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 he 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."[430] "Supposing 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 a 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 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 watering-place, 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."[431]
Most Socialists think it wiser to tax capital gradually out of
existence than to confiscate it at one stroke. "The 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 long-drawn process, working itself
out further and further in the measure as the new order gets
consolidated and makes its beneficent influence felt."[432]
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 land-sweaters 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 without 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.[433]
The despoiled capitalists might leave the country, but 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."[434]
"Do you mean to say, then, that the capitalist does not perform a
useful function in running a risk for the profit he receives?--No. In
so far as he exercises the function of management and receives
remuneration for this, his remuneration is not profit at all, but
wages of superintendence, and the functions of management would be
undertaken by the organised society of the future through its
appointed representatives. As to any necessary risks, all individuals
would be relieved from this under Socialism, as it would be borne by
the whole of society."[435] "If capitalists attempt to justify their
way of making profit by saying that they have to run risks sometimes,
that a part of their property might occasionally be lost, we answer
that labour has nothing to do with that."[436]
Capital large and small is the result of thrift. If capital is theft,
then thrift also is theft. The thrifty investor, being an immoral
person, has no right to protest against the confiscation of his
property. "By capitalist I mean the investor who puts his money into a
concern and draws profits therefrom without participating in the
organisation or management of the business. Were all these to
disappear in the night, leaving no trace behind, nothing would be
changed."[437] Nothing would be changed for the Socialist agitator,
the loafer, and the tramp. On the contrary, they would profit from the
ruin of the industrious and the thrifty. The fact that honest and
hardworking men who do their duty to their family and who wish to
leave their children provided for should have the result of the
economy of a lifetime confiscated matters little to the Socialist
leaders. According to the Socialist doctrines the industrious and the
thrifty are thieves and exploiters of those workers who have never
saved a penny. On the other hand, those men who live from hand to
mouth, who work only a few days each week and loaf on the remaining
days, who waste all their earnings in drink, gambling, and
music-halls, and who possess nothing they can call their own, are
honest and excellent citizens. They are entitled to the savings of the
thrifty.
In accordance with the Socialist principles stated in the foregoing,
all shareholders, being merely exploiters of labour, would be
expropriated. "Are shareholders in companies useful in organising
labour?--As a rule they employ others to organise labour, and the work
done by the company would go on just as well if the shareholders
disappeared."[438] Besides, "Stocks when analysed, in nine cases out
of ten simply mean the right to squeeze tribute out of workers who are
nominally free. By far the greatest part of what is set down as
national 'capital' is merely slave flesh-and-blood."[439]
Holders of Government stocks would be treated no better than
landowners and shareholders. Foremost among the "immediate reforms"
demanded in the programme of the Social-Democratic Federation[440]
ranges the "Repudiation of the National Debt." The repudiation of the
National Debt has during many years been demanded, and is still
demanded, by the Social-Democratic Federation, as may be seen from a
recent issue of "Justice," its weekly publication, in which we find
the following statement: "The National Debt is simply a means of
extracting unearned incomes from the people of this country. It is
idle to nationalise or municipalise industries by means of loans on
which interest is paid. Such interest would be only another form of
rent and profit. When capitalism is abolished, every one of its many
forms will necessarily have to go."[441]
The repudiation of the National Debt is demanded by many Socialist
leaders and leading writers. "The National Debt (falsely so-called) has
already been paid thrice over in usury. All future interest-payments
should be held as part of the principal."[442] "The few thousand
persons who own the National Debt, saddled upon the community by a
landlord Parliament, exact _28,000,000l._ yearly from the labour of
their countrymen for nothing."[443] "Outside the land monopoly, the
most infamous source of usury is unquestionably the so-called 'National
Debt.' There the whole of the capital is absolutely spurious. The real
capital consisted of the gunpowder and the lead which Sovereigns and
statesmen expended so liberally about a century ago in attempting to
murder liberty on the Continents of Europe and America. Our war debt is
the most stupendous monument of human crime and folly in existence; and
worst of all, the 'butcher's bill' has already been paid by the unhappy
toilers thrice over in usury."[444] "The entire national liability has
been discharged to the moneylenders by the people once during the last
thirty-seven years. We repay public debts once every thirty-seven years
without wiping out a penny of the said debts. We pay away in blank
usury _20,000,000l._ per year on this one head, or enough to provide
old-age pensions for three-fourths of our aged poor in the United
Kingdom on the basis of _7s. 6d._ per head per week."[445] "236,514
blackmailers suck the udder of industry through the convenient teat of
what, with audacious cynicism, is called the 'National Debt.'"[446]
The largest part of the National Debt was not created by "murdering
liberty" but by fighting the armies of the French Revolution and of
Napoleon I. Besides, the defence against the French Revolution and
Napoleon was not a "crime," but a necessary duty. Furthermore, the
holders of the National Debt are not "blackmailers" but industrious,
useful, and thrifty citizens, or the children and descendants of
industrious, useful, and thrifty citizens.
About one-half of the National Debt is held by thrifty wage-earners,
as all the money deposited in the savings banks, and most of the
savings deposited with friendly societies, &c., is invested in
Consols, and as a very large part of the assets of the industrial and
other insurance societies consists of Government Stocks. Property
being theft, and thrift being akin to it, the thrifty workman whose
savings are invested in Consols has apparently no right to complain of
being robbed of his savings by the Socialists.
Some Socialist agitators have the audacity to tell the thrifty worker
that he will not suffer, but benefit, by the confiscation of his
savings. "Opponents try to scare this man against Socialism by the
fear of losing his interest. Granting for a moment he would do so,
would he not gain by the general abolition of interest, &c., which
would double his wage in common with that of all workers?"[447]--The
worker is to be indemnified for his positive and certain loss in
property through the confiscation of his savings, or at the least of
the interest paid on them, by a problematical rise in general wages
which would benefit the unthrifty quite as much as the thrifty. But if
the promised doubling of wages should not take place, what will
happen? The Socialist agitators will explain that they are sorry to
have made a mistake, whilst the thriftless are squandering the
property of the thrifty.
According to the Socialist teachings, the capitalist is a perfectly
useless being in the national household. "Does he himself want to
work: to do something useful? Far from it. His money works for him;
his money makes money, as the saying is."[448] Most capitalists--and I
think the large majority of wage-earners are capitalists to some
extent--are engaged in useful productive work of hand or brain.
However, the capitalist of the Socialist imagination, the wealthy man
who lives without any work, who studies the money market and Stock
Exchange quotations, and who is occupied solely in investing and
reinvesting his money to the best advantage, is an extremely useful
member of society. It is of the utmost consequence to all workers, and
to the whole nation, that the national capital should grow, that
mines, railways, ships, machinery, houses, &c., should multiply and be
constantly improved. Now the thrifty, not the wasteful, preserve and
increase the national capital. Wise and cautious capitalists in
enriching themselves will enrich the nation. Careless ones will lose
their money and impoverish the nation. The wealth of France has, to a
very large extent, been created by cautious and far-seeing _rentiers_,
and thus France has become the banker among nations.
Socialists teach that the wealth of the few causes the poverty of the
many; that therefore the private capitalist should be destroyed. Why,
then, are the workers most prosperous in those countries which possess
the wealthiest capitalists, such as France and the United States, and
why are they poorest in countries, such as Turkey and Servia, where
wealthy capitalists do not exist? And may not the destruction of the
capitalists reduce Great Britain to the level of Turkey and Servia?
FOOTNOTES:
[430] _Socialism Made Plain_, p. 9.
[431] _Capital and Land_, pp. 5, 6.
[432] Kautsky, _The Social Revolution_, p. 11.
[433] Blatchford, _The Clarion Ballads_, p. 9.
[434] Blatchford, _The Pope's Socialism_, p. 2.
[435] Bax and Quelch, _A New Catechism of Socialism_, p. 17.
[436] Sorge, _Socialism and the Worker_, p. 11.
[437] Keir Hardie, _From Serfdom to Socialism_, p. 11.
[438] Joynes, _The Socialist Catechism_, p. 3.
[439] Davidson, _The Gospel of the Poor_, p. 54.
[440] See Appendix.
[441] _Justice_, October 19, 1907.
[442] Davidson, _The Democrat's Address_, p. 5.
[443] _Socialism Made Plain_, p. 8.
[444] Davidson, _The Gospel of the Poor_, p. 49.
[445] McLachlan, _Tyranny of Usury_, p. 13.
[446] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 76.
[447] _Wealth Makers and Wealth Takers_, p. 1.
[448] Sorge, _Socialism and the Worker_, p. 10.