Frank Chodorov
Dan Sullivan: Are you a Real
Libertarian, or a ROYAL Libertarian?
The red, red herring
Royal libertarians are fond of confusing the classical liberal
concept of common land ownership, particularly as espoused by land
value tax advocate Henry George, with socialism. Yet socialists have
always been contemptuous of George and of the distinction between
land monopoly and capital monopolies. However, Frank Chodorov and
Albert J. Nock (the original editors of The Freeman) were both
advocates of George's economic remedies as well as lovers of
individual liberty.
The only reformer
abroad in the world in my time who
interested me in the least was Henry George, because his project did
not contemplate prescription, but, on the contrary, would reduce it to
almost zero. He was the only one of the lot who believed in freedom, or
(as far as I could see) had any approximation to an intelligent idea of
what freedom is, and of the economic prerequisites to attaining
it....One is immensely tickled to see how things are coming out
nowadays with reference to his doctrine, for George was in fact the
best friend the capitalist ever had. He built up the most complete and
most impregnable defense of the rights of capital that was ever
constructed, and if the capitalists of his day had had sense enough to
dig in behind it, their successors would not now be squirming under the
merciless exactions which collectivism is laying on them, and which
George would have no scruples whatever about describing as sheer
highwaymanry. —Albert J. Nock "Thoughts on Utopia" ... Read
the whole piece
Fred E. Foldvary — The
Ultimate Tax Reform:
Public Revenue from Land Rent
Frank Chodorov, a fervent individualist and founding editor of The Freeman,
published by the Foundation for Economic Education and still a leading
libertarian journal of ideas, became in 1937 director of the Henry
George School of Social Science in New York City, serving until 1942.
Like most
followers of Henry George, Chodorov regarded a charge on land value
as not a true tax, which arbitrarily extracts wealth, but a “payment
for the use of a location, determined by the higgling and haggling of the
market, and it makes no difference to the land user whether he pays rent
to the city fathers or to a private owner.”26 Explaining the value
of a location derives to a great extent from community services, rather
than the efforts of the landowner as such, Chodorov noted “it would
seem logical that this value—which we call land rent—should
go to defray the expenses of these common services." ... read the whole document
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