During the capitalist period, it suffices for socialism to establish the possibility of the emancipation of the working-class and to work for that emancipation. There is no occasion to waste time in working out and settling the details of the organization of the future society. Each epoch has its task. Let us not have the presumption to lay down rules for those who are to come after us, and let us be content with present duties. The point upon which socialism trains its guns at present, though recognizing the utility that it has had in the past, is the capital-form; but let us not forget that the substance beneath this form will be every whit preserved. When an office is taken away from an office-holder, the individual is left without a hair the less. In the same way, in taking from the means of production their function as capital, everything that functions to-day under that form will remain intact. Socialism then attacks the capital-form, the form only, and it attacks it only in so far as the economic phenomena authorize such an attack. Everything which constitutes the substance of capital will be preserved, the capital-form alone will disappear and along with it that power that it involves of exploiting the labor of others.
What will be the fate of the capitalists?
Capital appears to be a collective power or force, by its origin, since it springs from the accumulated surplus-labor of a collective body of laborers, by its functional activity since it also requires a collective body of laborers to enable it to enter upon its functions, and by its mode of ownership since, if it is private property, it tends more and more to be the private property, not of an individual, but of a collective body, a company or trust. To make public property of the means of production, which are capital when they are able to exploit the labor of others and which are capital only on that condition, is simply to generalize the collective or social character which they already have.
Is the holder of a share in a mining or railway company or any sort of stock-company justified in speaking of "his" property? Where is his property? In what does it consist? What can he show if someone asks to see it? A machine? A piece of real estate? No, simply one or several bits of paper which represent only an infinitesimal fraction of an undivided whole. Would this shareholder be any the less a property-owner, if this undivided whole should become an integrant portion of the national property? Would there be such a great difference between "his" property, as it now is, and his quota or share in the national property? Just as the capitalists understand well enough to-day how to avail themselves of the national forests, for instance, for fresh air, pleasure excursions afoot and awheel, recreation, etc., so, after the socialization of the material objects that make up what is at present capital, they would use this newly nationalized property as means of labor or production.
This, then, would be a true democratization[6] of property. The process, ordinarily called by this name, the dispersion of shares, stocks and bonds, is only the process—called legitimate—of extracting good hard cash from all pockets, even those most scantily supplied, centralizing it, monopolizing the real possession of it in exchange for a certificate of nominal ownership, making it breed or expand, and permitting to flow back in interest, dividends, etc., only tiny crumbs until the day comes when the poor investors cease to get even these microscopical returns. This pretended democratization of property results simply in the formation of a financial aristocracy creating scandalous fortunes out of the good dollars of the small investors, and if these dollars, when the paper accepted in their stead is no longer worth anything, are lost for their former possessors, they are not lost for everyone. (They have become the reward of "abstinence."—Translator.)
Let the stocks representing part-ownership in a company lose all value—this is an occurrence that the shareholders and bondholders of the Panama canal, for example, can tell you is not unknown in our bourgeois society—and the shareholder finds himself, in this instance, permitted to enjoy all the blessings of expropriation without any indemnifying compensation; sometimes even he has the delicate attention of an invitation from the Receiver or the Courts to pour some more money into the hole where his former savings disappeared. Now even in this case the owners of this sort of personal property do not make too much ado about the matter. Why should they complain any more bitterly on the day when there will be, as it were, only a substitution of one kind of stocks or shares for another, when they will all become stockholders and bondholders of the great society (the Co-operative Commonwealth), instead of being shareholders and bondholders in one or several little societies or companies?
By this transformation they will gain complete assurance against risk of loss—a real enough danger to-day when, after the actual control of property passes into the hands of financial magnates, the revenue of the nominal owners, the stockholders, etc., falls to zero or nearly zero, thus cutting off their means of existence or enjoyment. They will lose only one thing: the power of dominating the labor of others and of appropriating its fruits; while they will have the privilege of enjoying the common wealth and the advantages springing from its co-operative employment.
Healthy adults will take for their own use, provided they work, their share of the social products. If they are already accustomed to any kind of work, they will find no hardship in this obligation to perform useful labor; if they are not accustomed to it, they will acquire the habit and will find their health greatly improved thereby in every respect. If they are old and infirm they will be liberally provided for by society.
What they can reasonably expect and insist upon having is the sustenance of life (in a broad sense),[7] and this they will have, as you see, in any case. The socialization will not result in such a change in the distribution of wealth as is often caused by watering the stock of a company. It will simply extend to all, those who hold stocks at present included, those advantages which a minority alone enjoys to-day, and it will benefit all, but stockholders especially, by doing away with those risks which capitalist exploitation forces everyone to run.