I find it fascinating that the original Monopoly game was desgined to teach us the difference and how Georgism (taxing bad behavior) may be used by "the people/democracy" to ensure capitalism is not the outcome.
Also very telling that the game was thn ripped off, and got popular as Monopoly, where the only set of rules are the capitalistic ones.
Georgism can be summarized as such: A person is entitled to exactly what he or she produces.
That’s the purest capitalism I’ve ever heard of. The scent of socialism you get is due to the examination that George provides of “exactly what he or she produces.”
Laborers are therefore entitled to all of their wages. Capitalists, who earn money by deploying capital (which is actually stored up labor) are entitled to all of their returns. Landlords, however, earn money by charging for access to something they did not produce - either to the “productive powers of nature” such as rivers, mines, farmable land, or to value created by the community surrounding a plot of land (such as education, cultural amenities, public transit, or private employment opportunities).
It’s really not socialist at all. It’s idealized capitalism.
Not only did they not produce it, in many places they (or the ancestors they inherited it from) actively stole it from the original inhabitants. e.g. The Inclosure Acts, Colonialism, etc.
If the moral position resonates, take it. If the economic position resonates, take it. If the political one resonates, take it. Each is very convincing by its own merits!
I'll think you'll find that Marx is pretty upset about labor not being entitled to what labor produces, as well. And while Marx is not all of socialism, I don't know anybody who says that Marxian thought is outside of socialism, and I've sought out lots of socialist thought that critiques Marx.
Most critiques of capitalism are that workers are not entitled to the fruits of their labor, that capital steals from them. So if saying that somebody is entitled to work and to keep their labor is capitalist, I'm having trouble understanding where you come from, and would like to hear more. In particular, I don't think George declares that capital is entitled to the fruits of others' labor, which is what you seem to be saying.
Georgism is about socializing land, about preventing people from hoarding it and the wealth it produces. Land is the one input to production that we can't make more of, so therefore hoarding it is by far the most harmful. It's about restoring commons, after the commons had been taken away and privatized. It's about restoring all land to some form of social control, no matter who owns it and how much that person owns. And it's about redistributing that wealth that people are unfairly taking from society when they pocket unearned land rents.
My problem with Georgism is that it tends to be politically unstable and lead to tax revolts. And my problem with the typical Marxist visions (Marx himself was not super prescriptive, but in that void, Marxist thought must expand upon Marx) is the tendency to dictators and totalitarianism, something which George also predicted.
I think George is extremely compatible with, and perhaps required for, the type of socialism that was sought in the Spanish revolution of 1936.
The fruits of labor that are not accounted for in a quid pro quo transaction with capital are those that go to land, for which there can be no quid pro quo transaction because you must occupy (and labor upon) land. If there were infinite land available, labor could simply move to that land and produce what they themselves can produce from nature with no gains going to capital because they need not employ capital to survive. If there were infinite land available, the only people who would choose to employ capital (or be employed by a capitalist, same thing) are those who believe the bigger pie is worth the smaller slice.
However we do not live in a world of infinite land, and so that calculus happens^ but it is coerced by the necessity to live and work on land owned by neither labor nor capital. Given that capitalists don't work directly on land and are generally "more efficient" (this is why capital is valuable, aka this efficiency is what capital is), the world becomes separated into those above the "rent line" and those below the "rent line," and there are far more capitalists above than below and far more laborers below than above. This creates tension between labor and capital, but neither of them are getting what they produce, but that's not because capital is stealing from labor - rather land is stealing from both, just capital has greater capacity to be stolen from before descending into poverty.
In any case:
* Not every point of an ideology is mutually exclusive of every point of every competitive ideology.
* Georgism is not about socializing land nor centralizing control. It is explicitly not about that. It is about socializing the gains on land produced by external factors (nearby public and private investment, technological improvements, etc)
* You mention Georgism tends to be politically unstable. Could you point to some historical examples you have in mind?
Economically the USSR had capital too, but it was mostly owned collectively (by the state).
Hence I define the two in terms of the people that actually own stuff.
