Freeland: A Social Anticipation

by Theodor Hertzka

Alonso Campeador (Extreme Left): I would earnestly warn you against such pusillanimous sentimentality, which would not win over the foes of the new order, but would only supply them with the means of attacking it, or shall we say allow them to retain those means. If we would exercise justice towards them, we should give to them, as to all other men, an opportunity of making a profitable use of their powers. They cannot or will not labour. They are accustomed to take their ease while others labour for them. Does this constitute a just claim to exceptional treatment? But it will be objected that they ask for only what belongs to them, nay, only a part of what belongs to them. Very well. But what right have they to this so-called property? Have they cultivated the ground to which they lay claim? Is the capital which they use the fruit of their labour? Does the human labour-force which carries on their undertakings belong to them? No; no one has a natural right to more than the produce of his own labour; and since in the new order of things this principle deprives no one of anything, but, on the contrary, leads to the greatest possible degree of productiveness, no one has any ground for complaint--that is to say, no one who is content with what is his own and does not covet what rightly belongs to some one else. To acknowledge the claims of those who covet what is not theirs would be like acknowledging the claims of the robber or thief to the property he has stolen.

It will be said that owners possess what they have bonâ fide; their claim is based upon laws hitherto universally respected. Right. Therefore we do not punish these bonâ fide possessors; we simply take from them what they can no longer possess bonâ fide. But the owners have paid the full value for what they must now give up: why should they lose their purchase-money, seeing that the purchase was authorised by the law then in force? Is the new law to have a retrospective force? These are among the questions we hear. But no one need be staggered by these questions unless he pleases. For the purchase-money rightly belonged to the possessor of it as little as the thing purchased; he who buys stolen goods with stolen money has no claim for compensation. If he acts in good faith he is not obnoxious to punishment--but entitled to compensation?

Yet--and this is the last triumph of the faint-hearted--the purchase-money, that is, the capital sunk in land or in any business, can be legally the property of the possessor even in our sense of the term. The possessor may have produced it by his own labour and saved it: is he not in that case entitled to compensation? Yes, certainly; in this case, to refuse compensation for such capital would be robbery; but is not the establishment of economic justice, which gives a right to the produce of any kind of future labour, a fully adequate compensation for that capital which has really been produced by the possessor's own labour? Consider how poorly a man's own labour was remunerated under the exploiting system of industry, what capital could be saved out of what was really one's own labour, and you will not then say that a real worker who possessed any such savings will not find a sufficient compensation in the ten-fold or hundred-fold increase of the produce of his labour. But perhaps a difficulty is found in the possibility that this small capitalist might no longer be capable of work? Granted; and provision is made for this in the new order of things. The honest worker receives his maintenance allowance when his strength has left him; even he will have no occasion to sigh for what he had saved in the exploiting times of the past. To these maintenance allowances I refer also those other exploiters whose habits have robbed them of both desire and ability to work. The free community of the future will be magnanimous enough not to let them suffer want; even they have, as our fellow-men, this claim upon the new order; but any right beyond this I deny.

Stanislaus Llowski (Freeland): We in Freeland take a different standpoint. The exploiting world could, without being false to itself, forcibly override acquired rights in order to carry out what might be the order of the day; it could--and has almost always done so--carry into force any new law based upon the sword, without troubling itself about the claims of the vanquished; it could do all this because force and oppression were its proper foundation. Its motto was, 'Mine is what I can take and keep'; therefore he who took what another no longer had the power to keep acted in perfect accordance with his right, whether he could base his claim upon the fortune of war or upon a parliamentary majority. If we recognised this ancient right, matters would be very simple: we have become the stronger and can take what we please. The hypocrisy of the modern so-called international law, which has a horror of brutal confiscations, need not stand in our way any more than it has ever stood in the way of anyone who had power. Conquerors no longer deprived the conquered of their land, they no longer plundered or made men their slaves; but in truth, it was only in appearance that these practices had ceased: it was only the form, not the essence of the thing, that had changed. The victor retained his right of legislating for the vanquished; and the earnings of the vanquished were more effectually than ever transferred to the pockets of the victors in the forms of all kinds of taxes, of restrictions, and rights of sovereignty. 'Property' was 'sacred,' not even that of the subjugated was touched; merely the fruits of property were taken by the strong. This we, too, could do. Take the property from its owners? How brutal; what a mockery of the sacred rights of property! But to raise the taxes until they swallowed up the whole of the property--who in the exploiting world would be able to say that was contrary to justice? Yet we declare it to be so, for we recognise no right to treat the minority of possessors differently from the minority of workers; and as in our eyes property is sacred, we must respect it when it belongs to the wealthy classes as much as when it belongs to ourselves.

But--objects the member on the Left--the victorious majority make no claim of right of private property in the land and in the productive capital. Certainly; but they do not possess anything which they will have to renounce in the future, while the minority does; hence to dispossess the possessors in favour of those who did not possess, in order that equality of right might prevail in future, would not be to treat both alike.

But--and this is the weightiest argument in the eyes of our friend--the minority is said to have at present no valid title to their property; they owe it to exploitation, and we do not recognise this as a just title; exploitation is robbery, and he who has stolen, though he did it in good faith, possesses no claim to compensation. This reasoning is also false. Exploitation is robbery only in an economic, not in a juridical, sense; it was not merely considered to be permissible--it was so. The exploiter did not act illegally though in good faith; rather he acted legally when in his day he exploited; and acted legally not merely on the formal ground that the law, as it then existed, allowed him thus to act, but because he could not act otherwise. This appropriation of other men's earnings, which, in an economic sense, we are compelled, and rightly so, to call robbery, was--let us not forget that--the necessary condition of any really productive highly organised labour whatever, so long as the workers were not able to freely organise and discipline themselves. Economic robbery, the relation of master held by the few towards the many, constituted an effective economic service that had the strongest right to claim the profit of other men's labour, which was in fact rendered profitable by it. Subsequently to confiscate the thus acquired compensation for the services rendered, because such services had become superfluous or indeed detrimental, would in truth be robbery, not merely in an economic sense, but in a legal sense--an offence against the principles of economic justice.

Then are those who have been exploiters to retain undiminished the fruit of their 'economic robbery'? Yes; but two things must be noted. In all ages it has been held to be the right of the community to dispossess owners of certain kinds of property without committing any offence against the sacredness of property, provided full compensation was offered to the owners. In the abolition of slavery, of serfdom, of certain burdens on the land, and the like, no one has ever found anything that was reprehensible, provided the owner of the slaves or of the land was compensated to the full value of the property taken from him. In the second place, it is to be noted that the community is bound to guarantee to the owners their property, but not the profit which has hitherto been obtained from it.

If you apply these two principles to the acquired rights which the Free Society found existing, you will find that, while the land is taken from the landowners, the value of it must be paid; the Society has nothing to do with movable capital, and the same holds good of the profit which the employers have hitherto drawn from their relation to the workers. The Society can also claim the right of obtaining possession of the movable productive property, so far as it may appear to be to the public interest to do this. Such an interest does not here come in question, for, apart from the fact that movable means of production can be created in any quantity that is required, there is no reason to fear that the owners will hold back theirs when they find what is both the only and the absolutely best employment for it in dealing with the associated workers. But, in the future, capitalists will not receive interest for their property, or, if they do, it will be only temporarily. There is as little occasion as there is right to forbid the receiving of interest; but, as every borrower will be able to get capital without interest, the paying of interest will cease automatically. Just as little can or need the Free Society forbid the former employers to hire workers to labour for them for stipulated wages; such workers will no longer be found.

Ali Ben Safi (Right): Where is the Free Commonwealth to obtain the means to purchase all the land, and at the same time to furnish the workers with business capital? It is possible that some rich countries may be able to accomplish this by straining all their resources; but how could we in Persia find the £125,000,000, at which the fixed property was estimated at the last assessment, to say nothing of the hitherto totally lacking business capital?

François Renaud (Right): On the contrary, I fear that the--from a legal standpoint certainly unassailable--justice to the former owners will occasion the greatest difficulties to just the richest countries. Their greater means involve the heavier claims upon those means; for in proportion as those countries are really richer will the value of the land be higher, and the workers, because more skilful in carrying on highly developed capitalistic methods of industry, will at once require larger amounts of business capital, which the community will have to furnish. So far, then, the greater strength and the heavier burden balance each other. But to this it must be added that in the more advanced countries the amount of mobile capital requiring compensation is far greater than that of poor countries. As interest is to cease, all these numberless invested milliards then bearing interest will be withdrawn: whence will the means be suddenly obtained promptly to meet all these calls?