Great Britain, various resolutions urging the nationalisa tion of all mines were proposed and carried. Mr. W. E. Harvey, M.P., for instance, moved "That the members of Parliament supported by this federation be instructed to direct the attention of the Government to bring in a Bill for the nationalisation of land, mines, and mining royalties, as we believe that it is only by such reforms that the workers can obtain full value for their labours." 1 It will be observed that nothing is sai about compensation in this resolution, which was passed unanimously.

had

How is the nationalisation of the land to be effected? "The land of every country belongs of natural and inalienable right to the whole body of the people in each generation. We say therefore, You need not kick the landlords out; you must not buy them out; you better tax them out.""2 "If the people rose in revolt, took up arms, confiscated the lands of the nobles, and handed them over to the control of a Parliament, that would not be brigandage; it would be revolution. But if the people by the exercise of constitutional means, passed an Act through Parliament making the estates of the nobles the property of the nation, with or without compensation, that would be neither brigandage nor revolu tion; it would be a legal, righteous, and constitutional reform. We propose to be neither revolutionaries not brigands, but legal, righteous, and constitutional reformers." Legality implies and presupposes justice, but Socialist law and justice are different from that conception of law and justice which has been held hitherto. Chapter XXIV. will make that point clear.

The foregoing should suffice to show that the Socialists intend to abolish private property in land by "taxing landowners out of existence."

Times, October 12, 1907. 2 Headlam, Christian Socialism, p. 7. * Blatchford, Some Tory Socialisms, p. 3.

They apparently forget that not all the owners of land are rich; that many small farmers, shopkeepers, artisans, &c., own freehold land and freehold houses; and that the insurance companies have a very large proportion of their funds invested in land and on the security of land. A confiscation of land would therefore ruin a vast number of hard-working people. It would cripple some insurance companies and ruin others. Hence the savings of thrifty workers would be confiscated or destroyed by the State together with those of the larger capitalists.

The Socialists are not entirely agreed as to the way by which the abolition of private ownership in land should be effected, but some interesting proposals will be found in Chapter X., "Socialist Views and Proposals regarding Taxation and the National Budget.' The purely agricultural aspect of the land question is treated in Chapter XVIII., "Socialism and Agriculture,” and in Chapter XXI., "Some Socialist Views on Free Trade and Protection."

CHAPTER IX

SOCIALIST VIEWS AND PROPOSALS REGARDING CAPITAL
AND THE CAPITALISTS

WE have seen in Chapter VIII. that Socialists claim that "Man has a right to nothing but that which be has himself made," that therefore, "No man can have a right to the land, for no man made it." May, then, owners of property keep at least that part of their property which is not invested in land?

The reply is, of course, in the negative. "As land must in future be a national possession, so must the other means of producing and distributing wealth." "Sup posing we assume it true that land is not the product of labour and that capital is; it is not by any means true that the rent of land is not the product of labour and that the interest on capital is. Since private ownership, whether of land or capital, simply means the right to draw and dispose of a revenue from the property, why should the landowner be forbidden to do that which is allowed to the capitalist, in a society in which land and capital are commercially equivalent? Yet land nationalisers seem to be prepared to treat as sacred the landlords' claim to private property in capital acquired by thefts of this kind, although they will not hear of their claim to property in land. Capital serves as an instrument for robbing in precisely identical manner. In England industrial capital is mainly created by wage workers-who get nothing for it but permission to create in addition enough subsistence 1 Socialism Made Plain, p. 9.

S

to keep each other alive in a poor way. Its immediate appropriation by idle proprietors and shareholders, whose economic relation to the workers is exactly the same in principle as that of the landlords, goes on every day under our eyes. The landlord compels the worker to convert his land into a railway, his fen into a drained level, his barren seaside waste into a fashionable wateringplace, his mountain into a tunnel, his manor park into a suburb full of houses let on repairing leases; and lo! he has escaped the land nationalisers; his land is now become capital and is sacred. The position is so glaringly absurd and the proposed attempt to discriminate between the capital value and the land value of estates is so futile, that it seems almost certain that the land nationalisers will go as far as the Socialists. Whatever the origin of land and capital, the source of the revenues drawn from them is contemporary labour." |

"The

Most Socialists think it wiser to tax capital gradually out of existence than to confiscate it at one stroke. direct confiscation of capital affects all, the small and the great, those unable to work and the able-bodied, everybody in an equal way. It is difficult by this method, often quite impossible, to separate the large property from the small invested in the same undertakings. The direct confiscation would also proceed too quickly, often at one stroke, while confiscation through taxation would permit the abolition of capitalist property being made a longdrawn process, working itself out further and further in the measure as the new order gets consolidated and makes its beneficent influence felt." 2

The argument that excessive taxation would drive capital out of the country is laughed at by Socialists. A Socialist pamphlet says: "It is true that the landsweaters and labour-skinners whom the people keep on

electing to rule and rob them can still frighten noodles
by threatening that they will run away from the country
and take their capital with them; that

They'll ship the mines and farms to Amsterdam,
The houses and the railways to Peru,
The canals and docks to Russia,

The woods and workshops off to Prussia,

And all the enterprise and brains to Timbuctoo.

"We calmly reply that there is not one single service that all the landlords, financiers, and their lesser parasites pretend to perform for society that could not be performed far more efficiently and infinitely more cheaply withou them."

Straightway those rich men started

To move their capitals.

On board of ships they carted
Their railways and canals;
With mines mine-owners scurried,
The bankers bore their books,
With mills mill-owners hurried,
The bishops took their crooks.'

but

The despoiled capitalists might leave the country, they would have to leave in the country all their property except perhaps a few valuables which they might remove.

Property being theft, capitalists as well as landowners are thieves who possess no claim whatever to consideration or even to mercy. "To talk about the respective claims of capital and labour' is as inaccurate as to talk about the ' respective claims' of coals and colliers, or of ploughs and ploughmen. Capital has no claims. This is not a quibble. The distinction between capital and the capitalists is one of vital importance. Capital is a necessary thing. The capitalist is as unnecessary as any other kind of thief or interloper. The capitalist, though as loud as greedy in his claims,' has no rights at all." 2

'Blatchford, The Clarion Ballads, p. 9.
2 Blatchford, The Pope's Socialism, p. 2.

1