On the Centenary of Progress and Poverty

Will Lissner

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 1979, vol. 38, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: Abstract. Henry George was more fortunate than many authors of classics. His Progress and Poverty won understanding, appreciation and recognition from the start. The book presented a theory of the business cycle based on monopoly of which theorists must take account. It also represented the peak of the development of the classical school. George shared with the school's great figures, particularly Adam Smith and David Ricardo, a Utopian vision of a free economy. But George went beyond them in envisioning a free society in a new moral order; he was one of the great libertarian philosophers. Moreover, as Teilhac has shown, he projected into economics a social rationalism that opened the way for a reborn political economy based on scientific method. Though his is one of the enduring creations of the human mind which spur the species on to greater cultural achievements, it is, first and foremost, an economic classic. Insofar as George pointed to monopoly and privilege as socially disastrous institutions, his teaching has been adopted by economists everywhere. His doctrine that all men share a common right to the earth now rules space exploitation—that is, the universe—and the deep oceans and it is winning grudging recognition in the one‐fourth of the earth humanity inhabits.

Date: 1979
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