This is the book that made its author Henry George suddenly famous. From the year 1879 to the present the doctrines of 'Progress and Poverty' have been familiar to all who are interested in social problems. The book has been read by many to whom Political Economy is still 'the dismal science', and it has been circulated in cheap editions by the thousand among the classes to which it holds out such an alluring prospect. 'Progress and Poverty' has become a classic in labor literature. Its doctrines have been accepted not only by many who see in them a means of personal rescue from distress and want, but by many others who are convinced by the reasoning of the author. Clergymen , in the Catholic as well as in the Protestant church, have become Mr. George's disciples, and business and professional men have gladly sat at his feet.
Henry George the greatest, most famous and most rejected of early American economists who trained himself in classical economics and developed a theory of a 'single tax'. There is much literature on many specific facets and aspects of George's work, but we lack a book which provides an overview of George's economics... until now!
During the latter half of the nineteenth century, a number of social philosophers' gained pre-eminence throughout North America and Europe for their writings and speeches, Henry George being one of the best known; often referred to as progressivists', they sought to expose the established and growing socio-economic iniquities that were the result of swift industrialisatio, and called for a new political ecomony and social order. This book, the first in a trilogy, examines the basics of Henry George's political and social philosophy. Through careful and exhaustive research into George's original works (including Progress and Poverty, Our Land and Land Policy and articles in the Standard), the editor has compiled in one volume the essentials required for a clear and comprehensive understanding of Henry George's thinking. Volume I: An Anthology of Henry George's ThoughtVolume II: An Anthology of Tolstoy's Spiritual EconomicsVolume III: An Anthology of Single Land Tax
America's remarkable explosion of industrial output and national wealth at the end of the nineteenth century was matched by a troubling rise in poverty and worker unrest. As politicians and intellectuals fought over the causes of this crisis, Henry George (1839–1897) published a radical critique of laissez-faire capitalism and its threat to the nation's republican traditions. Progress and Poverty (1879), which became a surprise best-seller, offered a provocative solution for preserving these traditions while preventing the amassing of wealth in the hands of the few: a single tax on land values. George's writings and years of social activism almost won him the mayor's seat in New York City in 1886. Though he lost the election, his ideas proved instrumental to shaping a popular progressivism that remains essential to tackling inequality today. Edward T. O'Donnell's exploration of George's life and times merges labor, ethnic, intellectual, and political history to illuminate the early militant labor movement in New York during the Gilded Age. He locates in George's rise to prominence the beginning of a larger effort by American workers to regain control of the workplace and obtain economic security and opportunity. The Gilded Age was the first but by no means the last era in which Americans confronted the mixed outcomes of modern capitalism. George's accessible, forward-thinking ideas on democracy, equality, and freedom have tremendous value for contemporary debates over the future of unions, corporate power, Wall Street recklessness, government regulation, and political polarization.
George's Progress and Poverty, Bellamy's Looking Backward, and Lloyd's Wealth against Commonwealth championed a national policy allied neither with large-scale capitalism, nor with bureaucratic socialism. Through vivid portraits of these journalists, Thomas traces the evolving ideologies of the most significant reformers of their age.
Henry George (1839–1897) rose to fame as a social reformer and economist amid the industrial and intellectual turbulence of the late nineteenth century. His best-selling Progress and Poverty (1879) captures the ravages of privileged monopolies and the woes of industrialization in a language of eloquent indignation. His reform agenda resonates as powerfully today as it did in the Gilded Age, and his impassioned prose and compelling thought inspired such diverse figures as Leo Tolstoy, John Dewey, Sun Yat-Sen, Winston Churchill, and Albert Einstein. This six-volume edition of the works of Henry George assembles all his major works for the first time with new introductions, critical annotations, extensive bibliographical material, and comprehensive indexing to provide a wealth of resources for scholars and reformers. Volume 1 of The Annotated Works of Henry George includes an introduction to the six-volume series that focuses on the social context for George’s political economy, as well as the public and private struggles that George faced. Tension between the dream of economic justice and different techniques to realize it proved a continuing challenge for the Georgist movement after its heady early years. Volume 1 presents three major works by George and new essays to provide context. George wrote Our Land and Land Policy (1871) while still a journalist in California. Fred Foldvary shows that George, even as a neophyte economist, wrote with uncanny insight and analytical skill. In The Irish Land Question (1881), George dove into the maelstrom of Irish land policy. Jerome Heavey provides the essential clarification of the history and politics of Irish land law and explains why George’s remedy was not adopted. Property in Land (1885) incorporates the debate between George and the eighth Duke of Argyll. Brian Hodgkinson provides the historical and philosophical setting for this exchange between the Scottish aristocratic landowner and the American “Prophet of San Francisco.”
Can today's policy makers and researchers effectively draw on the ideas of nineteenth-century philosopher Henry George to help solve twenty-first-century problems? This compendium presents eight essays by scholars who demonstrate that many of George's ideas about land use and taxation remain valuable today.
In Comte’s original work on positivism, he attempted to outline a general perception of positivism, how it can be applied to society and how society would work should positivism be applied. J.H. Bridges’ translation, originally published in 1865, this version first published in 1908, manages to simplify and clarify Comte’s views of positivism and how it is related to the thoughts, feelings and actions of humankind as well as how positivism can be applied to philosophy, politics, industry, poetry, the family and the future. This title will be of interest to students of sociology and philosophy.
