THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. 
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Utilize it ; and secondly, that the rent, paid by the tenants 
to the community, should be expended for the common benefit 
of all. According to the Belgian Socialist, there are only two 
entirely distinct methods of holding land : first, that adopted at 
the present day, in which the soil is given up to individuals, or 
to certain classes of individuals, and labour is enslaved ; 
secondly, the system of the future, under which the soil will be 
collective property, and labour will be free. 
The above relates to the production of wealth. Let us now 
consider the way in which Rational Socialism regulates its 
distribution. 
When labour is free—as is necessarily the case when the 
land is accessible to all—every one can live without being 
obliged to accept wages from anybody. In that case, a man 
would work for others only if they offered him, as wages, more 
than he could gain by working for himself. This situation is 
expressed in economic terms by saying that then wages would 
tend to a maximum, and when it exists, the distribution of 
wealth is so affected that the larger share of the product goes 
to labour and the smaller to capital. But when labour is 
enslaved, the labourers are forced, under pain of starvation, to 
compete with one another in offering their labour to those who 
possess land and capital ; and then their wages fall to what is 
strictly necessary for existence and reproduction ; while if the 
holders of wealth do not need labour, the unemployed labourers 
must disappear. Wages, then, tend to a minimum, and the dis 
tribution of wealth takes place in such a way that the greater 
part goes to the landowners and capitalists, and the smaller 
to the labourers. When labour is free, every man’s wealth 
increases in proportion to the toil he has expended ; but when 
labour is enslaved, his wealth grows in proportion to the capital 
he has accumulated. 
From these two opposite modes of distribution flow, accord 
ing to Colins, the two following consequences, each of which 
has reference to one or other of the two systems of holding 
land above described. When land is owned by individuals, 
the wealth of one class of the community and the poverty ot 
the other increase in parallel lines, and in proportion to the