Henry George: rebel with a cause

Henry George's Progress and Poverty (1879) was undoubtedly the most widely read book on economics in the nineteenth century. Its proposal for a 'single tax' on land rents inspired both socialists and liberal reformers in the closing decades of the nineteenth century but it was attacked and condemned by virtually all the leading economists of the day, principally on the ground that it was not possible even in principle to separate pure ground rent from profits on capital invested in land. The question whether land is a special factor of production, essentially different from labour and capital, turns out to be at the very heart of all the controversies surrounding the doctrines of Georgism; my view, like that of Marshall, is that land is indeed a unique factor of production.