Different industries and sectors gradually scale differently, but all move towards concentration. This is consistent and graduated. Every Capitalist country has regularly seen this gradual concentration over time, even if temporary shifts against this trend happen.
Again, without an analysis of political power and taking an agnostic attitude towards production, you have what can sound to liberals as a good idea but is ultimately not a real answer. If the Proletariat cannot wrest control, all regulations and taxes will be enacted in a manner that suits the Capitalists in control if you get far enough in the first place. Wealth will continue to accumulate, as the entire M-C-M’ circuit is based on growth in scale of profit, not steady cashflow.
The Marxist position isn’t that moving towards full public ownership immediately is a practical solution, but that this is a gradual process that starts with the proletariat siezing control. I recommend you actually engage with Marxist theory.
I already know these theoretical arguments you’re presenting, but they are not worth as much when there’s no empirical proof. You didn’t answer my more empirical questions, which are the main source of the counter arguments. Why are there capitalist countries that don’t see a rise in inequality? Where is housing in your analysis, which makes up more than 50% of all wealth (up from 15-20% 100 years ago). Why is the capital to income ratio not rising when housing is taken out of the equation? Why is every productivity gain in society accompanied by equally rising housing rents?
There’s absolutely empirical proof of steady monopolization and concentration of production in fewer and fewer hands, it happens in all countries as industry develops. Growing larger and more complex is a necessary aspect of lowering supply chain costs, and thus chasing profits. As for your specific questions:
Why are there capitalist countries that don’t see a rise in inequality?
These don’t exist. There are countries where large influxes of concessions from Capitalists have lowered inequality temporarily, but there is still rising inequality over time.
Where is housing in your analysis, which makes up more than 50% of all wealth (up from 15-20% 100 years ago).
I don’t even agree with your numbers, if you could source them that would be great, but even if we take them at face value as true, rent and land are key aspects of Marxist analysis. Land is finite, as population grows and supply is constrained, monopoly prices can be extracted. It’s usury, landlordism is parasitic. The land factories are on also plays a part in the cost of finished goods, rent is tied to commodity pricing.
Georgists seem to think they are the only ones to have noticed the problems with private land ownership, but the truth is that Marxists have a more comprehensive understanding of it. See China, Cuba, and other countries run by Marxists to see what Land Reform under Marxists looks like. I think you’ll probably like the PRC’s model.
Why is the capital to income ratio not rising when housing is taken out of the equation?
Citation needed, and you need to narrow the scope. You need to take Imperialism into account as well, workers in the Global North are paid “bribes” won by international plundering.
Why is every productivity gain in society accompanied by equally rising housing rents?
It’s not always equal, but often is. Worker wages are largely depressed to the cost to reproduce them, and rents rise accordingly. Productivity isn’t coupled with wages in Capitalist countries as a rule, the landlords and Capitalists swallow all of the gains up.
Overall, you seem to think you have a grand insight into land. You’re certainly above the average liberal, who sees no real problem with it, but Marxists have a more multi-sided understanding of land, and have regularly enacted successful land reform. Georgists also have no real way to implement their policies without adopting a revolutionary stance, where they are far outnumbered by the Marxists and Anarchists.
Georgism is more correct than standard liberalism, but is too focused on one aspect of the failures of Capitalism, too one-sided, too insufficient even if it were enacted, and has no path to actually be enacted. Marxism has none of those faults.
There’s proof of it happening but not falsifiable. What I mean is that, I believe it is not happening in Scandinavia for example, but I could be wrong! I mean I feel like Scandinavia has enough “people power” to counteract that force - but it’s only based on some inequality stats. Not actual deep dive into market concentration.
In piketty’s capital in the twenty first century you see that income inequality has decreased in France, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Italy, Denmark and Spain from 1910 to 2010 without a subsequent increase. But of course you have to look at a capital/income ratio (even this is flawed because capitalists and workers are not two distinct groups). And then there is this graph (figure 4) from https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/wealth-and-history-reappraisal showing that top 1% wealth share in France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the UK has only gone dow from 1896-2019.
Then, if capitalists are winning, you would see the capital share of GDP increasing. Matthew Rognlie examined this: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2015a_rognlie.pdf
He found that if you take housing out of the “capital” equation, capital share is not increasing. He concludes “these results suggest that concern about inequality should be shifted away from the overall split between capital and labor”.
I’m not a Georgist, if you show me evidence that suggests otherwise, I will reconsider my belief that land is the most important component in explaining rising inequality, but you would have to show me a lot, because I’ve found quite a lot of valid evidence so far that it is a big part of the problem.
Why is all this happening? Because land is scarce and has ricardian rents. People hoard land and don’t give up part of their land as more people arrive to the world or the city. There is not mechanism for that without a land value tax (or public ownership of land for which you would charge a rent for people to use, which is the same as a land value tax). You just reap the benefits of increased land values from its scarcity as more people move in. As a result every new birth cohort owns less housing than the previous. A pattern that has not changed according to OECD’s “the squeezed middle class”.
It’s not monopoly rents that happen from land ownership, it’s called economic rent and Ricardian rent. There might also be monopoly rents if one landlord owns a whole neighborhood, but that’s rarely the case. Economic rents come from the scarcity and ricardian rents come from the differences in land values due to natural features, public investments and private amenities.
Capitalists only swallow up productivity gains if they have monopoly rents, which is not necessarily the case everywhere as there is still competition, and capital is not inelastic. Land is inherently inelastic and thus swallows up everything. This is explained by Gaffney in https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/03068290910947930/full/html
Stiglitz adds to the discussion in “inequality and growth” http://link.springer.com/10.1057/9781137554543
He makes the following conclusions:
“ That is, observed increases in wealth and wealth–income ratios cannot be explained by the steady process of the accumulation of capital. • An important component of the “wealth residual” is associated with an increase in rents: land rents, exploitation rents – including those associated with information asymmetries, monopoly and other forms of market power – and returns on intellectual property. Any theory attempting to explain the evolution of the economy must thus focus on explaining the increase in rents and their capitalized value, which are an increasingly important share of overall wealth.”
I think if I was American, I would be focusing a little more on capital than otherwise because there’s obvious huge concerns in that regard. But still, land seems to be more than half of the problem, so I prefer to focus on the big things - especially since it seems to be underrated in part due to how we measure all land held by businesses as business assets. But I’m from Scandinavia. I don’t see the private market’s influence having a concerning amount of political power, but I will change my stance if I see evidence otherwise. Again, I want to focus on the biggest part first. And as I’ve made clear, I still support public ownership of natural monopolies. I also support antitrust laws. I believe there are huge flaws in our democracies, when the private market can influence the public by owning the news outlets and buy politicians. We need stronger institutions against this.
I think we don’t disagree that much actually. I’m just a little more optimistic that we can inform ourselves enough to create strong enough anti-monopolistic institutions, coming from a country where I at least don’t feel like the government is bought. I’ve already started getting interest in big tech and how to break up these monopolies. I guess most people on this app have that interest. I switched my email, browser, search engine, and will in the future buy a Fairphone with the eOS ecosystem.
I don’t see myself as a Georgist. I don’t think it’s helpful for my scientific openness to label myself with an identity. Then I become too attached to the ideas and fail to look beyond.
Sorry this post became a bit messy and incoherent. I enjoy the conversation though, hope you can follow my point despite the lacking structure.
Scandinavian countries are seeing rising wealth inequality. This inequality was pushed back against, especially when the Soviet Union still existed as a neighboring alternative system, but unionization alone doesn’t translate to control of the State or fight against rising inequality. Further, Scandinavia is Imperialist, it isn’t accurate to see it as a closed system with internal inequality alone, the geopolitical context must be analyzed as well.
It’s very easy to find sources showing rising concentration of wealth. This makes logical sense, even if there is a tendency for the rate of profit to fall. Such a tendency is core to Marxist understanding of the eventual failure of Capitalism under its own weight.
Economic rents are monopoly rents, for the purpose of our conversation. Monopoly is a sliding scale, if something is restricted in supply, to where you can’t make any more, it fetches higher prices. Land is one aspect, an important one, but it isn’t the source of new value, labor is. When orienting an economy, we need to understand who controls what, and Land is a form of Capital. Land rent is an aspect of the overall system, but in focusing on it one-sidedly, you get an incomplete view, such as your belief that the government in Scandinavia represents the people. Really, it supports Capital, including land, and bribes its working class with the spoils it plunders from the Global South.
Essentially, your analysis is half-baked, thus undercooked. You have a partial view, and that over-emphasis on one part of the whole leads to incorrect conclusions about the whole. Land is important, that’s why one of the first things Marxists tend to do upon taking power is implement land reform, but it isn’t the full picture.
Rising wealth inequality doesn’t say much about capitalists if that wealth inequality is tied to pensions (the case in the Netherlands) or housing. Denmark has one of the world’s highest mortgage interest deductions giving massive transfers of wealth to homeowners and lenders. This was a failed social attempt to improve homeownership in the whole global north.
I would love to see some statistics on rising market concentration in Scandinavia, cause isn’t that your argument? That the cause of inequality is due to rising market concentration?
I agree that imperialism is important. And I wish that organizations like UN had more power and credibility to uphold countries’ responsibilities of fairness. What exactly is Scandinavia doing according to you in the global south (I always assumed they are, but you seem to know more)? I’d love to hear more. I know that the IMF keeps lenders in poverty for example.
I’ve shown you myself that there is definitely concentrations of wealth. But in my last comment I explained to you that this rise in wealth is mainly attributed to housing. I showed you the statistics. I haven’t really seen you engage with that, was it because you don’t believe it? Or do you just need more time to look into it?
Monopoly rents happen when competition is reduced - from being able to charge more due to the lack of competition. Economic rents accrues to owners of fixed resources. They are both related to scarcity, but one is created and one is inherent. Land is not capital according to classical economists. This is because of its unique properties: https://www.cooperative-individualism.org/gaffney-mason_land-as-a-distinctive-factor-of-production.pdf for example it cannot be moved (capital can), it cannot be produced (capital must), it is necessary for production (capital is not - technically).
Land wealth is much more unearned than capital wealth, cause at least some capital wealth can be attributed to innovation and consumer preferences research. No increase in land values were ever fairly earned by the landowner cause land values only increase from scarcity, public investments, qualities of neighbors and private amenities popping up.
I never said land is the full picture, but what I said was that the data says it’s the biggest part. In the stiglitz quote I added it even recognized the importance of exploitation rents, monopoly rents etc. I’ve repeated that I think market power is a problem, but you seem to think I think it’s not. I’m not sure why you think that?
We agree that wealth inequality is rising, we agree that market power plays a role in that, we agree that it’s beneficial for at least some companies to be publicly owned, we agree that land plays a role in that, we agree that between country inequality is perpetuated by the global north to some extent, and probably we agree that imperialism left a power vaccuum and made it difficult for these countries to develop their own institutions.
We seem disagree about
the extent to which land plays a role in rising inequality - for which I have showed data that in my view should be quite convincing - let me know if you see any flaws?
conversely, the extent to capital (produced assets) plays a role in rising inequality - I’m not saying it doesn’t, just that land plays a a bigger role
how much capital it is necessary for the government to seize - again I believe natural monopolies have good reason to be publicly owned and that antitrust laws should have more power (and that politicians should not be allowed to own stocks, take campaign money or in any way make deals with companies)
how sceptical one should be in the possibility that society can democratically create anti monopolistic institutions that prevent market power from taking too much control. I have a bit of hope in that. Not sure what else you can do but learn, inform, and take action.
We just need to be focused. And that means to focus on the problem: land rents, monopoly rents, exploitation rents etc. Marxism offers one way to solve the problem. I believe at a big cost from a deontological ethics perspective. I believe there are other ways that would have lower costs.
But we could also just leave it at that, It seems you are set and at the same time being a bit rude. I see disagreement as an opportunity to learn. I think this is the best way to go about it, don’t you? Have you learned something from this conversation?
You’re misunderstanding many of my points. Market concentration is one aspect of how Capitalism functions, and is why it can’t last forever and is bound to be replaced by planning or by barbarism. Land ownership is a part of that process as well. However, the negative consequences of these facts are minimized in areas like Scandinavia through Imperialism.
You already kinda leaned into it, IMF loans are an example of Imperialism. Essentially, Scandinavian countries do the same thing other Imperialist countries do, they outsource the worst labor and pay far less for it than they’d pay for domestic labor, and along with the rest of the Imperialist gang use millitary threats and reliance on things like food control from countries like the US to keep these countries dependent. It’s why “aid” is really a tool of underdevelopment, true aid would allow countries in the Global South to develop themselves, rather than foster dependence.
I am not engaging mostly with the stats you bring up because they are one-sided and really serve to apologize for Capitalism and Imperialism, by focusing on land ownership alone when it’s a giant and interconnected system. I’m skeptical that the impact is as big as you say it is, but even if we accept them all as true, you’re still only analyzing one factor and thus miss the true problems at play. Marx elaborates as such in this letter discussing Henry George.
I’ll answer the disagreements in order:
The role of land. My point is that a Land Value Tax will not solve the problems of Capitalism. It can certainly play a role in a larger transition to Socialism, but it alone will simply pave the way for new avenues of exploitation, as has happened every time a “progressive Capitalism” has been enacted.
Capital, and its role. Land is one aspect of Capital, just as financial Capital and Industrial Capital are. You taking specific aim at Land ownership, and not at the system of private ownership as a whole, is why you have an incomplete view.
We agree already that Land needs to be tackled, and you agree that markets centralize and thus are better to have those monopolies folded into the public sector, but what happens after that? How do we get there in the first place? We keep folding into the public sector and abolish classes, and we get to there in the first place through revolution. We don’t sieze for the sake of siezing, but because it becomes an economic necessity as production increases in complexity.
It has never genuinely been possible for any working class to gain power by asking for it, ever. Only revolution has worked.
You do focus, but you over-focus, which is why you miss the key points. This is why there aren’t really any Georgists anymore, the right-Georgists become Social Democrats or Neoliberals, and the Left-Georgists become Marxists. Georgism occupies a niche underdeveloped in economics, which explains its scarcity. The largest economy by Purchasing Power Parity is run by Marxists, while Georgists don’t run anywhere.
I also don’t know what you mean by “ethical problems” with respect to Marxism. Marxism, if anything, is more ethical as it aims to abolish class society as a whole, rather than apologize for a large part of it and focus on one aspect.
I don’t think I’m being rude. I do disagree with your analysis quite sternly because I think you quite nearly get it. You fall just short, and it’s frustrating, if I’m being honest. If that manifests in rudeness on my part I apologize.
You’re misunderstanding many of my points. Market concentration is one aspect of how Capitalism functions, and is why it can’t last forever and is bound to be replaced by planning or by barbarism. Land ownership is a part of that process as well. However, the negative consequences of these facts are minimized in areas like Scandinavia through Imperialism.
I follow the logic here. So the inequalities that would have happened in Scandinavia is outsourced to countries with less worker rights and thus lower pay, and you evaluate the inequality of the whole economic ecosystem including these outsourcing countries. I always thought of it as a natural progression - that when these countries grow, the rights of their workers will grow too, which will reverse the trend or move the outsourcing to a new country until there are none left. It doesn’t negate your argument however, and aside from institutions that reinforce these inequalities like the IMF, isn’t outsourced labor also creating some positives for these countries in terms of growth and raising people out of poverty? How would these workers have faired without the outsourced labor?
I am not engaging mostly with the stats you bring up because they are one-sided and really serve to apologize for Capitalism and Imperialism, by focusing on land ownership alone when it’s a giant and interconnected system. I’m skeptical that the impact is as big as you say it is, but even if we accept them all as true, you’re still only analyzing one factor and thus miss the true problems at play. Marx elaborates as such in this letter discussing Henry George.
Again I’m not bringing up the stats to argue that only land is important. I feel like I’ve stressed this in almost every comment, but you keep saying that I’m only looking at land - that is the position of some Georgists maybe, but as I said, I’m not a Georgist. Unfortunately when you do a PhD, you have to make a focus, and the focus of mine is land rent. It does not mean that I remain shut off to other theories and ideologies. As I said, I do believe in the existence of exploitation rents and monopoly rents. Even Adam Smith believed in taxing land and stopping monopolies. I bring up land ownership, because it seems vastly underrated in comparison to how much it contributes to inequality, recessions, urban sprawl, stagnated growth, and housing unaffordability. The numbers I show, should be quite convincing to most people that land makes up the majority of the rise in inequality, and I would love to see empirical arguments as to why this is not the case. Without it, I cannot change my current judgment of its importance, which seems to be increasing exponentially as an increasing population is competing for the same scarce land - which again is NOT to say that market power and exploitation isn’t important and doesn’t deserve debate and reform.
The role of land. My point is that a Land Value Tax will not solve the problems of Capitalism. It can certainly play a role in a larger transition to Socialism, but it alone will simply pave the way for new avenues of exploitation, as has happened every time a “progressive Capitalism” has been enacted.
Again, I never stated that an LVT will solve the problems of capitalism. I said in many comments that I believe exploitation rents and monopoly rents should also be solved. I have spend time eloborating on the problems of rising market power in the west. I have said I believe in state owned natural monopolies and that we should have stronger antitrust laws, better institutions preventing companies from owning modes of communication, making bought elections illegal, making political ownership of stocks illegal. I understand that you don’t believe these things are sufficient, but that is different from saying that I only focus on land, which I don not.
Capital, and its role. Land is one aspect of Capital, just as financial Capital and Industrial Capital are.
You are stating this as if it’s a fact, but these are normative arguments that the classical economists disagreed with. And a main reason land was consolidated with capital in the neoclassical economic school was because of some simplifying assumptions when they attempted to make economics more mathematical.
You taking specific aim at Land ownership, and not at the system of private ownership as a whole, is why you have an incomplete view.
Again, focusing on land ownership, does not mean I ignore everything else, and isn’t any view incomplete - and who decides which view is complete? George was mistaken in not thinking at all about monopoly rents.
Also, are you saying that all private ownership is a problem?
We agree already that Land needs to be tackled, and you agree that markets centralize and thus are better to have those monopolies folded into the public sector, but what happens after that? How do we get there in the first place? We keep folding into the public sector and abolish classes, and we get to there in the first place through revolution. We don’t sieze for the sake of seizing, but because it becomes an economic necessity as production increases in complexity. It has never genuinely been possible for any working class to gain power by asking for it, ever. Only revolution has worked.
I’m not dismissing revolution as unnecessary. But the historical record of revolutionary transitions is complex, and there’s no clear blueprint. There are revolutions that have advanced human flourishing, and there are those that have produced new forms of domination. The welfare state in much of Europe was built incrementally through democratic politics, trade union pressure, and policy innovation—not revolution. Civil rights movements in the US achieved a lot of changes in law, education, voting, and labor rights through organizing, protest, and legal pressure, not regime overthrow. The Iranian revolution replaced a secular authoritarian monarchy with a theocratic regime. Even revolutionary regimes often reproduce the same dynamics of rent-seeking and monopolization under different banners, which is why institutional design matters after revolution. My work doesn’t reject revolutionary change, but it asks what institutions are necessary before and after revolution to prevent new monopolies from forming. I don’t present a land value tax as panaceas, but it can help lay groundwork for a big part of the problem.
You do focus, but you over-focus, which is why you miss the key points. This is why there aren’t really any Georgists anymore, the right-Georgists become Social Democrats or Neoliberals, and the Left-Georgists become Marxists. Georgism occupies a niche underdeveloped in economics, which explains its scarcity. The largest economy by Purchasing Power Parity is run by Marxists, while Georgists don’t run anywhere.
The history of Georgism is complex. The neoclassical school were only able to argue that land was capital through assumptions that simplified the analysis for mathematical conceptualizations that ignored economic rent, and John Bates Clark, who initiated the marginalist revolution, was paid large sums of money to take down Henry George. He did it by making assumptions about land that would make it equal to capital, ignoring it’s differences. And as I said, Henry George was wrong in ignoring monopoly rents. Ryan-Collins and co-authors in “rethinking the economics of land and housing” argue that it was one of the main reasons Marx had more succes than Henry George; he had a too narrow focus. I’m not taking his position.
I also don’t know what you mean by “ethical problems” with respect to Marxism. Marxism, if anything, is more ethical as it aims to abolish class society as a whole, rather than apologize for a large part of it and focus on one aspect.
This is true from a consequentialist ethics point of view, but not from a deontological ethics point of view. A system grounded only in consequentialist ethics risks justifying coercive or unjust means if they are believed to serve long-term egalitarian ends which can override individual autonomy. On the other hand, a purely deontological view of property rights can enforce structural inequalities by treating existing distributions as fair, however unfair these might be. I believe that a fair and resilient economy should balance the need for redistributive justice while respecting individual freedoms and rule of law. This means recognizing the moral legitimacy of correcting advantages—such as unearned economic rents, monopoly rents, exploitation rents or inherited wealth—while also preserving basic rights, procedural fairness, and pluralism. I think the balance is found democratically, which is why I believe so strongly in improving the institutions that strengthen democracy. I might have my own opinions on this balance, and it all depends on the trade-offs in different situations.
I don’t think I’m being rude. I do disagree with your analysis quite sternly because I think you quite nearly get it. You fall just short, and it’s frustrating, if I’m being honest. If that manifests in rudeness on my part I apologize.
I guess it’s not a rudeness I’m observing. I think what I interpreted as rude was the absolutism in your replies. The main problems I have with your replies is first that you are making my arguments into strawmen, and second that you are evaluating the truth of my arguments not out of a scientific point of view, but out of whether it aligns with what you believe. I believe you have done a great deal of research, but I’m getting the feelings from your replies that Marxism is more important to you than truth. If you are arguing that Marx is the one and only truth, then it is not much different from religion. I’m trying to synthesize findings, not defend an ideology.
You’re starting to really get the Imperialism argument, fantastic! To answer your question regarding development eventually evening out, it’s through millitary presense and fostering dependence that keeps these countries underdeveloped. Look to what the Sahel States are doing now for an example of actual resistance to this expropriation, they are nationalizing industries and limiting exports to finished products, rather than raw materials. The Imperialist countries fight this with millitary intervention and sanctions in order to extend the plunder as long as possible, because without it these Imperialist countries would face instability from having its working class suddenly being far more exploited.
As for the rest of your comment, I did read through it. Rather than respond point by point, though, I think our time would be better served by focusing on a few key points. I’d rather start fresh, to be honest, I believe we aren’t getting anywhere as it stands right now.
Land as Capital
I am not saying Land is the same as all other forms of Capital. However, ownership of land is handled in much the same way as industrial and financial capital, and the purpose of land from an economic perspective is to play a role in fulfilling needs and producing goods. It plays a part in the interconnected process. Focusing on land ownership doesn’t mean you ignore other aspects, and that’s not what I was trying to insinuate. However, placing more weight on Land than on Capitalist production in general, land included, seems to me an unjustified focus when land is becoming more of a problem precisely because of Capitalism, and isn’t as much of a problem in Socialist countries.
Private Ownership
My belief is that all markets centralize over time and eliminate competition. This happens at different rates in different sectors, but is nonetheless a constant approach. Market forces create societies where those best guessing the market decide the rules of society, while Socialism allows us to focus on satisfying needs over profits. After revolution, the transformation from markets to public ownership of the whole economy is a gradual one, but a necessary one nonetheless.
Ethics
To make this short, Marxism has nothing against individual freedoms except for the freedom of individuals to dominate others. Socialist societies have all seen dramatic democratizations of the economy not found within Capitalist systems.
Circling back, I really don’t think you and I disagree on much in the final analysis, the reason I seem absolutist in your eyes is because of firm disagreements on how we achieve a better society, as well as analysis of Imperialism. I think a lot of what you see in “successful Capitalism” rides on Imperialism, which is why I’m very happy to see your first paragraph. Marx was wrong on a few things, and also didn’t live to be able to analyze Imperialism as a special stage necessary to Capitalism. He didn’t predict countries using Imperialism as a means to perpetuate Capitalism. However, Marxism is an evolving framework, which is why we can look to see its success in China, as an example.
If you want, I can link sources or readings. However, I opted not to do so, as in my opinion, doing so rarely results in people actually doing the reading.
Different industries and sectors gradually scale differently, but all move towards concentration. This is consistent and graduated. Every Capitalist country has regularly seen this gradual concentration over time, even if temporary shifts against this trend happen.
Again, without an analysis of political power and taking an agnostic attitude towards production, you have what can sound to liberals as a good idea but is ultimately not a real answer. If the Proletariat cannot wrest control, all regulations and taxes will be enacted in a manner that suits the Capitalists in control if you get far enough in the first place. Wealth will continue to accumulate, as the entire M-C-M’ circuit is based on growth in scale of profit, not steady cashflow.
The Marxist position isn’t that moving towards full public ownership immediately is a practical solution, but that this is a gradual process that starts with the proletariat siezing control. I recommend you actually engage with Marxist theory.
I already know these theoretical arguments you’re presenting, but they are not worth as much when there’s no empirical proof. You didn’t answer my more empirical questions, which are the main source of the counter arguments. Why are there capitalist countries that don’t see a rise in inequality? Where is housing in your analysis, which makes up more than 50% of all wealth (up from 15-20% 100 years ago). Why is the capital to income ratio not rising when housing is taken out of the equation? Why is every productivity gain in society accompanied by equally rising housing rents?
There’s absolutely empirical proof of steady monopolization and concentration of production in fewer and fewer hands, it happens in all countries as industry develops. Growing larger and more complex is a necessary aspect of lowering supply chain costs, and thus chasing profits. As for your specific questions:
These don’t exist. There are countries where large influxes of concessions from Capitalists have lowered inequality temporarily, but there is still rising inequality over time.
I don’t even agree with your numbers, if you could source them that would be great, but even if we take them at face value as true, rent and land are key aspects of Marxist analysis. Land is finite, as population grows and supply is constrained, monopoly prices can be extracted. It’s usury, landlordism is parasitic. The land factories are on also plays a part in the cost of finished goods, rent is tied to commodity pricing.
Georgists seem to think they are the only ones to have noticed the problems with private land ownership, but the truth is that Marxists have a more comprehensive understanding of it. See China, Cuba, and other countries run by Marxists to see what Land Reform under Marxists looks like. I think you’ll probably like the PRC’s model.
Citation needed, and you need to narrow the scope. You need to take Imperialism into account as well, workers in the Global North are paid “bribes” won by international plundering.
It’s not always equal, but often is. Worker wages are largely depressed to the cost to reproduce them, and rents rise accordingly. Productivity isn’t coupled with wages in Capitalist countries as a rule, the landlords and Capitalists swallow all of the gains up.
Overall, you seem to think you have a grand insight into land. You’re certainly above the average liberal, who sees no real problem with it, but Marxists have a more multi-sided understanding of land, and have regularly enacted successful land reform. Georgists also have no real way to implement their policies without adopting a revolutionary stance, where they are far outnumbered by the Marxists and Anarchists.
Georgism is more correct than standard liberalism, but is too focused on one aspect of the failures of Capitalism, too one-sided, too insufficient even if it were enacted, and has no path to actually be enacted. Marxism has none of those faults.
There’s proof of it happening but not falsifiable. What I mean is that, I believe it is not happening in Scandinavia for example, but I could be wrong! I mean I feel like Scandinavia has enough “people power” to counteract that force - but it’s only based on some inequality stats. Not actual deep dive into market concentration.
In piketty’s capital in the twenty first century you see that income inequality has decreased in France, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Italy, Denmark and Spain from 1910 to 2010 without a subsequent increase. But of course you have to look at a capital/income ratio (even this is flawed because capitalists and workers are not two distinct groups). And then there is this graph (figure 4) from https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/wealth-and-history-reappraisal showing that top 1% wealth share in France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the UK has only gone dow from 1896-2019.
And from this paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014498324000500 - you see how housing wealth makes up more and more wealth. The graph I’m referring to is also seen in https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/wealth-and-history-reappraisal (Figure 3).
Then, if capitalists are winning, you would see the capital share of GDP increasing. Matthew Rognlie examined this: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2015a_rognlie.pdf He found that if you take housing out of the “capital” equation, capital share is not increasing. He concludes “these results suggest that concern about inequality should be shifted away from the overall split between capital and labor”.
I’m not a Georgist, if you show me evidence that suggests otherwise, I will reconsider my belief that land is the most important component in explaining rising inequality, but you would have to show me a lot, because I’ve found quite a lot of valid evidence so far that it is a big part of the problem.
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Faer.20150501 Found that 80% of changes in house prices are explained by land.
In https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/rethinking-the-economics-of-land-and-housing-9781350374270/ they find that 87% of the rise in capital/income ratios can be explained by housing.
Why is all this happening? Because land is scarce and has ricardian rents. People hoard land and don’t give up part of their land as more people arrive to the world or the city. There is not mechanism for that without a land value tax (or public ownership of land for which you would charge a rent for people to use, which is the same as a land value tax). You just reap the benefits of increased land values from its scarcity as more people move in. As a result every new birth cohort owns less housing than the previous. A pattern that has not changed according to OECD’s “the squeezed middle class”.
It’s not monopoly rents that happen from land ownership, it’s called economic rent and Ricardian rent. There might also be monopoly rents if one landlord owns a whole neighborhood, but that’s rarely the case. Economic rents come from the scarcity and ricardian rents come from the differences in land values due to natural features, public investments and private amenities.
Capitalists only swallow up productivity gains if they have monopoly rents, which is not necessarily the case everywhere as there is still competition, and capital is not inelastic. Land is inherently inelastic and thus swallows up everything. This is explained by Gaffney in https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/03068290910947930/full/html
Stiglitz adds to the discussion in “inequality and growth” http://link.springer.com/10.1057/9781137554543 He makes the following conclusions: “ That is, observed increases in wealth and wealth–income ratios cannot be explained by the steady process of the accumulation of capital. • An important component of the “wealth residual” is associated with an increase in rents: land rents, exploitation rents – including those associated with information asymmetries, monopoly and other forms of market power – and returns on intellectual property. Any theory attempting to explain the evolution of the economy must thus focus on explaining the increase in rents and their capitalized value, which are an increasingly important share of overall wealth.”
I think if I was American, I would be focusing a little more on capital than otherwise because there’s obvious huge concerns in that regard. But still, land seems to be more than half of the problem, so I prefer to focus on the big things - especially since it seems to be underrated in part due to how we measure all land held by businesses as business assets. But I’m from Scandinavia. I don’t see the private market’s influence having a concerning amount of political power, but I will change my stance if I see evidence otherwise. Again, I want to focus on the biggest part first. And as I’ve made clear, I still support public ownership of natural monopolies. I also support antitrust laws. I believe there are huge flaws in our democracies, when the private market can influence the public by owning the news outlets and buy politicians. We need stronger institutions against this.
I think we don’t disagree that much actually. I’m just a little more optimistic that we can inform ourselves enough to create strong enough anti-monopolistic institutions, coming from a country where I at least don’t feel like the government is bought. I’ve already started getting interest in big tech and how to break up these monopolies. I guess most people on this app have that interest. I switched my email, browser, search engine, and will in the future buy a Fairphone with the eOS ecosystem.
I don’t see myself as a Georgist. I don’t think it’s helpful for my scientific openness to label myself with an identity. Then I become too attached to the ideas and fail to look beyond.
Sorry this post became a bit messy and incoherent. I enjoy the conversation though, hope you can follow my point despite the lacking structure.
Scandinavian countries are seeing rising wealth inequality. This inequality was pushed back against, especially when the Soviet Union still existed as a neighboring alternative system, but unionization alone doesn’t translate to control of the State or fight against rising inequality. Further, Scandinavia is Imperialist, it isn’t accurate to see it as a closed system with internal inequality alone, the geopolitical context must be analyzed as well.
It’s very easy to find sources showing rising concentration of wealth. This makes logical sense, even if there is a tendency for the rate of profit to fall. Such a tendency is core to Marxist understanding of the eventual failure of Capitalism under its own weight.
Economic rents are monopoly rents, for the purpose of our conversation. Monopoly is a sliding scale, if something is restricted in supply, to where you can’t make any more, it fetches higher prices. Land is one aspect, an important one, but it isn’t the source of new value, labor is. When orienting an economy, we need to understand who controls what, and Land is a form of Capital. Land rent is an aspect of the overall system, but in focusing on it one-sidedly, you get an incomplete view, such as your belief that the government in Scandinavia represents the people. Really, it supports Capital, including land, and bribes its working class with the spoils it plunders from the Global South.
Essentially, your analysis is half-baked, thus undercooked. You have a partial view, and that over-emphasis on one part of the whole leads to incorrect conclusions about the whole. Land is important, that’s why one of the first things Marxists tend to do upon taking power is implement land reform, but it isn’t the full picture.
Rising wealth inequality doesn’t say much about capitalists if that wealth inequality is tied to pensions (the case in the Netherlands) or housing. Denmark has one of the world’s highest mortgage interest deductions giving massive transfers of wealth to homeowners and lenders. This was a failed social attempt to improve homeownership in the whole global north.
I would love to see some statistics on rising market concentration in Scandinavia, cause isn’t that your argument? That the cause of inequality is due to rising market concentration?
I agree that imperialism is important. And I wish that organizations like UN had more power and credibility to uphold countries’ responsibilities of fairness. What exactly is Scandinavia doing according to you in the global south (I always assumed they are, but you seem to know more)? I’d love to hear more. I know that the IMF keeps lenders in poverty for example.
I’ve shown you myself that there is definitely concentrations of wealth. But in my last comment I explained to you that this rise in wealth is mainly attributed to housing. I showed you the statistics. I haven’t really seen you engage with that, was it because you don’t believe it? Or do you just need more time to look into it?
Monopoly rents happen when competition is reduced - from being able to charge more due to the lack of competition. Economic rents accrues to owners of fixed resources. They are both related to scarcity, but one is created and one is inherent. Land is not capital according to classical economists. This is because of its unique properties: https://www.cooperative-individualism.org/gaffney-mason_land-as-a-distinctive-factor-of-production.pdf for example it cannot be moved (capital can), it cannot be produced (capital must), it is necessary for production (capital is not - technically).
Land wealth is much more unearned than capital wealth, cause at least some capital wealth can be attributed to innovation and consumer preferences research. No increase in land values were ever fairly earned by the landowner cause land values only increase from scarcity, public investments, qualities of neighbors and private amenities popping up.
I never said land is the full picture, but what I said was that the data says it’s the biggest part. In the stiglitz quote I added it even recognized the importance of exploitation rents, monopoly rents etc. I’ve repeated that I think market power is a problem, but you seem to think I think it’s not. I’m not sure why you think that?
We agree that wealth inequality is rising, we agree that market power plays a role in that, we agree that it’s beneficial for at least some companies to be publicly owned, we agree that land plays a role in that, we agree that between country inequality is perpetuated by the global north to some extent, and probably we agree that imperialism left a power vaccuum and made it difficult for these countries to develop their own institutions.
We seem disagree about
We just need to be focused. And that means to focus on the problem: land rents, monopoly rents, exploitation rents etc. Marxism offers one way to solve the problem. I believe at a big cost from a deontological ethics perspective. I believe there are other ways that would have lower costs.
But we could also just leave it at that, It seems you are set and at the same time being a bit rude. I see disagreement as an opportunity to learn. I think this is the best way to go about it, don’t you? Have you learned something from this conversation?
You’re misunderstanding many of my points. Market concentration is one aspect of how Capitalism functions, and is why it can’t last forever and is bound to be replaced by planning or by barbarism. Land ownership is a part of that process as well. However, the negative consequences of these facts are minimized in areas like Scandinavia through Imperialism.
You already kinda leaned into it, IMF loans are an example of Imperialism. Essentially, Scandinavian countries do the same thing other Imperialist countries do, they outsource the worst labor and pay far less for it than they’d pay for domestic labor, and along with the rest of the Imperialist gang use millitary threats and reliance on things like food control from countries like the US to keep these countries dependent. It’s why “aid” is really a tool of underdevelopment, true aid would allow countries in the Global South to develop themselves, rather than foster dependence.
I am not engaging mostly with the stats you bring up because they are one-sided and really serve to apologize for Capitalism and Imperialism, by focusing on land ownership alone when it’s a giant and interconnected system. I’m skeptical that the impact is as big as you say it is, but even if we accept them all as true, you’re still only analyzing one factor and thus miss the true problems at play. Marx elaborates as such in this letter discussing Henry George.
I’ll answer the disagreements in order:
The role of land. My point is that a Land Value Tax will not solve the problems of Capitalism. It can certainly play a role in a larger transition to Socialism, but it alone will simply pave the way for new avenues of exploitation, as has happened every time a “progressive Capitalism” has been enacted.
Capital, and its role. Land is one aspect of Capital, just as financial Capital and Industrial Capital are. You taking specific aim at Land ownership, and not at the system of private ownership as a whole, is why you have an incomplete view.
We agree already that Land needs to be tackled, and you agree that markets centralize and thus are better to have those monopolies folded into the public sector, but what happens after that? How do we get there in the first place? We keep folding into the public sector and abolish classes, and we get to there in the first place through revolution. We don’t sieze for the sake of siezing, but because it becomes an economic necessity as production increases in complexity.
It has never genuinely been possible for any working class to gain power by asking for it, ever. Only revolution has worked.
You do focus, but you over-focus, which is why you miss the key points. This is why there aren’t really any Georgists anymore, the right-Georgists become Social Democrats or Neoliberals, and the Left-Georgists become Marxists. Georgism occupies a niche underdeveloped in economics, which explains its scarcity. The largest economy by Purchasing Power Parity is run by Marxists, while Georgists don’t run anywhere.
I also don’t know what you mean by “ethical problems” with respect to Marxism. Marxism, if anything, is more ethical as it aims to abolish class society as a whole, rather than apologize for a large part of it and focus on one aspect.
I don’t think I’m being rude. I do disagree with your analysis quite sternly because I think you quite nearly get it. You fall just short, and it’s frustrating, if I’m being honest. If that manifests in rudeness on my part I apologize.
I follow the logic here. So the inequalities that would have happened in Scandinavia is outsourced to countries with less worker rights and thus lower pay, and you evaluate the inequality of the whole economic ecosystem including these outsourcing countries. I always thought of it as a natural progression - that when these countries grow, the rights of their workers will grow too, which will reverse the trend or move the outsourcing to a new country until there are none left. It doesn’t negate your argument however, and aside from institutions that reinforce these inequalities like the IMF, isn’t outsourced labor also creating some positives for these countries in terms of growth and raising people out of poverty? How would these workers have faired without the outsourced labor?
Again I’m not bringing up the stats to argue that only land is important. I feel like I’ve stressed this in almost every comment, but you keep saying that I’m only looking at land - that is the position of some Georgists maybe, but as I said, I’m not a Georgist. Unfortunately when you do a PhD, you have to make a focus, and the focus of mine is land rent. It does not mean that I remain shut off to other theories and ideologies. As I said, I do believe in the existence of exploitation rents and monopoly rents. Even Adam Smith believed in taxing land and stopping monopolies. I bring up land ownership, because it seems vastly underrated in comparison to how much it contributes to inequality, recessions, urban sprawl, stagnated growth, and housing unaffordability. The numbers I show, should be quite convincing to most people that land makes up the majority of the rise in inequality, and I would love to see empirical arguments as to why this is not the case. Without it, I cannot change my current judgment of its importance, which seems to be increasing exponentially as an increasing population is competing for the same scarce land - which again is NOT to say that market power and exploitation isn’t important and doesn’t deserve debate and reform.
Again, I never stated that an LVT will solve the problems of capitalism. I said in many comments that I believe exploitation rents and monopoly rents should also be solved. I have spend time eloborating on the problems of rising market power in the west. I have said I believe in state owned natural monopolies and that we should have stronger antitrust laws, better institutions preventing companies from owning modes of communication, making bought elections illegal, making political ownership of stocks illegal. I understand that you don’t believe these things are sufficient, but that is different from saying that I only focus on land, which I don not.
You are stating this as if it’s a fact, but these are normative arguments that the classical economists disagreed with. And a main reason land was consolidated with capital in the neoclassical economic school was because of some simplifying assumptions when they attempted to make economics more mathematical.
Again, focusing on land ownership, does not mean I ignore everything else, and isn’t any view incomplete - and who decides which view is complete? George was mistaken in not thinking at all about monopoly rents. Also, are you saying that all private ownership is a problem?
I’m not dismissing revolution as unnecessary. But the historical record of revolutionary transitions is complex, and there’s no clear blueprint. There are revolutions that have advanced human flourishing, and there are those that have produced new forms of domination. The welfare state in much of Europe was built incrementally through democratic politics, trade union pressure, and policy innovation—not revolution. Civil rights movements in the US achieved a lot of changes in law, education, voting, and labor rights through organizing, protest, and legal pressure, not regime overthrow. The Iranian revolution replaced a secular authoritarian monarchy with a theocratic regime. Even revolutionary regimes often reproduce the same dynamics of rent-seeking and monopolization under different banners, which is why institutional design matters after revolution. My work doesn’t reject revolutionary change, but it asks what institutions are necessary before and after revolution to prevent new monopolies from forming. I don’t present a land value tax as panaceas, but it can help lay groundwork for a big part of the problem.
The history of Georgism is complex. The neoclassical school were only able to argue that land was capital through assumptions that simplified the analysis for mathematical conceptualizations that ignored economic rent, and John Bates Clark, who initiated the marginalist revolution, was paid large sums of money to take down Henry George. He did it by making assumptions about land that would make it equal to capital, ignoring it’s differences. And as I said, Henry George was wrong in ignoring monopoly rents. Ryan-Collins and co-authors in “rethinking the economics of land and housing” argue that it was one of the main reasons Marx had more succes than Henry George; he had a too narrow focus. I’m not taking his position.
This is true from a consequentialist ethics point of view, but not from a deontological ethics point of view. A system grounded only in consequentialist ethics risks justifying coercive or unjust means if they are believed to serve long-term egalitarian ends which can override individual autonomy. On the other hand, a purely deontological view of property rights can enforce structural inequalities by treating existing distributions as fair, however unfair these might be. I believe that a fair and resilient economy should balance the need for redistributive justice while respecting individual freedoms and rule of law. This means recognizing the moral legitimacy of correcting advantages—such as unearned economic rents, monopoly rents, exploitation rents or inherited wealth—while also preserving basic rights, procedural fairness, and pluralism. I think the balance is found democratically, which is why I believe so strongly in improving the institutions that strengthen democracy. I might have my own opinions on this balance, and it all depends on the trade-offs in different situations.
I guess it’s not a rudeness I’m observing. I think what I interpreted as rude was the absolutism in your replies. The main problems I have with your replies is first that you are making my arguments into strawmen, and second that you are evaluating the truth of my arguments not out of a scientific point of view, but out of whether it aligns with what you believe. I believe you have done a great deal of research, but I’m getting the feelings from your replies that Marxism is more important to you than truth. If you are arguing that Marx is the one and only truth, then it is not much different from religion. I’m trying to synthesize findings, not defend an ideology.
You’re starting to really get the Imperialism argument, fantastic! To answer your question regarding development eventually evening out, it’s through millitary presense and fostering dependence that keeps these countries underdeveloped. Look to what the Sahel States are doing now for an example of actual resistance to this expropriation, they are nationalizing industries and limiting exports to finished products, rather than raw materials. The Imperialist countries fight this with millitary intervention and sanctions in order to extend the plunder as long as possible, because without it these Imperialist countries would face instability from having its working class suddenly being far more exploited.
As for the rest of your comment, I did read through it. Rather than respond point by point, though, I think our time would be better served by focusing on a few key points. I’d rather start fresh, to be honest, I believe we aren’t getting anywhere as it stands right now.
I am not saying Land is the same as all other forms of Capital. However, ownership of land is handled in much the same way as industrial and financial capital, and the purpose of land from an economic perspective is to play a role in fulfilling needs and producing goods. It plays a part in the interconnected process. Focusing on land ownership doesn’t mean you ignore other aspects, and that’s not what I was trying to insinuate. However, placing more weight on Land than on Capitalist production in general, land included, seems to me an unjustified focus when land is becoming more of a problem precisely because of Capitalism, and isn’t as much of a problem in Socialist countries.
My belief is that all markets centralize over time and eliminate competition. This happens at different rates in different sectors, but is nonetheless a constant approach. Market forces create societies where those best guessing the market decide the rules of society, while Socialism allows us to focus on satisfying needs over profits. After revolution, the transformation from markets to public ownership of the whole economy is a gradual one, but a necessary one nonetheless.
To make this short, Marxism has nothing against individual freedoms except for the freedom of individuals to dominate others. Socialist societies have all seen dramatic democratizations of the economy not found within Capitalist systems.
Circling back, I really don’t think you and I disagree on much in the final analysis, the reason I seem absolutist in your eyes is because of firm disagreements on how we achieve a better society, as well as analysis of Imperialism. I think a lot of what you see in “successful Capitalism” rides on Imperialism, which is why I’m very happy to see your first paragraph. Marx was wrong on a few things, and also didn’t live to be able to analyze Imperialism as a special stage necessary to Capitalism. He didn’t predict countries using Imperialism as a means to perpetuate Capitalism. However, Marxism is an evolving framework, which is why we can look to see its success in China, as an example.
If you want, I can link sources or readings. However, I opted not to do so, as in my opinion, doing so rarely results in people actually doing the reading.