If you aren't going to progress onto socialism, then georgist capitalism still runs into the same crisis, imperialism, and falling rates of profit. Moving from privatized ownership and competition into collectivized ownership and cooperation solves fundamental problems that are unsustainable in capitalism.
this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2026
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Hello! What are good socialist critiques of georgism?
Economist Michael Hudson often makes arguments for taxation of real estate, but not necessarily as a singular tax. https://michael-hudson.com/category/real-estate-and-georgism/
-no seizing the means of production nor outlawing trade
Unless your proposal is something that the owners of the means of production want, it’s not going to happen. Why? Because the owners rule the state. The Epstein class rules the state[1]. The state’s job is to impose the will of the Epstein class upon the working class, if necessary through the state’s monopoly on violence. Changing this power dynamic requires changing who owns the means of production.
-tax revenue being used for whatever you prefer
Money is used for whatever the ruling class prefers, and right now that’s not the working class.
Note that I said that money is used, not tax revenue. That’s because, while regional taxes can pay for things, at the federal level they don’t actually pay for anything[2]. Michael Hudson again: The Use and Abuse of MMT.
Unless your proposal is something that the owners of the means of production want, it’s not going to happen
Assuming you believe in democracy, can't democracy prevent abuses of power? Aren't the means of production limited by demand? Like they have to make something people really want? So what's an example of something bad that they couldn't do in socialism? Maybe we agree that bureaucracies will squander wealth, but then a ubi from the revenue solves that
Assuming you believe in democracy, can’t democracy prevent abuses of power?
I do believe in democracy, but proletarian democracy, not bourgeois democracy. Democracy under capitalism will always been one dollar, one vote. The wealthy own the media, so they frame the public discourse. The wealthy fund politicians’ campaigns, so they have the politicians’ ears. They decide who makes it to the primaries, so by the time you get vote, your options have been preselected.
Maybe we agree that bureaucracies will squander wealth
I don’t agree that that is a universally true. That’s the ideology of neoliberalism under which we currently live, though. They’ve spent the last fifty years under-funding public services until those services under-perform, then blame the poor performance on the fact that the service is public, and then privatize it. This was an inevitability, though, because the capitalist class already owned everything else, so of course they were going to privatize whatever public commons was left.
Aren’t the means of production limited by demand?
I don’t see the relevance. What would be the point of producing stuff no one wants?
Like they have to make something people really want? So what’s an example of something bad that they couldn’t do in socialism?
I’m still not quite sure what you’re getting at, but a lot of what we want is thanks to advertising. Corporations spend ungodly amounts of money on advertising in order to influence our desires. Smoking wouldn’t have become pandemic if not for people like Edward Bernays, the father of advertising & “public relations”, A.K.A. propaganda.
a ubi from the revenue solves that
I don’t think UBI under capitalism would solve much, because companies would inflate the prices of their goods and services to capture much of it.
All these “socialists” since Colins have this much in common that they leave wage labour and therefore capitalist production in existence and try to bamboozle themselves or the world into believing that if ground rent were transformed into a state tax all the evils of capitalist production would disappear of themselves. The whole thing is therefore simply an attempt, decked out with socialism, to save capitalist domination and indeed to establish it afresh on an even wider basis than its present one.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/letters/81_06_20.htm