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THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. 
CHAPTER XL 
COLLECTIVISM AND LAND NATIONALIZATION. 
HE word Collectivism is quite modern, but the idea forms 
part of every system of Radical Socialism. Radical 
Socialism would either abolish altogether, or restrict within 
narrow limits, the right of hereditary succession, even in the 
direct line, because its effect is to increase inequality, and to 
give to the heirs the enjoyment of property which they have 
not produced themselves—an effect contrary to the principle 
of distributive justice, which derives property, and consequently 
the right to its enjoyment, from personal labour. If the right 
of hereditary succession were abolished or limited, the property 
thus left without an heir would lapse, as it does at present, to 
the State, or through the State to the Commune, and in this 
way collective property would necessarily arise. 
Collectivism may be conceived more or less completely 
applied, according as the State is endowed with the ownership 
of the soil alone, as is proposed in England in the schemes for 
“ land nationalization ; ” or also with the ownership of all fixed 
capital ; or even with that of circulating capital as well, in this 
case leaving to individuals the power of acquiring objects of 
enjoyment only as the immediate product of labour. 
The St Simonians went deeper than anybody towards the 
root of this problem. Without stopping to trace the plan of 
any ideal organization, as Fourier, Cabet, or even Louis Blanc 
did, and without relying on the doctrines of political economy, 
as Marx and Lassalle have since so skilfully done, they at once 
attacked the principle of hereditary succession, upon which, io 
point of fact, everything depends.