While our population increased 200 per cent in the past 50 years, capitalism increased our expenditures for mass-slaughter more than 2400 per cent!
LETTER XV
My dear Judd:
We are going to take over the industrial plant of the United States, and run it as one planned enterprise for the benefit of the whole people.
Just what do we mean to take? Roughly speaking, all railroads, telegraphs and telephones, all banks, the mines and large factories, the large oil fields with pipe-lines and refineries, the large packing and canning plants, the large warehouses and stores, and what office buildings are necessary for these enterprises. We do not want the homes, nor the personal property, nor the automobiles, nor the livestock; nor, if I have my way, shall we want farms. Some old-time Socialists will contest this, but the new generation will agree, I think. The reason is interesting, and it may help to clear up the whole matter if we begin by considering the problem of the land.
Karl Marx thought that the farms would go the same way as the factories; that is, they would get bigger and bigger, under capitalist ownership. He failed to allow for the essential factor—that no capitalist can work his employes so hard as the small farmer works his women and children. So the small farmer has stayed on his small farm; a free man—except that every year he is deeper in debt to the banker, and in a larger percentage each year he loses the ownership, and is merely a tenant, supporting an absentee landlord. The modern Socialist, recognizing that situation, does not propose to walk into the trap, but seeks a different solution of the land problem.
The single taxer comes, urging us to take the burden of taxes off improvements, which are made by human labor, and put it on the land, which is the gift of Nature. He points to the rise of land values in cities, the so-called “unearned increment”; values go up, because people crowd into the city, and private owners get a colossal increase, which they have done nothing whatever to earn; their gains make a heavy burden on production, which the whole community must pay. That sounded reasonable, and so for a while I was a single taxer; you’ll be interested to know, Judd, that the reason I gave it up was you!
We had a big single tax campaign here in California in 1916, and I put in some hard work at it; among other things I spent a day arguing with my friend Judd. We were sitting on the roof of the garage, laying shingles, and all the time I tried to make you “see” the single tax. But you had read in the Los Angeles “Times” that it would increase the taxes on your two lots, and that had made you mad; also, you had read that it would take the taxes off the rich man’s bonds, and off his wife’s jewels, and that had made you madder. I tried to get you to see the absurdity of believing that the “Times” could be interested in keeping any taxes on the rich; I tried to show the actual reason, that the tax collector couldn’t find the rich man’s bonds, nor his wife’s jewels. But you didn’t get it, Judd, and when I saw the votes of all the other Judds in that election, I decided that the single tax is a tactical blunder. Never again will I be caught proposing to take any taxes off the rich; from that day forth I have been a multiple taxer—I want to put just as many kinds of taxes on the rich as the imagination can invent.
Joking aside, Judd, I changed my whole strategy as result of that day on the roof with you. For twelve or thirteen years I had been expecting to see Socialism brought about by some sort of tax on wealth; but you made me realize how passionately every human creature hates taxes. Could one not find some easier way? I realized that all men like money, the more the merrier; and then came the war, and I saw our government making money by the billions, just by acts of Congress and the waving of a presidential pen. Then came the panic, and I saw our wonderful Federal Reserve System making more billions for the use of the big bankers and the trusts; so a great light dawned upon me, a heavenly light! I see now, Judd, that we shall forget taxes altogether, and take a leaf out of Wall Street’s new book; we shall make as many billions of new money as the emergency requires, and instead of having Wall Street put that new money off on us, we shall put it off on Wall Street!