for his labour, is the unpardonable thing in his representative of to-day.

If interest is to be successfully attacked on the score of its being immoral, it must be on one of two grounds—either because the principal was come by in questionable ways, or because the continued payment of interest necessarily leads to great social injustices and evils, which could be removed by its abolition without producing greater evils. Now, as to the first proposition, it is doubtless true that a portion of the present accumulation of capital in individual hands did come originally from doubtful sources, morally viewed; but as it would be impossible to separate the part morally suspected from that fairly acquired-as, moreover, no law was broken in its acquisition-the present possessors ought not to be disturbed in its enjoyment. Long possession purifies titles on many grounds, and especially the title to capital. But while there should be indemnity as regards the past, that is no reason why the ways to wealth should not be more legally fenced in in future, especially as regards the operations of speculators, promoters," and cornerers; as well as regards the possible unscrupulousness of employers.

As to the second proposition, that the payment of interest in one or other form is the chief cause of social evils and injustices, which could be removed by its abolition-this is indeed held by all the new Socialists. But as its abolition is only a part of the whole scheme of collectivism, and is not advocated by Socialists, save as part of the whole, it will be necessary first to consider that scheme together with

its advantages and drawbacks before we can pronounce decisively whether interest, which next to inheritance is undoubtedly the chief cause of the modern inequality of wealth, is also good on the whole, and good for the greatest number.

CHAPTER V.

IN THE SOCIALIST STATE.

I.

So far we have only had Marx's argument to prove that capitalism as a system is robbery and spoliation : an argument which, as we have just seen, is less solid than the new Socialists suppose. There is no positive and constructive scheme in Marx's writings; but collectivism is undoubtedly suggested,' that is, the collective ownership of land and capital as the means of production, together with a distribution of products amongst all workers, productive or unproductive, according to the quantity of the work done, which is to be measured by the hours of labour bestowed on it, skilled labour being rated as a certain multiple of average or common labour.

Collectivism is merely suggested by Marx as the future governing principle; it is not worked out into detailed application, so as to present us with a positive, connected, and practicable scheme. As in the case of the somewhat resembling though vaguer scheme of St. Simon, it was the school that elaborated the scheme, so it has been rather the disciples of Karl

In particular, "Capital," vol. ii. p. 789 (Eng. trans.).

Marx than the master who have developed collectivism-so far as it has yet been developed into a system.

It must be confessed that its development has not proceeded far: possibly in part, as Schæffle suggests, from prudence on the part of collectivist leaders, lest they might afford a handle to the objector; partly it may be from defect of constructive genius and imagination, which would be more tasked to-day in our more complex life than when Sir Thomas More drew up his ingenious work: and partly it may even be, as M. Leroy-Beaulieu affirms, because of the inherent impracticabilities and ineradicable contradictions of the scheme. Whatever the cause, certain it is that no connected and well-thought-out presentment of the scheme as a whole, with a due forecast, adequate weighing, and satisfactory answering, of objections, has been given to the world by Socialist writers of authority, if we may except the short but masterly sketch entitled, "The Quintessence of Socialism," by Dr. Schæffle, who, however, is not so much a Socialist as an impartial critic alike of the new Socialism and of the existing system.3

In this absence of full exposition we must content ourselves with taking up the central and main principle, and considering what it logically and necessarily

2" Le Collectivisme."

66

3 There is also Mr. Gronlund's Co-operative Commonwealth," in which while the constructive part is greatly wanting on the economical side, neither his exposition of the political side of collectivism nor yet his too easy refutation of objections is quite satisfactory.

implies; we may also take the points in provisional programmes in which the collectivists seem agreed, and those points in the existing system which they have mainly attacked. By all these means, especially by the first, we may get a more magnified if not a more detailed picture of collectivism. We can see as in a panorama the whole of it, what the parent idea in its integrity involves, apart, of course, from the qualifications or reservations of particular

advocates.

The State, then, or the community in general, is to be the collective owner of the land and of all the instruments of production and of transport; by instruments meaning all things requisite, other than land, to produce and to circulate commodities-what economists call fixed capital-all factories, workshops, warehouses, machinery, plant, appliances, railways' rollingstock, ships, &c. The State is to own the land and the fixed capital-or to express both conveniently in a single phrase, the means of production, production according to economic usage being supposed to include the distribution or circulation of products.

Products in their final shape, in which they are directly consumable, the State will not own. These it will only keep in its care, in public warehouses or magazines or stores, until the workers of all kinds send in their claims on them, which claims will be measured by the number of hours for which they have worked, and for which they will have received certificates or labour cheques or orders to be presented against goods in their final consumable form as distinct from those intermediate stages in which