Julio Senador and the Spreading of Georgism in Spain: Towards the Single Tax Using Regeneration Rhetoric

Abstract

Julio Senador Gomez (1872-1962) was an important member of the Spanish Georgist movement between 1917 and the Civil War and also probably its most influential public spokesman, after becoming a well-known publicist in Spain during the first third of the twentieth century. However, Senador’s popularizing of Henry George’s ideas was limited and incomplete. Firstly, and like many other Georgists, Senador – who had a little economic education – focused essentially on the practical remedy of a single tax, completely overlooking any analytical foundation to justify it in Progress and Poverty nor attempting to provide theoretical debate or development. Secondly, his impassioned Regenerationist rhetoric and excessive style, together with his chaotic way of presenting his arguments, tended to obscure – and even often radically distort – his reformist proposals based on George’s theories which, in reality, were quite moderate and far from orthodox socialism. Finally, Senador’s Georgist approach did not evolve: he completely ignored the severe criticism of Georgism by Spanish economists and did not pay enough attention to the changes that had taken place in the Spanish economy from the end of the Restoration period until the Second Republic. As a result, his discourse became reiterative. Today, the most valued contributions of Senador’s work are precisely those that are not related to his Georgist facet.