Now the Synthesis: Capitalism, Socialism and the New Social Contract

Summary

Now the Synthesis: Capitalism, Socialism and the New Social Contract (1991) is an edited volume published by the Centre for Incentive Taxation Ltd, London (Shepheard-Walwyn) and New York (Holmes & Meier). The book brings together essays by Nicolaus Tideman, Francis M. Smith, Fred Harrison, James L. Busey, Jerome F. Heavey, David Richards, Jürgen Backhaus, Jacob Jan Krabbe, Richard Body, and C. Lowell Harriss, with an Introduction (pp. 1–11) and a keynote chapter titled "Dialectics and the Millennium: emergence of the Synthesis" (pp. 13–46) by editor Richard Noyes. The volume argues that land value taxation offers a "synthesis" between capitalism and socialism — preserving market freedom while restoring the community's claim on economic rent (Noyes 1991, p.13).

Noyes frames the book as articulating an "applied philosophy" for the post-Cold War era, arguing that the old orders of Western individualism and Eastern statism alike "exaggerated the potential for conflict by over-simplifying, through their institutions and social processes, the rights and obligations of the individual and of the State" (Noyes 1991, p.1). The volume's thesis is that Henry George's principle — that land value is created by community and should be returned to community — represents the emerging social synthesis, observable in diverse phenomena from UK "planning gain" to ecological tax reform and post-socialist transitions in Eastern Europe.

Core Findings

The Constitutional Case for 100% LVT (Tideman, Ch. 2)

Nicolaus Tideman argues that 100% land value taxation, introduced without compensation, would not be barred by the US constitutional prohibition of uncompensated takings if introduced as a constitutional rather than legislative matter. Tideman draws an analogy to the abolition of slavery: the Fourteenth Amendment explicitly denied compensation for emancipated slaves, establishing that "those who held slaves should have known that it is not possible for one human being to own another" (Tideman 1991, p.56). Similarly, Tideman argues, "no one can have a claim to own land, because no one made the land" (Tideman 1991, p.56).

Tideman distinguishes between 100% LVT (requiring constitutional consensus) and incremental property tax reform (shifting taxes from improvements to land), which "probably causes land prices to rise on average" since land becomes more valuable when improvements carry no additional tax liability (Tideman 1991, p.58). It is this "absence of anything like a taking" that makes the latter "fair game for ordinary politics" (Tideman 1991, p.58).

Planning Gain as Implicit Land Value Taxation (Smith, Ch. 3)

Francis M. Smith analyzes UK "planning gain" — the practice of local authorities extracting benefits from developers in exchange for planning permission. Smith argues this is "a partial demonstration of the principle that Henry George established, i.e., that the value of land is created by the community and should justly be returned to the community" (Smith 1991, p.60). When farmland is converted to housing or commercial use, the increase in land values "can be a thousandfold" (Smith 1991, p.61).

Smith documents the evolution from the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act's "betterment" concept (later abandoned), through the Development Land Tax of 1976 ("it was ineffective and was abolished in 1985"), to the informal Planning Gain system of the 1980s (Smith 1991, p.63). He cites the Canary Wharf agreement (1987), where Tower Hamlets Borough Council secured a commitment of 2,000 jobs for local people (with a £7,000 penalty for each job short) and £2.5m over eight years for training from the developers of the 71-acre site (Smith 1991, p.64).

Post-Socialism and the Single Tax (Harrison, Ch. 4)

Fred Harrison argues that post-socialist societies — above all Gorbachev's USSR — were attempting transformation "without the aid of the holistic philosophy that was a pre-condition of success" (Harrison 1991, p.77). Henry George's philosophy, he contends, "addresses the immediate needs of hungry people while also addressing Gorbachev's larger vision. It is a holistic program, readily available to guide the emergence of post-socialist society" (Harrison 1991, p.78). The chapter develops a land-value-taxation-based development model for the transition, integrating "social, economic and ecological objectives into a single thrust" (Harrison 1991, p.96).

Geocracy in Latin America (Busey, Ch. 5)

James L. Busey asks whether classical social theory, as refined by Henry George into what he calls "geocracy," can fill the doctrinal gap left by the collapse of Marxism (Busey 1991, p.113). Using Central America as his case study, he attributes Costa Rica's relative exception from the region's "pattern of unremitting misery" to "a wider distribution of land and therefore of other property than is the norm in Central America" (Busey 1991, p.113). Geocracy, he argues, rejects state ownership of the means of production while joining Marx and Engels only in part of the first plank of the Communist Manifesto: the "application of all rents of land to public purposes" (Busey 1991, p.126).

The Greens and the Tax on Rent (Richards, Ch. 7)

David Richards examines why politically active ecologists have failed to adopt land value taxation despite its ecological fit. He restates George's "most controversial prescription... that the community should recover all the land rents that the creation of freehold tenancies had alienated into private ownership," and extends it: users of land and natural resources already in the public domain should be charged full market rent, and any new property rights in natural resources created by government decree — such as marketable permits to emit waste — should be designed to return the resource's rent to the community (Richards 1991, p.158). He documents the UK Green (Ecology) Party's 1981 conferences on land tenure policy, whose agreed aims he calls "a perfect statement of the Georgist position," even though the party could not agree on land value taxation ("Community Ground Rent") as the mechanism (Richards 1991, p.160).

Incentive Taxation and the Environment (Backhaus & Krabbe, Ch. 8)

Jürgen Backhaus and Jacob Jan Krabbe argue that incentive taxation (taxing land and resource rents rather than labor and capital) is environmentally beneficial — "complex — yet feasible," per their subtitle (Backhaus & Krabbe 1991, p.174). They read Progress and Poverty (1879) as containing "the blueprint of a comprehensive policy towards the environment" (Backhaus & Krabbe 1991, p.174). Their conclusions: a substantial number of natural resources are used inefficiently, in part because "grandfathering" of established property rights acts as an entry barrier to new industry; the remedy is "an alternative system in the spirit of Henry George" covering all natural resources, dealing with resource damage "along the lines of Henry George's fiscal policy" (Backhaus & Krabbe 1991, p.202).

International Trade and Rent (Part V, Chs. 9–10)

The volume's international trade section comprises Richard Body's "Protectionism, Rent and the Dynamics of Agricultural Degradation" (Ch. 9) and C. Lowell Harriss's "Trade and Investment: preserving the fruits of liberty" (Ch. 10). Body, a British parliamentarian and farmer, argues that "the ecological argument for free trade was no less strong than either the moral or economic one" (Body 1991, p.207), and that the economic value of agricultural subsidies and protection "is capitalised into higher land prices," making the landowner — not the farmer, laborer, or consumer — the primary beneficiary (Noyes 1991, Introduction, pp. 8–9). Harriss restates George's Protection or Free Trade case that free trade principles are consistent with rent capture (Noyes 1991, Introduction, pp. 8–9).

Policy Recommendations

• 100% Land Value Taxation: Tideman argues for full rent capture without compensation, pursued through constitutional consensus rather than narrow coalition politics (Tideman 1991, p.57)
• Property Tax Reform: Shifting taxes from improvements to land as an incremental step appropriate for "ordinary politics" (Tideman 1991, p.58)
• Planning Gain as a Step to Land Value Capture: Smith argues planning gain reveals a growing recognition that land value benefits "should accrue directly to society as a whole, which has the moral right to them," rather than being "drawn off by private individuals as the fruits of privilege" (Smith 1991, p.73)
• Ecological Tax Reform: Backhaus & Krabbe advocate shifting taxation from production to land and resource rents, covering all natural resources (Backhaus & Krabbe 1991, p.202)

Nuances and Limits

• The book is an edited volume with varying levels of analytical rigor across chapters; some claims are normative rather than empirical
• Tideman's constitutional argument for uncompensated 100% LVT is explicitly a normative position about justice, not a tested legal doctrine: he grounds it in the logic that "one constitutional amendment cannot preclude another" and in the Fourteenth Amendment precedent (Tideman 1991, p.56), and conditions its justice on a prior "change in society's consensus regarding the requirements of justice" (Tideman 1991, p.57); no such amendment has ever been attempted
• The post-socialist chapters were written in 1991, before the outcomes of post-Soviet transitions were known
• Planning gain data is UK-specific; generalizability to other jurisdictions is not directly addressed

Key Quotes

"George's most controversial prescription, therefore, was that the community should recover all the land rents that the creation of freehold tenancies had alienated into private ownership." — David Richards, "The Greens and the Tax on Rent" (Ch. 7), p. 158

"The rules by which land is occupied dictate the way people relate to each other and determine the success with which they interact. The system of land tenure may be used to divide people, or to integrate them into healthy communities. […]" — David Richards, "The Greens and the Tax on Rent" (Ch. 7), p. 158. As examples of divisive tenure he cites South Africa's apartheid Bantustans and Latin America's large rural estates.

"That every person in every generation has an equal right to the use of land was Henry George's basic moral axiom. It is one with which few people would disagree, and it is certainly common ground in the Green movement. […]" — David Richards, "The Greens and the Tax on Rent" (Ch. 7), pp. 158–59. Community collection of land rent, Richards adds, is not commonly perceived as that axiom's necessary logical outcome.

"Socialists see the connection, but go on to make the fatal mistake of proscribing private ownership of land altogether, thereby missing another connection — between private decision-making and prosperity." — David Richards, "The Greens and the Tax on Rent" (Ch. 7), p. 159

"Henry George's message appears destined to fall between political stools. To Greens it offers equitable sharing of the world's natural resources; to non-Greens, economic efficiency and, hence, growth. […]" — David Richards, "The Greens and the Tax on Rent" (Ch. 7), p. 159. Within both groups, Richards continues, it offers thoroughgoing private ownership of producible goods to the Right and untrammelled social ownership of natural resources to the Left.

"Is it conceivable that classical social theory […] as further refined at the hands of Henry George (which I shall call geocracy), might fill a doctrinal gap and be suitable both for the preservation of freedom and for the resolution of human travail?" — James L. Busey, "Conflict, Ideology and Hope in Central America" (Ch. 5), p. 113

"The aims of land tenure policy were quickly established. […] This is a perfect statement of the Georgist position." — David Richards, "The Greens and the Tax on Rent" (Ch. 7), p. 160. The aims Richards lists (citing Ecology Party 1981: 9): re-establish land as a common heritage free of monopoly and speculative pressures; equal right for all to occupy land in small ecological units; security of tenure on that basis; and returns from land not due to individual effort accruing to the community.

Bears On

• Land Value Tax — the volume's central policy prescription
• Single Tax — the foundational concept the volume synthesizes
• Community Creates Land Value — Smith's planning gain analysis directly supports this narrative
• Land-Value Capture — the UK planning gain discussion
• Georgism — the book's overall synthesis argument
• Ecological Georgism — the Backhaus/Krabbe and Richards chapters
• Nicolaus Tideman — author of the constitutional property rights chapter
• Fred Harrison — author of the post-socialism chapter

See Also

• Richard Noyes — editor's author page
• Land Value Tax
• Single Tax
• Fred Harrison
• Nicolaus Tideman
• Community Creates Land Value
• The Corruption of Economics

Sources

1. Richard Noyes (ed.), Now the Synthesis: Capitalism, Socialism and the New Social Contract (London: Shepheard-Walwyn; New York: Holmes & Meier, 1991). © Centre for Incentive Taxation Ltd. — used for all claims on this page (primary source); verified against primary text 2026-07-10 via the full chapter scans hosted by the School of Cooperative Individualism (Scan Depth: Heavy).
2. Nicolaus Tideman, "Property Rights and the Social Contract: the constitutional challenge in the U.S.A.," in Noyes 1991, pp. 47–59 (Ch. 2) — used for the constitutional argument for 100% LVT (C-claim; normative/philosophical).
3. Francis M. Smith, "'Planning Gain': the making of a tax on land values," in Noyes 1991, pp. 60–74 (Ch. 3) — used for the UK planning gain analysis (B-claim; empirical/policy).
4. Fred Harrison, "Post-socialism and the Single Tax: a holistic philosophy," in Noyes 1991, pp. 77–111 (Ch. 4) — used for the post-socialist transition findings (C-claim; theoretical).
5. James L. Busey, "Conflict, Ideology and Hope in Central America," in Noyes 1991, pp. 112–135 (Ch. 5) — used for the geocracy and Central America findings (C-claim; theoretical).
6. David Richards, "The Greens and the Tax on Rent," in Noyes 1991, pp. 155–173 (Ch. 7) — used for the ecological-Georgist synthesis and Green Party history (C-claim; theoretical).
7. Jürgen Backhaus and Jacob Jan Krabbe, "Incentive Taxation and the Environment: complex — yet feasible," in Noyes 1991, pp. 174–204 (Ch. 8) — used for the ecological taxation findings (C-claim; theoretical).
8. Richard Body, "Protectionism, Rent and the Dynamics of Agricultural Degradation," in Noyes 1991, pp. 207–214 (Ch. 9), and C. Lowell Harriss, "Trade and Investment: preserving the fruits of liberty," in Noyes 1991, pp. 215–224 (Ch. 10) — used for the international trade section.