"George was neither a socialist nor a communist; he influenced Tolstoy but he disagreed with Marx. He saw himself as defending 'the Republicanism of Jefferson and the Democracy of Jackson.' He had a bit of Melville in him (the sailor) and some of Thoreau ('We do not ride on the railroad,' Thoreau wrote from Walden. 'It rides upon us.') But, really, he was a Tocquevillian. Tocqueville believed that democracy in America was made possible by economic equality: people with equal estates will eventually fight for, and win, equal political rights. George agreed. But he thought that speculative, industrial capitalism was destroying democracy by making economic equality impossible."
Jill Lepore in The New York Times recalls Henry George.
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