Loehr (2026): Henry George and Silvio Gesell — The Odd Couple

Overview

"Henry George and Silvio Gesell: The Odd Couple" is a 2026 article by Dirk Loehr in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, published online 2 April 2026, doi:10.1111/ajes.70039.[1] It compares the reform programs of Henry George (1839–1897) and Silvio Gesell (1862–1930) — two contemporaries who both advocated land reform, free markets, and rejection of protectionism, but who diverged sharply on money, interest, and taxation.[1] Crossref does not yet assign this article a volume/issue (it carries an April 2026 "version of record" date, ahead of print), so — unlike this wiki's Xu, Huang & Li and Obeng-Odoom AJES pages, both confirmed to share AJES vol. 85, no. 2's themed "Special Issue: Henry George" — it is not yet confirmed whether this piece belongs to that same special issue or a later regular issue.

The article is genuinely open access (CC-BY, per both Crossref's license record and Semantic Scholar's record of the DOI). The full text was not publicly accessible at last review (2026-08-10), a limit shared by the other AJES papers covered on the wiki regardless of their license status. This summary therefore rests on the paper's published abstract and on its publisher-deposited reference list.

The Comparison

Per the abstract, George treated land value taxation as "the sole means to fund public goods and curb speculation," while Gesell proposed demurrage money — currency that loses value on a schedule unless spent, eliminating the return to simply holding it — "to eliminate capital scarcity and cyclical crises," paired with public land leasing as a secondary plank.[1] The paper "compares their theoretical foundations, critiques, and enduring influence" and situates both in modern contexts: infrastructure self-financing (a concept associated with the Henry George Theorem), central-bank debates over negative interest rates, and the evolution of land-lease practice.[1] Its conclusion, per the abstract: "integrating Georgist and Gesellian insights offers a more comprehensive reform program addressing monetary, fiscal, and land-use dimensions" — i.e., the two traditions are read as complementary rather than competing.[1] That reading is the author's own interpretive synthesis.

What the Paper Builds On

The article's publisher-deposited reference list, available in full, runs to 26 entries. It draws on primary texts from both thinkers being compared — Henry George's Fortschritt und Armut (the German edition of Progress and Poverty, 1880) and Silvio Gesell's Die Natürliche Wirtschaftsordnung durch Freiland und Freigeld (1916) — alongside classical and 20th-century political economy: David Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817), John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy (1848), Hermann Heinrich Gossen, John Maynard Keynes's General Theory (in German translation), Friedrich Hayek's Die Verfassung der Freiheit, and Léon Walras. Modern capital-and-inequality economics appears through Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) and Matthew Rognlie's 2015 net-capital-share paper — already covered on the wiki at Rognlie: Deciphering the Fall and Rise in the Net Capital Share. Georgist-tradition secondary sources include Mason Gaffney's "The Hidden Taxable Capacity of Land" (2009; wiki page: Gaffney: The Hidden Taxable Capacity of Land) and Fred Harrison's Wheels of Fortune: Self-Funding Infrastructure and the Free Market Case for a Land Tax (2006) — the source of the infrastructure-self-financing theme the abstract connects to the Henry George Theorem. This is reference-list evidence only: it shows what the paper cites, not how it uses or evaluates each source.

Standing and Limits

• Abstract-only scan. The paper's body text was not publicly accessible at the two reviews to date (2026-07-26 and 2026-08-10), although the article remains CC-BY licensed. The theoretical-foundations comparison, the specific critiques each thinker is said to answer, and the "enduring influence" claims are all abstract-level summaries; the underlying argument may contain nuance, caveats, or counter-readings this page cannot represent. The publisher-deposited reference list (26 entries) is available in full — see "What the Paper Builds On" above — which narrows the gap to the body text specifically, not the paper's scope or scholarly context.
• Novel topic for the wiki. Before this page, Silvio Gesell had no coverage anywhere on the wiki — the free-money/demurrage tradition and its historical overlap with land reform (both parties to the same early-20th-century monetary-and-land-reform ferment) was a real gap. This page and the companion Silvio Gesell stub close it, on Loehr's authority for the comparison specifically.
• Tier. Rated Supplementary given the abstract-only scan depth; if the full text becomes accessible, the entry warrants a deeper scan and a re-rating.

See Also

• Silvio Gesell — the wiki's new stub on Gesell, created alongside this page
• Loehr (2026): Private Land Ownership — Tax or Socialize? — Loehr's companion paper, narrowing this comparison into a concrete urban/peripheral policy hybrid
• Henry George
• Land Value Tax · Economic Rent
• Henry George Theorem — the infrastructure-self-financing idea the paper connects to modern LVT design

Sources

1. Dirk Loehr, "Henry George and Silvio Gesell: The Odd Couple," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, published online 2 April 2026, doi:10.1111/ajes.70039 — used for all claims on this page (abstract only; CC-BY/hybrid open access per the Crossref and Semantic Scholar records; full text not accessible at last review, 2026-08-10). Crossref record · Semantic Scholar record
2. Crossref record for doi:10.1111/ajes.70039 — used for the publisher-deposited reference list (26 entries), read 2026-08-25, underlying "What the Paper Builds On" above. https://api.crossref.org/works/10.1111/ajes.70039