Why we need a Georgist political ecology

By Joe Williams, University of Bristol

2025 saw large-scale and organized demonstrations across the world where protesters connected issues of rent, soaring cost of living and stagnant wages. In Italy, during Jeff Bezos’s lavish wedding in Venice, activists took to the streets to protest inequality and high housing costs; tens of thousands marched across Barcelona and other Spanish cities demanding rent controls, affordable housing and anti-speculation measures; in Mexico City residents have repeatedly protested gentrification and rising rents. We also saw large youth-led (or ‘GenZ’) movements in Kenya, Morocco, Madagascar and Nepal – and elsewhere – protesting lack of opportunity and cost of living. What connects all of these is a broader discontent at rising inequality and a sense that the global concentration of wealth in the hands of a few is linked to poverty and lack of opportunity for others.

There is a growing popular and academic literature arguing that the global economy is increasingly characterized by accumulation through ownership and the extraction of value via rent. In a recent paper, I argued that the economic and philosophical contributions of 19th-century political economist Henry George offer important insights into this contemporary condition.

Henry George (1839–1897) was an American political economist, journalist, and social reformer best known for his influential work Progress and Poverty (1879). Writing during a time of rapid industrialization, George sought to explain why economic growth and technological progress often coincided with persistent poverty and rising inequality. He argued that at the root of this paradox was the private ownership of land and other natural opportunities (broadly understood as ‘nature’) that allowed owners to capture increasing rent without contributing productively. In societies characterised by monopoly ownership of land and nature, rent has a tendency to grow disproportionately compared to interest and wages. In such a situation, those who hold ownership will see their wealth increase, while the wealth of everyone else stagnates or declines. As a result, the benefits of growth and increased productivity accrue disproportionately, such that, according to George, “unless we acknowledge the equal right of all to land…our discoveries and inventions will but add to the force that presses the masses down.”

To George, ‘land’ is simply the economic category of ‘nature’. The term ‘land’ encompasses all material elements and processes that are in some way used in the production and distribution of wealth; including the soil, forests, water, air, energy and minerals. George was a historical materialist (although importantly, not a Marxist), in the sense that he recognized that all economic activities, all professions, all exchanges rest on the material basis of labour and transformation of nature, and that all human existence, (re)production and wellbeing is predicated on the ‘absolute and constant dependence’ on nature. George made a crucial distinction between ownership of nature and ownership of the product of labour, which sets him apart from the Marxist tradition. This principle, which is derived from George’s partial acceptance of the Lockean theory of property, asserts that everyone has the right to own that which they have made, which results from their own exertion, and to trade the product of their labour with others, to buy and sell the product of other people’s labour. As all labour is rooted in the transformation of nature, this presupposes fair access to nature upon which to labour (even if this is indirectly in increasingly complex economies). In contrast, the ownership of nature, which gives monopoly rights to some while excluding others, is seen as unjust. Crucially, to deny a person’s right to nature is to deny their right to exist.

The ‘value of nature’, according to George, is socially produced. A river, or a forest, or a particular piece of land, for example, has no inherent economic value until it has a use for human populations. “The most valuable lands on the globe, the lands which yield the highest rent,” George wrote in Progress and Poverty, “are not lands of surpassing natural fertility, but lands to which a surpassing utility has been given by the increase of population.” This socially-produced value, should be shared among everyone, but where private property in nature exists, it is largely extracted in rent. In the Georgist perspective, the concept of rent does not simply refer to real estate or land, but any income derived from ownership rather than labour or investment of capital. Today, this would include intellectual property rights and online platforms. The great dividing line in society, therefore, is not between labour and capital on opposing sides, but between labour and capital on one side and private ownership of nature on the other. Despite this assertion of equal rights to the economic value of nature, George was a reformer not a radical. He didn’t believe it was necessary to forcefully take back private property, but rather that the value extracted via rent could be re-distributed through a land value tax at close to 100%. This is the famous ‘single tax’ for which George was best known, and
which is comparable to contemporary calls for a wealth tax.

It is difficult to overstate the influence that Henry George had in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries. By the 1920s, Progress and Poverty was the most widely read book ever published on economics. George is credited with inspiring the progressive movement in the United States, for the influence his work had on the formation of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom and the development of social democracies in Europe. His admirers included Tolstoy and Einstein. The American pragmatist, John Dewey, wrote that “it would require less than the fingers of the two hands to enumerate those who from Plato down rank with him.” Conversely, George had fierce opponents among the establishment, and it has been argued that the emergence of neo-classical economics in the early- and mid- twentieth century was a direct attempt to combat the threat to powerful interests posed by his ideas.

While George’s works are once again finding traction in critical development studies and critical planning (see, for example, recent work by Franklin Obeng-Odoom, Ed Sheppard and Laura Wolf-Powers), they have been almost entirely overlooked in political ecology. My recent paper is an attempt to incorporate Georgist theory into the field. I suggest that this might include the following principles:

1) All human existence is rooted in a material exchange between humans and
nature. To deny access to nature is to deny the most basic human right to existence.

2) Private or exclusionary ownership of nature is therefore a violation of this right, from which all other human rights flow.

3) The ‘value of nature’ is socially produced (rather than stemming from inherent material characteristics), and must therefore be shared.

4) Rent (understood broadly as wealth derived solely from ownership, rather than labour or investment of capital) is unjust.

5) In a society that tolerates rent from private ownership of nature, inequality, poverty and injustice are inevitable.

You can read the full paper, open access, in the journal of Human Geography:
Williams, J., 2025. Nature, rent and the persistence of inequality: A Georgist political
ecology. Human Geography, p.19427786251390972.

jg.williams@bristol.ac.uk