Ralph Leonard's Communist Egoism is Incomplete

Interesting read, but ultimately I'm unconvinced

I wanted to respond to an article written for Sublation Magazine, one of the more important Marxist papers online. I find Marxist thought rather fascinating and though ultimately it left me unconvinced, Leonard’s piece is well worth a read.

That said, I find it necessary to challenge its core claim; the presumption of communism as an ideal conduit for individual self-interest. This contention prompts a closer examination of what constitutes a fair and just system that respects individual liberty while upholding societal harmony.

First, just to get the obvious out of the way, any lower-class individuals may support communism from an egoist lens, from a lens solely of brutal self interst, capitalist self interest even, as it seemingly serves their immediate needs and wants better at the very least than the system at present, providing a buffer against economic uncertainties and inequalities. But not everyone expects to remain in the lower class; they aspire to elevate their financial status, reaching above-the-middle, or even to the top. Herein lies the intrinsic problem with communism—it assumes a static societal structure, a world in which individuals do not harbor aspirations beyond their present conditions.

The Georgist perspective offers an alternative view by considering land and labor separately, emphasizing the difference between value generated by work and that originating from natural resources. Communism appears, at least to me, inherently flawed, again, not necessarily from a communi-tarian perspective, from an individualistic one.

Georgism recognizes that individual self-interest can be compatible with communal prosperity. In essence, it champions a system where individual success does not come at the expense of others. By proposing public ownership of natural resources, and the rental of (at least some, obviously not all) those resources to individuals, it acrues the full value of their worth, worth might I add that is a product of the collective capacity to labor upon them, not the individual capacity of any one of us to do so, but of us as an aggregage, while simultaneously encouraging personal growth and prosperity through the fruits of one’s labor, undeterred by taxation.

This viewpoint upholds individual liberty, allowing people to reap the benefits of their industriousness while acknowledging the shared nature of land. This proposal, while appearing simple, confronts an essential question: why should anyone privately profit from a resource that is fundamentally communal? The value of land primarily emerges from societal development, not individual efforts.

But that’s all philosophical reasons for Georgism over Marxism, I’d like to offer further a politcal point; Georgism provides a pragmatic approach that responds to societal changes. As people ascend the socio-economic ladder, their self-interest remains catered for under this system, unlike the rigid framework of communism that often stagnates individual ambition. The policy set that we have now is the one that everything, fairly or no, will always be compared to.

Socialism and communism bring up valid points about society, notably the critique of unbridled capitalism and its propensity to create stark inequalities - I’m certainly in favor of estate taxes, I think a strong argument could be made, if enforceable, that they, philosophically speaking, should probably be 100%, but it’s hard to make the claim that, from an egoist perspective, I should expect a millionaire’s son to agree, and so the claim that communism genuinely engages with matters of individual liberty, no for a large portion of society, but for all of society, bluntly, seems a tad naïve.

By focusing on the root cause of inequality—the unearned increment from land—Georgism scales across society. There’s no one in America, even the speculators on empty plots of land who wouldn’t, ultimately, be better served by land value taxation than by property taxes - just from a personal fiscal point of view, to speak nothing of the increases in housing availability, infrastructure quality, taxable city revenues etc. Obviously I’d like quite a bit further than that, and yes, I’d like to see natural resources, most relevantly land, back in the hands of the public, but, were that to happen, either by buying them back at fair market value into public community land trusts or, and I’m not advocating for this in the United States, by force, the day after that happened, it would be in the selfish interest of former land owners to continue to till the land, to continue to profit off the creation of infrastructural improvements etc, whereas the day after a Marxist revolution, the day after it becomes no longer possible to build your own personal stock of capital above and beyond that of those around you - all things financially equal, I’d much rather sit in my backyard eating a pizza and writing about economic philosophy than do any kind of hard labor like building new housing.