Socialism proposed the abolition of poverty, and the common ownership and control of the land and the means of production, distribution, and exchange as the solution of economic questions.
Social Reform proposes to mitigate the hardships of life for the multitude, and, while leaving land and capital in private hands, to compel by taxation provision for the wants of the people. Its aim is the abolition of destitution by State assistance to voluntary effort, and the gradual raising of the standard of life. It does not propose to remove the cause of poverty.
Socialism would place the democracy in possession of the means of wealth. Social Reform requires the State to tax wealth and provide for the people. It promises a living wage, decent housing accommodation, an insurance against unemployment, and security in old age, and leaves the question of national ownership or private ownership to be settled by posterity.
Land Reform and the Single Tax
Apart from the ideals of Socialism, the democratic ideal of a community owning the full value of its land was presented by Henry George, an American economist, in 1879, and his book "Progress and Poverty," was at once received with enthusiasm by certain reformers in England and America. George visited England in 1881, 1884, and 1889, and his visits resulted in a strong movement for the taxation of land values. This movement has been inspired by an ideal of a democratic community as definite as the Socialist ideal, and it has grown steadily in popular favour as the justice of a tax on land values has been recognised. "Progress and Poverty" is the bible of the Land Reformers, as Marx's "Capital" is (or was) the bible of Socialists. It is claimed that a tax on land values is the true remedy of social and economic ills, and that democracy can eradicate the root-cause of poverty by such a tax. In this belief the followers of Henry George have preached the Single Tax, as it is called, with unquenchable fervour, and the Liberal Party has been gradually won over—if not to the Single Tax, at least to a tax on land values. Many Conservatives, too, favour the taxation of land values in cities, and all the principal municipalities have petitioned Parliament in favour of this method of taxation. But it is the democratic ideals of Henry George that have been the life of the movement for the Single Tax, and but for these ideals the movement would never have become a living influence towards democracy, or inspired a social enthusiasm.
The charm about the Single Tax propaganda is that its ideals of democracy do not discourage the practical politician and the average citizen from supporting what seems a necessary and reasonable proposal. Without committing themselves at all to Henry George's full scheme for the total abolition of land monopoly by a tax of twenty shillings in the pound on all land values, and without abandoning the common British suspicion of the doctrinaire and the political idealist, the ordinary shopkeeper and householder are quite of opinion that urban values in land can be taxed legitimately for the benefit of the community, and that democracy would do well to decree some moderate tax on land values for the relief of the overtaxed non-landowner.
So the taxation of land values is presented by its advocates as a social reform more radical and democratic than all other social reforms, as a reform that in fact would make democracy master of its own land, and the people free from the curse of poverty; and it is accepted by the great mass of working people as a just and useful method of raising revenue for local and imperial needs.
Socialism, social reform, the Single Tax—various are the ideals of a democratic people at work at the business of government, and various are the means proposed to establish the democracy in economic freedom.