The scene is a modest but book-lined study in a European city, late in the 19th century. Rain streaks the windows. Nikolai Fyodorov, with the ascetic look of a desert prophet, pours tea for Henry George, whose face is earnest and intense, framed by a formidable beard. An open copy of Progress and Poverty sits on the table beside a manuscript in Cyrillic.
Henry George: I thank you for the tea, Mr. Fyodorov. And for your thoughtful correspondence. Your work is… it is one of the boldest things I have ever read. A vision of filial piety made into a science for conquering the stars.
Nikolai Fyodorov: And I, you, Mr. George. You have looked upon the great paradox of your age—that the steam engine and the telegraph produce ever more paupers—and you have not flinched. You have found the vampire that drains the life from labor and capital both.
Henry George: The vampire is private property in land. A simple principle. The earth is the birthright of all people, yet we allow a few to charge the many for the right to live upon it. All the value created by a thriving community, which should be its common wealth, funnels into the pockets of the landowner. My solution is as simple as the problem: let the community collect that value—the land rent—and abolish all other taxes that crush the working man.
Nikolai Fyodorov: A just and elegant solution.
Henry George: Then you agree? It is the foundation upon which any good society must be built. Which brings me to my purpose. Your ‘Common Task,’ your resurrection of the fathers… it is a project of unimaginable scale. It would require the unified, passionate effort of all mankind.
Nikolai Fyodorov: It is the only task that could unite them.
Henry George: But how can you unite a man who owns a county with the man who must pay him for a corner in a tenement to sleep? They are not brothers; they are master and serf. Before humanity can embark on your great project, we must first establish justice on Earth. We must free the land. Without that, your ‘Common Task’ will be built on the same rotten foundation, and the resurrected fathers will awaken into a world as unjust as the one they left. First, secure the home for the living.
Nikolai Fyodorov: You see justice as a matter of distribution for the sons, Mr. George. A noble goal. But what of the fathers? Your single tax creates a more equitable world for one generation, only for them to die and be forgotten, their fleeting justice turning to dust. It is a brotherhood of orphans. The ultimate injustice is not that a man must pay rent for land; the ultimate injustice is that he must pay with his life, and that his children must stand on his grave.
Henry George: A man starving today is not comforted by the promise of resurrection tomorrow! We have a duty to the living, to the palpable suffering right before our eyes. To speak of conquering death before we have conquered poverty seems to me a great and tragic misdirection of human energy. Give mankind justice, and you will unleash a creative force you cannot imagine.
Nikolai Fyodorov: I do imagine it. But I direct it to its proper end. You say the earth is the birthright of all. I say the entire universe is our field of labor. The hunger you see is a failure of our control over nature—a failure the Common Task would correct by regulating weather, eradicating drought. You seek to rearrange the furniture in the prison cell. I seek to tear down the prison walls of mortality itself. Your ‘rent’ is a pittance. The true debt we owe is to our ancestors, to whom we owe our very existence. The payment is not in coin, but in their restoration to life.
Henry George: So we are to ignore the landlord at the door to listen for the whispers of the dead?
Nikolai Fyodorov: The landlord at the door is a symptom of our disunity. He exists because we fight each other for scraps of land, instead of uniting to transform the planet into a vessel for all who have ever lived. You seek justice between brothers. I seek the reunion of sons and fathers. Your project corrects the relations between men. Mine must correct the very relationship between man and nature. Tell me, Mr. George, once your just society is established, what will your children do when they look upon your grave? Will they be content with their inheritance, or will they feel the ache of the ultimate dispossession?
George looks out the window, at the people hurrying through the rain. He says nothing for a long moment.
Henry George: They will, at least, be free men standing on free ground. And that is the necessary start for any task, no matter how common or how cosmic.
Fyodorov nods slowly, sipping his tea, his eyes looking at something far beyond the rain-streaked glass.