Telegraph and telephone lines, railroads, mail service, river and ocean vessels, street-cars, automobile cars and trucks, air-ships and flying machines, and whatever all the institutions and vehicles serving traffic and communication may be called, will have become social property. In Germany many of these institutions, like the mail, the telegraph, the telephone system, and most railroads, have already been made state institutions; their transformation into public property is a mere matter of form. Here private interests can no longer be injured. If the state continues to operate in the present direction, so much the better. But these state-owned institutions are not socialistic institutions, as is erroneously assumed. These institutions are exploited by the state, according to the same capitalistic principles as if they were privately owned. Neither the officials nor the workingmen are particularly benefited by them. The state does not treat them differently from a private employer. When, for instance, in the bureaus of the national navy and the railroad administration orders are issued not to employ workingmen who are over forty years of age, that is a measure which proves the class character of the state as a state of exploiters, and is bound to rouse the indignation of the workers. Such and similar measures resorted to by the state in its capacity of employer, are much worse than when resorted to by private employers. The latter is always a small employer compared to the state, and the employment that he refuses may be granted by another. But the state, monopolizing certain branches of employment, may, by such maxims, with one blow drive thousands into poverty. These are not socialistic but capitalistic actions, and Socialists have every reason to protest against the assumption that the present state-owned institutions are socialistic in character and may be regarded as a realization of socialistic aims.
As large, centralized institutions will replace the millions of private dealers, and agents of all kinds, so the entire system of transportation will also assume a different aspect. The millions of small shipments that are sent out daily to an equal number of owners, and entail a great waste of work, time and material, will be absorbed by shipments on a large scale, sent out to the municipal store-houses and the large centers of manufacture. Here, too, work will become greatly simplified. As it is much simpler to ship raw material to a factory employing 1000 workingmen than to ship it to hundreds of scattered small factories, so the centers of production and distribution for entire municipalities, or for parts of same, will mean a considerable saving. This will be to the advantage of society, but also to the advantage of each individual, for public interest and personal interest will then be identical. The aspect of our places of production, of our means of transportation, and especially also of our residences, will thereby become entirely changed. They will obtain a much more cheerful aspect. We will be freed, to a great extent, from the nerve-racking noise, speed and confusion of our large cities, with their thousands of vehicles of all kinds. The building of streets, street-cleaning, the manner of living, the intercourse of people with one another—all will experience a great transformation. It will then be possible to carry out hygienic measures easily, which to-day can be carried out only at a great expense and insufficiently, and often only in the residential quarters of the wealthy classes.
Under such conditions traffic and transportation must attain their highest development. Perhaps aerial navigation will be the favorite means of transportation then. The means of transportation are the veins that conduct the exchange of products—the circulation—through the entire body social, and are therefore particularly adapted to the dissemination of an equal standard of comfort and culture. To provide for the extension and ramification of the most perfect means of transportation to the remotest portions of the provinces will become a necessity to the public welfare. Here the new society will set tasks for itself that by far exceed those of present-day society. This highly perfected system of communication will also decentralize the masses of humanity that at present congest our large cities and centers of industry, and will scatter them broadcast over the land. This will not only be of the greatest benefit to public health, it will also have a decisive influence on the material and intellectual progress of civilization.
[CHAPTER XXII.
Socialism and Agriculture.]
[1.—Abolition of the Private Ownership of Land.]
Land, being the prime raw material for all human labor and the basis of human existence, must be made the property of society, together with the means of production and distribution. At an advanced stage of development society will again take possession of what it owned in primeval days. At a certain stage of development all human races had common ownership of land. Common property is the foundation of every primitive social organization; it is essential to its existence. Only by the rise and development of private property and the forms of rulership connected with it, has common property been abolished and usurped as private property, as we have seen, not without severe struggles. The robbery of the land and its transformation into private property formed the first cause of oppression. This oppression has passed through all stages, from slavery to “free” wage-labor of the twentieth century, until, after a development of thousands of years, the oppressed again convert the soil into common property.
The great importance of the soil to human existence was the reason why the ownership of the soil constituted the chief cause of conflict in all social struggles of the world—in India, China, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Christian middle ages, the realms of the Aztecs and Incas, and in the social struggles of modern times. Even at the present day men like Adolf Samter, Adolf Wagner, Dr. Schaeffle, Henry George, and others, who do not believe in other forms of common property, favor the common ownership of land.[236]
The welfare of a population depends primarily upon the cultivation of the soil. To develop this cultivation to the highest degree is eminently to the interest of all. That this highest degree of development cannot be attained under the rule of private property, has been shown. To obtain the greatest possible advantage from the soil, not its cultivation alone must be taken into consideration. Other factors must be considered to which neither the largest private owner nor the most powerful association is equal, factors that may exceed even the jurisdiction of the state and require international consideration.