Page 4 RAIN June 1982 translated into all the major European languages and became a worldwide bestseller. George's ideas gained a following among millions of ordinary people and were praised by as diverse a group of intellectuals as ever agreed on a single issue. Tolstoy read Progress and Poverty to his peasant workers and urged the czar to give serious attention to what George had said. Sun Yat Sen, the future father of the Chinese republic, vowed to make George's teachings the basis of his program of reform. George himself became an important American political figure, and came close to being elected mayor of New York City. Georgism as a major political movement did not long survive its leader, but it continued to inspire an eclectic mixture of polticians and social thinkers at both ends of the political spectrum. Many leaders of the early-twenti- eth century progressive movement in the United States said their interest in reform began with Henry George. George Bernard Shaw said the same was true for many of the early British socialists. Even Chiang Kai Shek, after being driven off the Chinese mainland by the Communists, tempered his rightwing authoritarian rule on Taiwan with a land reform policy based largely (as Sun Yat Sen had wished) on Georgist principles. One of the most interesting of George's American followers was Ralph Borsodi. Bom in 1886, Borsodi was, like George, largely self-educated. He lived through nine eventful decades, always more than a little ahead of his Hme. He pioneered in the back-to-the-land movement, organic agriculture, natural foods, intentional communities and appropriate technology — all before World War II. During the war, he published a global peace plan which anticipated today's bioregional planners by stressing the need for replacing nation-states with administrative units based on land areas whose topography made them naturally unified systems. The plan also harked back to Henry George in calling for a tax on the possession of mineral resources, which were to be treated as the natural heritage of all of humankind. This tax would be used to support a Global Authority with limited administrative functions. The world's leaders were clearly not ready for Borsodi, but his ideas about land and resources made a lifelong impression on a young man named Robert Swann who was in prison for conscientious objection to the war. Swann joined a study group with other prisoners interested in decentralist politics and learned alx)ut Borsodi's experiences in the 1930s organizing intentional communities as trusts with each member family leasing land from the community as a whole. Over the next twenty years, as Swann actively involved himself in the peace and civil rights movements, he conhnued to ponder the need for new systems of land tenure and as he worked with Blacks in the deep south during the mid-60s, he was particularly struck by their urgent need to acquire a land base of their own. He learned that Ralph Borsodi had just returned from India where he had spent several years studying the Gandhi-inspired Gramdan movement, which placed donated land in trusteeship under village control for the benefit of the poor. Swann and Borsodi made contact and decided to join forces. In 1967 they formed the Institute for Community Economics which was dedicated to sponsoring and assisting in the formation of community land trusts based on Borsodi's concept (derived from Henry George) of "trustery," or stewardship, toward land and resources. Swann met with Slater King, a Black real estate dealer and civil rights leader who shared his interest in providing a land base for southern Blacks. King was impressed with the land trust model as outlined by Swann. It seemed to be a particularly equitable method of landholding which also could provide protections against Blacks losing their investments through white chicanery. Swann and King, together with other civil rights leaders, eventually secured funding from a variety of sources to begin New Communities, Inc. on 4,800 acres near Albany, Georgia. The trust combined five acre private homesteads on some of its land with cooperative farming in other areas. Eami- lies received a lifetime lease on their land from the community as a whole and held private ownership of their improvements. Today, New Communities is still active, and its Eeatherfield Earm project is the largest Black- owned single-tract farm in America. Since the experience with New Communities, the Institute for Community Economics has assisted in forming dozens of land trusts in a variety of rural and urban settings. Community land trusts have yet to acquire an amount of property sufficient to bring real changes in American land use patterns, but they are serving an important purpose in providing the models which inspire increasing numbers of people to recognize there is more than one way to look at their relationship to the land. Henry George predicted a century ago that attitudes toward land would change slowly. But he also predicted that "one day, jushce and peace will flood the world, and people will treat land as their common heritage."nn ACCESS Henry George School 5 East 44th Street New York, NY 10007 Henry George School of Social Science 833 Market Street San Francisco, CA 94103 Both of these institutions offer courses and publications relating to Georgist soc- cial and economic theory. The School of Living P.O. Box 3233 York, PA 17402 - Founded nearly half a century ago by Ralph Borsodi, this organization has been at the forefront of many movements for change. They have a good selection of literature by or about Borsodi and Henry George. Progress and Poverty, by Henry George, 1978 edition, $10.00 from; E. P. Dutton 2 Park Avenue New York, NY 10016 The Institute for Community Economics 151 Montague City Rd. Greenfield, MA 01301 413/774-5933
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