The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (108 page)

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GATS
.

 
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The instrument by which syndicalists believed capitalism would be brought to its knees. The General Strike in Britain in May 1926 was not led by syndicalists, nor was it successful.

 
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Central political concept in the work of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau
, for whom the general will is the result when citizens make political decisions considering the good of society as a whole rather than the particular interests of individuals and groups. Originally part of a theological debate concerning whether or not God had a general will that all men be saved or a particular will that some be not saved. Rousseau was influenced by the Jesuit philosopher, Malebranche (1638–1715), who rejected the idea of original sin central to Calvinism.
According to Rousseau, the general will can only be achieved in a city state analogous to those in the ancient world, or to Rousseau's birthplace, Geneva. These had political systems based on direct democracy in which all citizens, a small minority of the population, had political rights, but no one else did. Citizens therefore enjoyed liberty in the ancient sense of participation in law-making, but not in the modern sense of having a sphere of life free from collective interference. The exercise of political rights formed part of a general ethos based on patriotism, and was a reflection of a set of values instilled into every member of the citizen class from birth.
CS 

 
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The deliberate killing, co-ordinated by the state and justified by claims of racial distinctiveness, of a population selected on cultural criteria, as of Jews in Europe during the 1940s.
CJ 

 
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An approach to politics originating in late nineteenth-century Germany that stressed the constraints imposed on foreign policy by location and environment, geopolitics contributed to the emphasis on continuity in modern political realism. Mediated to policy-makers by Karl Haushofer , the British Liberal MP Halford Mackinder, and the United States authors N. Spykman and S. B. Cohen , the idea that control of the Eurasian land mass or heartland was a prerequisite for global dominance fed the successive preoccupations of Germany, Britain, and the United States with the power of Russia in Asia, of the industrialized democracies with German expansionism, and of the United States and its allies with Communist expansion into the so-called rimlands of Southeast Asia, Eastern and Southern Europe, and the Middle East during the
Cold War
.
CJ 

 
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(1839–97)
American economist and social reformer best known for his
Progress and Poverty
(1879). In this book George examined the reasons for the persistence of poverty in capitalist industrial societies (despite their steadily increasing levels of production) and also considered the causes of slumps and continuing economic depressions. In George's opinion, the key factor was the fluctuation of land values (in terms of rent) which led to intense speculation in the interests of a small number of privileged landowners. His proposed remedy was a ‘single tax’ system which would levy a tax on land values, and would thus in effect create a kind of common property in land (without altering legal ownership), while at the same time other taxes on earned incomes would be abolished, thus providing strong incentives for free enterprise and productive labour. George's proposal was in some respects reminiscent of the ‘impot unique’ idea associated with the
physiocrats
. Single tax legislation, albeit on a limited (usually local) scale, has since been implemented in many countries of the world, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In Britain George's ideas influenced the economic thinking of the Fabian socialists, and it is also noteworthy that the Liberal Government's 1909–10 budget included a proposal to value all land in England with a view to taxing it for the benefit of society as a whole.
KT