Marx responded to Georgists and criticized the ideology in his time, too. Here is a key letter in which he addressed the mistakes of Georgism. He pointed out that George was not the first theorist to suggest abolishing ground rent with this method, and that all these “socialists” made the same mistake: Failing to address capital and its contradictions, leaving wage labor, and in effect, using land redistribution to actually uphold and perpetuate capitalism.

All these “socialists” since Colins have this much in common that they leave wage labour and therefore capitalist production in existence and try to bamboozle themselves or the world into believing that if ground rent were transformed into a state tax all the evils of capitalist production would disappear of themselves. The whole thing is therefore simply an attempt, decked out with socialism, to save capitalist domination and indeed to establish it afresh on an even wider basis than its present one.

Sounds a lot like the “reform vs. revolution” kind of debates that we’re still having as we try to raise the consciousness of the working class. Communist revolutions have generally put these kinds of land reforms at the forefront of their platforms while also attempting to address the contradictions of capitalism directly, unlike Georgism. Countries like (if I recall correctly) China, Vietnam, Lao, and Cuba have some form of collective ownership of land in which all land is ultimately owned by the state, which grants temporary ownership through leases or other methods. Needless to say, they also have other economic policies and reforms that go beyond land ownership. Singapore also has a similar land ownership policy and is a highly capitalist country, so hopefully you can see the limitations of such a “solution.”