Alfred Russel Wallace
The co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection became a leading advocate of land nationalisation, applying Georgist-adjacent reasoning to British land reform.
Overview
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913), the naturalist who independently conceived natural selection alongside Darwin, was also a committed social reformer — and one of Britain's most prominent advocates of land nationalisation.
Land Reform
In Land Nationalisation: Its Necessity and Its Aims (1882), Wallace argued that private monopoly of land was a fundamental social injustice and proposed returning land to common control. He served as the first president of the Land Nationalisation Society. His position was close to, though distinct from, Henry George's: where George proposed taxing land rent while leaving title private, Wallace favoured the state taking ownership. The two approaches were part of the same late-19th-century ferment over the land question that Progress and Poverty helped ignite.
See Also
Sources
- Alfred Russel Wallace (1882), Land Nationalisation: Its Necessity and Its Aims (book).