Human Nature from a Georgist Perspective

• Published date: 01 October 2012
• Author: JAMES DAWSEY
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1536-7150.2012.00846.x
• Date: 01 October 2012

HUMAN NATURE

Human Nature from a Georgist Perspective

By JAMES DAWSEY*

ABSTRACT. George’s view of human nature was also deeply rooted in

the Judeo-Christian tradition. Since God’s creation was good, so too

were humans intended for good—not evil. Through creation, each

person was accorded dignity by God and equal status with all other

humans, regardless of the accidents of birth. God established people as

stewards rather than owners of the world; they were entrusted with the

special labor of enacting just and eternal laws that would perpetuate

creation itself and dispense God’s bounty for all. He intended them to

be rational beings, seekers of justice, communitarian and free. By

allowing, participating in, and often benefitting from unjust structures

regarding land ownership, Christians engaged in theft. It was thus up to

George and others in “the movement” to build consensus, to persuade,

to become politically involved, and ultimately to inaugurate, practice,

and enforce land laws allowing equal opportunity to all.

The Prophet from San Francisco

In a letter so personal that it was only released after Henry George’s

death, George disclosed to the Rev. Thomas Dawson what drove him

to write Progress and Poverty (George 1981: 311–312):

Because you are not only my friend, but a priest and a religious, I shall say

something that I don’t like to speak of—that I never before have told to any

one. Once, in daylight, and in a city street, there came to me a thought, a

vision, a call—give it what name you please. But every nerve quivered.

And there and then I made a vow. Through evil and through good,

whatever I have done and whatever I have left undone, to that I have been

true. It was that that impelled me to write Progress and Poverty and that

sustained me when else I should have failed. And when I had finished the

*James Dawsey is Wolfe Chair and Professor of Religious Studies, Religion Depart-

ment, Emory & Henry College.

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 71, No. 4 (October, 2012).

© 2012 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

last page, in the dead of the night, when I was entirely alone, I flung myself

on my knees and wept like a child. The rest was in the Master’s hands. That

is a feeling that has never left me; that is constantly with me. And it has led

me up and up. It has made me a better and a purer man. It has been to

me a religion, strong and deep.

If of another time, a different place, we might think of Henry George

principally as a religious figure rather than political economist or

social philosopher.

An opponent to George, once trying to make light of his ideas,

satirized him as the “Prophet of San Francisco” (the Duke of Argyll’s

essay “The Prophet of San Francisco” originally appeared in the

Nineteenth Century for April, 1884; it is most accessible today as

included in its entirety with rebuttal in George 1965). But as if from

Balaam’s mouth, this attempt to demean and curse captured a

remarkable truth: Henry George shared much indeed with the bib-

lical personages of yore. George’s childhood was suffused with

pious instruction; his homelife in his 30s and 40s was marked by

prayer, hymns, and private devotion. As a mature man, his faith in

Providence grew to the extent that he fully trusted the continuity of

this life into an eternal after. And George’s greatest wish for this

world was simply that God’s plan for justice become concrete. Was

George a prophet? In many ways, yes. George’s comments to the

Rev. Dawson reveal a calling every bit as focused as Isaiah’s (Isaiah

6: 1–13), as personal as Jeremiah’s (Jeremiah 1: 4–10), as mystifying

as Ezekiel’s (Ezekiel 1–2), and, in its own way, as compelling as

Moses’ (Exodus 3–4). “I have observed the misery of my people,”

God said to Moses, “I have heard their cry on account of their

taskmasters. Indeed I know their sufferings” (Exodus 3: 7). Was not

the aforesaid vision that George related to his friend, the Rev.

Dawson, of the same type?

George (1942: 9–10) penned the following sentiments at the begin-

ning of Progress and Poverty: “It is as though an immense wedge were

being forced, not underneath society, but through society. Those who

are above the point of separation are elevated, but those who are

below are crushed down....In the United States it is clear that

squalor and misery, and the vices and crimes that spring from them,

everywhere increase....It is in the older and richer sections of the

788 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology