SHALL WE TAKE IT OR PAY FOR IT?
My dear John,
While some of the more mild-mannered advocates of Socialism will try to
make you believe that the change from private ownership to collective
ownership will be accomplished without confiscating anybody’s property,
there are few among the authoritative Marxists who consider such a
course, even as a remote possibility. Marx didn’t think that it could
be done, as you will see if you will turn to Engels’ “Preface” to the
English translation of “Capital” (p. xiv), and in this theory he is
supported by almost every Socialist apologist of note. Once in a while
we encounter a socialistic writer who proposes to compensate owners if
they will permit themselves to be expropriated “with a good grace,” a
theory which assumes that, if the owners of property are not entirely
willing that their possessions shall be taken away from them, they will
be punished by being forcibly deprived of their goods, whether they
like it or not.
And, if you want still more corroborative testimony, turn to “The
Ethics of Socialism,” by Belfort Bax, and on pages 127 and 128 you will
read: “The Socialist has a distinct aim in view. If he can carry the
initial stages towards his realization by means of the count-of-heads
majority, by all means let him do so. If, on the other hand, he sees
the possibility of carrying a salient portion of his program by
trampling on that majority, by all means let him do this also.”
Not long ago I discussed this question with one of the conservative
Socialists who believe that those who own property will be very glad to
help on the new régime by relinquishing their possessions.
“You are mistaken,” he said. “We do not intend to confiscate. We shall
pay for everything we take. The worst we shall do is to compel the
capitalists to give us their property at the price which the commission
of awards sets as a fair return.”
“But will not that defeat your whole scheme?” I asked. “If you give the
owners of productive capital a fair monetary return for their property,
would you not automatically create a set of class distinctions that
would be quite as pronounced as those which exist to-day?”
“Oh,” he said, “we do not propose to give them for their property money
that they could invest; we shall give them bonds.”
“How does that make any difference?” I persisted. “Interest-bearing
bonds would have a more definite effect than actual money. By giving
such bonds you would establish a perpetually-idle class, and so defeat
the aims of your movement.”
“But the bonds will not bear interest,” he replied. “Interest is
usury--a crime which will not be permitted in the Socialist State.
As Leatham says (“The Class War,” p. 11): ‘Everyone who lends his
neighbor £5 and exacts £5 5s. in return is a criminal.’ Holders of
bonds may dispose of them, if they can find anybody who is foolish
enough to want to hoard money, but--once the value of the bonds has
been spent--that will end the matter, and we shall have eliminated the
property-possessing parasites without violence or ‘confiscation.’”
Is it possible to conceive of a more one-sided arrangement? Valuable
property is to be taken from its owners and in return they are to be
given bonds which may or may not possess real value. In case nobody can
be found to purchase them, the possessors will have to be content with
the satisfaction of framing the certificates as evidence that they were
once members of an “exploiting class.”
In this, however, the Socialists are really most logical. To take
wealth from a citizen in one kind would be the height of folly, if
the same wealth were promptly returned to him in another kind. Such a
transfer of productive property would mean nothing to the community.
The only way in which the Socialist scheme can be carried out is to
eliminate entirely all private rights in property used for purposes
of production, distribution and exchange. If we admit the Socialist
contention that labor is entitled to all value produced, no matter how
it is produced, and that the worker is now the victim of spoliation,
the only logical attitude is a defence of confiscation.
Most Socialists assume this position and excuse it on the ground that
such an act on the part of the Co-operative State would be eminently
just.
Rev. Charles H. Vail, in “Modern Socialism” (p. 152), upholds this
method of reasoning. “As to the confiscation of property,” he says,
“the misconception here relates to the justice of confiscation, and is
due to a failure to comprehend the nature of capitalist accumulations.
The Socialist contends that all such is the result of spoliation
and exploitation. The capitalist is able to appropriate the product
of labor by reason of his ownership of certain means of production.
Private property, then, in the instruments of production is unjust.
The confiscation of private property is therefore just. If capital
represents the fleecings of labor, no one can contend that its holders
have claim to compensation on the ground of equity. The only grounds
upon which compensation can be argued is that of mercy or expediency.”
Even the Socialist will admit that under existing laws confiscation
would be illegal. So long as they live under the present system they
may be willing to abide by these laws--at least to the extent of not
openly violating them and so subjecting themselves to the danger of
incarceration in capitalist prisons. They insist, however, that as
these laws were made for the protection of property-holders, there is
no reason why they should not change them and so make the ownership of
property just as great a crime as the theft of property is to-day. All
they wait for is the power to accomplish this purpose.
In other words, they stand for the principle that might makes right,
and as you know, John, might doesn’t do anything of the kind. In taking
this position, Socialism proposes to violate natural right. A majority
might do this; a majority might compel a minority to relinquish the
rights that are inherent in natural law; but Socialism has no more
right to do this thing than it has to re-establish slavery. Natural
right does not depend upon a vote of a majority, but is grounded on
primary law, and is eternal, no matter what majorities may say to the
contrary.
That the contrary is the position of Socialists upon this question is
fully attested by that eminent apostle of Socialism, Eugene V. Debs. In
_The International Socialist Review_ (February, 1912), Debs says:
“As a revolutionist, I can have no respect for capitalist property
laws, nor the least scruple about violating them. I hold all such laws
to have been enacted by chicanery, fraud and corruption, with the sole
end in view of dispossessing, robbing and enslaving the working class.
But this does not imply that I propose making an individual law-breaker
of myself and butting my head against the stone wall of existing
property laws. That might be called force, but it would not be that. It
would be mere weakness and folly. If I had the force to overthrow these
despotic laws, I would use it without an instant’s hesitation or delay,
but I haven’t got it, and so I am law-abiding under protest--not from
scruple--and bide my time.”
That the great majority of Socialists take the same position upon the
question of confiscation will scarcely be denied by those who are
at all familiar with the Socialist trend of thought. That they are
serious in their effort to incite disrespect for all property laws
is shown by the efforts that are made to teach the children in their
Sunday schools that all rent, profit and interest are no more than so
many forms of robbery. “The Red Catechism,” used in Socialist schools,
holds up to execration all those who are supposed to stand in the way
of the revolution. They are referred to as the “landlord class” and
the “capitalist class,” and in these categories everybody is included
who owns anything, however little, or who employs another person for a
wage, even though it be but the bellows-boy or a humble dressmaker’s
assistant. Thus, “The Red Catechism” asks:
“When would Socialists allow anyone to have a machine?”
“When a person can use a machine for her own use. For instance,
Socialists would let a dressmaker have a machine for her own work, but
not for the purpose of employing others to exploit and rob them,” is
the answer.
How craftily the Socialist school-teachers impart their philosophy of
destruction to the boys and girls who are so unfortunate as to come
within their sphere of influence is told by a story, the truth of which
is vouched for by the special commissioners of the London _Standard_--a
paper which recently conducted a painstaking investigation of the
menacing character of Socialism.
A well-known Socialist speaker and writer was addressing a meeting in
Islington, attended chiefly by children. A portion of his address ran
somewhat as follows:
“The most interesting event of the week has been the train murder,
of which most of you have no doubt heard. Two men were seated in a
railway carriage. The one was rich; he had a diamond pin in his tie,
a thick gold chain across his waistcoat, money jingled in his pockets
when he moved. The other was poor, miserably poor; he wanted money
for everything--food, clothes, lodging. He asked the rich man to give
him of his superfluity; the rich man refused and so the poor man took
by force what he could not get by entreaty, and in the use of that
force--the only effective argument which the poor possess--the rich man
was killed. The shedding of blood is always to be deplored, but there
are times when it is warranted. Violence is a legitimate weapon for the
righting of social wrongs.”
The address over, the lecturer went about among the children
questioning them with the object of finding out whether they had
grasped the meaning of his address. To a bright intelligent girl of
twelve, he said:
“You heard what I said about the two men in the train?”
“Yes,” was the reply.
“Did you understand what I meant by my story?”
“Oh, yes,” answered the girl. “You meant that if we hadn’t got
something that we wanted, and somebody else has got it, we could go and
take it from them.” And the lecturer, smiling his approval, passed on.
There are Socialists who will indignantly repudiate all such ideas;
yet we have but to turn to some of the most respectable authorities on
Socialism to find ample evidence that the gentleman who lectured before
the children of Islington was scarcely more radical than many of the
more eminent advocates of Marxism. Bax, for example, in his “Ethics
of Socialism,” admits that “for him [the Socialist] it is indifferent
whether social and political ends are realized by lawful or lawless
means.”
If it be said that this is a principle which was applied by Bax to
conditions in general, and had nothing to do with the conduct of
individuals, what is to be said of the advice which he gives (“Outlooks
from the New Standpoint”) to those who are searching for the “new”
standard of personal integrity. “The cheapest way of obtaining goods is
not to pay for them,” said Bax, “and if a buyer can avoid paying for
the goods he obtains, he has quite as much right to do so as the seller
has to receive double or treble their cost price and call it profit.”
Karl Kautsky, who is regarded by many as the official interpreter of
Socialism, has also laid down laws for the guidance of Socialists in
ethical matters. He advances the theory that the moral law prevails
only when we have intercourse with members of our own class, or social
organization. “One of the most important duties is that of truthfulness
to comrades,” he says (_Neue Zeit_, October 3, 1903). “Towards enemies
this duty was never considered binding.” As the Socialist, even from
his Sunday school days is taught to regard every employer as his enemy,
the natural effect of such a principle, if put into operation in every
day affairs, is obvious.
At the time this statement was made by Kautsky, some resentment was
expressed towards him because, as he himself relates (“Ethics and
the Materialistic Conception of History,” p. 157), his “statement
was interpreted as if he had attempted to establish a special social
democratic principle in opposition to the principle of the eternal
moral law which commands unconditional truthfulness to all men.”
“Whether this interpretation was right or wrong,” says Ming (“The
Morality of Modern Socialism,” p. 136), “we may judge from the
well-attested fact that in a Socialist meeting in Hamburg a motion made
to disavow Kautsky’s proposition was lost.”
In view of all these facts, it is difficult to see what ground
Socialists can have for denying that they expect to put the process
of confiscation into effect. Of course, not all Socialists are
so radical as Bax, who takes occasion repeatedly to declare his
advocacy of this doctrine. “Now, justice being henceforth identified
with confiscation and injustice with the rights of property, there
remains only the question of ‘ways and means.’... The moral effect of
sudden expropriation would be much greater than that of any gradual
process.” To him there can be no middle-ground between “possession and
confiscation.” Unless a man accepts the doctrine that private ownership
is unjust and confiscation just, he cannot be a true Socialist (op.
cit., pp. 75-76).
As we have seen, John, the principle of confiscation, once we have
accepted the proposition that private property is theft, is perfectly
logical and even the methods of compensation proposed by Socialists are
nothing more or less than confiscation in disguise. Cecil Chesterton
states this fact very clearly in _The Church Socialist Quarterly_
(January, 1911), where he says:
“Socialism means confiscation. Let no Socialist deceive himself about
that. However ‘evolutionary’ (whatever that may mean) the process may
be, whatever solatium to the present property-owners humanity and
a sense of justice may dictate, Socialism means confiscation. The
issue may be stated very concisely. However gradual the process of
transferring wealth from the rich class to the community, will the rich
at the end of that process be as wealthy as before, or won’t they? If
they will, then the end of Socialism has not been achieved. If they
won’t, then, under whatever form, their property has been confiscated.”
Quite in keeping with this presentation of the case is the resolution
passed by the Socialist Federation of Australasia, held in Melbourne,
in June, 1912. It read:
“The Federation vehemently protests against the working class being
misled by the Labor or other parties into the belief that it is
possible to socialize the instruments of production by a gigantic
scheme of ‘buying out,’ or compensation to the possessing class,
and warns the workers against endorsing such a Utopian, immoral and
impracticable scheme.” This, says The Socialist (March, 1911), the
organ of _the Socialist_ Labor party of England, “is a condensed
statement of the position laid down in our manifesto of 1908.”
Even Morris Hillquit, a conservative American Socialist, is compelled
to admit that confiscation is likely to become the order of the day
once Socialists are in power. “It is not unlikely that in countries in
which the social transformation will be accomplished peacefully, the
State will compensate the expropriated proprietors, while every violent
revolution will be followed by confiscation. The Socialists have not
much concern about this issue” (“Socialism in Theory and Practice,” p.
140).
It may be true, as Hillquit says, that Socialists “are not much
concerned” with the charge that they are planning to set up a State
in which the Divine law, “Thou shalt not steal,” is to be set at
naught--a State that will take from the successful and the thrifty
the possessions they have accumulated--a State against the actions of
which there can be no redress. But what have you to say as a decent
law-abiding citizen, John? What?
Before leaving this subject, John, there is still another difficulty
to be considered: if the Socialist State proposes to pay for the
property it seizes, where is the money to come from for even an
inadequate scheme of compensation? Do you think that the new State
would be content to assume the additional burden imposed by such a
debt as would be represented by all these obligations? No matter how
extortionate the new methods of taxation might be, if they stop short
of relative confiscation, it would take many decades to extinguish this
liability. Is it not more likely that history would repeat itself, and
that the story of the French Revolution would be repeated in the new
Co-operative Commonwealth? In France, in the days of the Revolution,
there was compensation for the expropriated in the beginning, but
this speedily resolved itself into expropriation without indemnity.
Nor must it be forgotten that, whatever provisions might be made,
the State would be bound by its principles to prevent those whom
it compensated from investing their funds, or engaging in business
competition; transferring their money or bonds, or bequeathing their
possessions to others; for, if this were not done, compensation
would prove to be the means of re-establishing the very system which
Socialism seeks to destroy.