe

Abstract

Abstract. The progressive democratic social philosophy of a 19th century American economist, Henrys George, has had a far‐reaching effect on some European intellectual and political leaders. Not all adopted his practical proposal, the single land value tax as a substitute for other taxes. But the British Liberal party, a section of the British Labor party and Danish smallholders did. George's ideas were absorbed into the long standing European land reform tradition and he became the initiator and theoretical founder of the modern movement there, as Heinrich Erman, the German legal scholar, held. It is a mistake to say that the French Physiocrats anticipated George; their produit net was a tax on output, not highest potential use and was aimed to achieve stability, not development. Europeans see George and Georgism the same as Americans but in a different context, that of Natural rights.