I think the straightforwardness of Bax is preferable to the crooked and insincere explanations and proposals of the British and foreign Socialist given in the foregoing. Bax's opinion is irrefutable. According to the doctrines of Socialism given in Chapter IV., labour is the source of all wealth; the greater part of the products of that labour is dishonestly abstracted from the labourer by the capitalist class, which has converted the result of that labour into property. Hence Socialists think with Proudhon, and they very often openly declare, that property is theft. Capitalist society will not compensate the thief when taking from him his booty. Socialism will not compensate property-owners when taking away their property. Besides, compensation would be utterly opposed to the root idea of Socialist justice. At present expropriation without indemnity is called theft, but it would not be called theft under a Socialist régime. The chapter on "Law and Justice under Socialism" will make that quite clear.
Socialism teaches that no man is entitled to anything except that which he has made himself. "No man has a right to call anything his own but that which he himself has made. Now, no man makes the land. The land is not created by labour, but it is the gift of God to all. The earth belongs to the people. For the nonce please take the statement on the authority of Herbert Spencer, All men 'have equal rights to the use of the earth.' So that he who possesses land possesses that to which he has no right, and he who invests his savings in land becomes a purchaser of stolen property."[311] "No man made the land, and laws and lawyers notwithstanding no man has any moral right before God to call a solitary strip of God's earth his than has the burglar to call his stolen goods his personal property. It is therefore evident that the bite named 'rent' given to landlords for permission to live upon and use God's free gift to man is as much the fruit of robbery, the spoil of plunder, as is the result of a burglar's night's marauding, a common pickpocket's day's 'takings.'"[312] Capital is in the same position as land, for "Land and capital are indistinguishable."[313]
The more honest Socialists agree with Bax that compensation for property acquired would be inadvisable and impracticable. "In a pamphlet called 'Collectivism and Revolution' M. Jules Guesde said, 'Expropriation with indemnity is a chimera. And whatever regret one may feel, however difficult may appear to peaceful natures the last method, we have no other way than to retake violently that which belongs to all, by—let us say the word—the Revolution.' He added, 'Capital which it is necessary to take from individuals, such as the land, is not of human creation; it is anterior to man, for whom it is a sine qua non of existence. It cannot therefore belong to some to the exclusion of others, without the others being robbed. And to make the robbers deliver up, to oblige them to restore in any and every way is not so much a right as a duty, the most sacred of duties."[314] A respected English Socialist says bluntly, "How to secure the swag to the workers is the problem."[315] A Christian Socialist clergyman sarcastically proposes: "If you are a Christian and love your rich neighbour as yourself, you will do all you can to help him to become poorer. For if you believe in the Gospel, you know that to be rich is the very worst thing that can happen to a man. That if a man is rich, it is with the greatest difficulty that he can be saved; for 'it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God' (Mark x. 25). This is startling now, but it was not less strange and startling to the disciples who 'were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved?' But the needle's eye has not grown any larger since then, and the camels certainly have not grown smaller! All true Christians then must desire to relieve the rich man of his excess for his own sake, since the inequality that ruins the body of Lazarus ruins the soul of Dives; and Dives is the more miserable of the two, because the soul is more precious than the body."[316]
The abolition of private property requires also the abolition of the right of inheritance, as otherwise capital might again be accumulated in the hands of the thrifty and the enterprising. Therefore the manifesto of Marx and Engels already demands the "abolition of all right of inheritance."[317] Other Socialists say that this right should not be abolished. "Socialists used to insist upon the abolition of the right of inheritance and bequest. But if what I gain by my own labour is rightfully my property—and the Co-operative Commonwealth will, as we have seen, declare it to be so—it will be inexpedient in that Commonwealth to destroy any of the essential qualities of propertyship; and I can hardly call that my property which I may not give to whom I please at my death. No man in a Co-operative Commonwealth could acquire so much more wealth than his fellows as to make him dangerous to them."[318] "Socialists do not object to property; they are not opposed to private property. They are therefore not opposed to inheritance. The right to acquire and hold involves the right to dispose by will or by gift. We only object to such a use of property as enables classes for generation after generation to live on the proceeds of other people's labour without doing any useful service to society."[319] This very diplomatic sentence may be explained in a variety of ways. Probably it means that holders of property of large size could summarily be deprived of their possessions by order of the Government, as has been indicated by that writer in another passage (see page 97). Such a power would make the right to hold and to bequeath property a farce. Property could be held then only on the same terms on which, I believe, it is held by Central African negroes. Another Socialist states, "If I am entitled to what I produce, then it follows that I am entitled to dispose of all that I produce;" and then denies the right to personal property by continuing: "The Socialists say, 'Not thine or mine, but ours.'"[320]
It would be only logical that the Socialist State, after abolishing private property by following the principle "not thine but ours," should not allow its re-creation and re-accumulation. "This pernicious right (wrong) of inheritance must be abolished. It is the means by which the 'classes' perpetuate their robbery of the 'masses' from generation to generation and age to age. The disinherited would of course have the community to look to for sound education in youth, suitable employment in years of maturity, generous pension in old age, &c., and to what else can any rational human being lay just claim?"[321] Some Socialists argue that in the Socialist State "there will be nothing to bequeath, unless we choose to regard household furniture as a legacy of any importance. This settles the question of the right of inheritance, which Socialism will have no need to abolish formally."[322] "Socialism condemns as reactionary and immoral all that tends to the debasement of humanity. It condemns our industrial and commercial system as a degrading system—degrading both to the few who amass wealth and to the many who by their labour enable the few to lay up riches. It is degrading to those who rob and to those who are robbed; to those who cheat and to those who are cheated; to those who swim and to those who sink; to those who revel in luxury and to those who, barely sustaining their own lives, are compelled by their toil to supply luxuries for others to enjoy."[323] Therefore Socialism means to abolish the present system root and branch, and the most straightforward Socialists are frankly in favour of the most thorough measures for abolishing private property.
Children and poets proverbially speak the truth. Let us see what the Socialist poets think of the expropriation of property-owners.
Some of the poets tell the workers that the labourers not only produce all the wealth, but are also all-powerful, and, if they wish to, they can do what they like with the country.
Shall you complain who feed the world—
Who clothe the world, who house the world?
Shall you complain who are the world
Of what the world may do?
As from this hour you use your power,
The world must follow you.
As from this hour you use your power.
The world must follow you.[324]
Others remind them of their grievances, and urge them to drive the rich man out of the country:
Think on the wrongs ye bear,
Think on the rags ye wear,
Think on the insults endured from your birth;
Toiling in snow and rain,
Bearing up heaps of gain,
All for the tyrants who grind ye to earth.