Albert Jay Nock and Frank Chodorov saw Henry George as a champion of individualist ideals. While director of the Henry George School, Chodorov attracted around him a number of others who shared the same views. Thus, the so-called “Georgist Movement” became associated with liberatarian ideals and policies (except that, as you note, few libertarians have embraced Henry George’s view that RENT is by its nature societal rather than individual property). What I believe is fair to say about Henry George’s views on government and the state is that he had great faith in participatory democracy. In his book ‘Social Problems’ he explores what ought to be the appropriate duties of government and the means of fulfilling these duties. Yet, he was clear in stating that circumstances and technologies might change sufficiently so that areas he then considered as “natural monopolies” and there best left in the public sector might someday be privatized or partially privatized. And, conversely, some areas of production that were then best left in the private realm might take on the character of natural monopolies and require strong regulation or even nationalization.

Years ago, I began to study the history of the movement forged by Henry George. I thought deeply about Henry George’s principles, which seemed to me to closely correspond to those of one other remarkable practical philosopher, Thomas Paine. And, to a lesser extent, George’s words reminded me of what Mortimer Adler wrote (less about political economy and more about democracy and Adler’s interpretation of Locke’s lessons on the distinction between ‘liberty’ and ‘license’). I learned of the founding of the intentional community of Fairhope, on Mobile Bay in Alabama, by a group of idealists influenced, to a degree, by Henry George’s ideas. Their founding document described their principles as those of “cooperative individualism.” This term seemed to me to very accurately describe what Paine, George, Adler and many others were aiming for as guiding principles.

I have been looking for a nice summary of Nock, and never seeked out to read one. Now one falls in my lap and I read it, and I wonder why I kept putting this off.

From a libertarian historical perspective, I really do appreciate the articles Jeff.

Our Enemy, the State helped me understand a little better where the Georgists were coming from. Nock made some cogent observations about the effects of the state’s grants (during the early colonial era) of far larger tracts of land than any individual proprietor would have been able to gain, hold, and improve on his own. I grant you, that particular toothpaste probably isn’t going back into the tube; I am not convinced that the single tax is the remedy.