The Socialism of to-day

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 835096955

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-28834

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Laveleye, Émile de

Title:: The Socialism of to-day

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Field & Tuer

Year of publication:: 1884

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (XLIV, 331 S.)

Collection:: Economics Books

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SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND. 317 As we have seen, following Karl Marx, they base everything on the fundamental proposition, dealt with by M. de Laveleye, that “ all wealth is due to labour, and therefore,” they say, “ to the labourer all wealth is due.” Thirty thousand persons, they assert, though with considerable inaccuracy,* own the land of Great Britain. They therefore call for the Nationaliza tion of the Land. “We claim that land in country and land in towns, mines, parks, mountains, moors, should be owned by the people for the people, to be held, used, built over, and cultivated upon such terms as the people them selves see fit to ordain. The handful of marauders who now hold possession have, and can have, no right save brute force against the tens of millions whom they wrong.” But, after all, the landlords are not the worst They get only ;^6o,ooo,ooo out of a total ;^i,000,000,000 robbed from the workers, t “ The few thousand persons who own the National Debt . . . exact >^28,000,000 yearly from the labour of their countrymen for nothing ; the shareholders, who have been allowed to lay hands upon our great railway communications, take a still larger sum. Above all, the active capitalist class, the loan-mongers, the farmers, the mine-exploiters, the contractors, the middle men, the factory-lords—these, the modern slave-drivers, these are they who, through their money, machinery, capital, and credit, turn every advance in human knowledge, every improvement in human dexterity, into an engine for accumulating wealth out of other men’s labour, and for exacting more and yet more surplus value out of the wage- slaves whom they employ. So long as the means of production, either of raw materials or of manufactured goods, are the monopoly of a class, so long must the labourers on the farm, in the mine, or in the factory sell themselves for a bare subsistence wage. As land must in future be a national possession, so must the other means of producing and distributing wealth. ... * The Parliamentary Return of 1872 gives the total number of land- owners in Great Britain and Ireland as 1,173,724. Apart from Ireland, there were in Great Britain (in round numbers) 234,000 owners of between I and 100 acres ; 47,000 owners of 100 acres and upwards ; while there were no less than 816,000 owners of less than one acre. These last must have been mainly owners of town holdings, as their aggregate rental amounts to >¿‘35,000,000. t Apart from the theory involved in the expression “ robbed from the workers,” it is right to state that the figures from which the sum of 1,000,000,000 is arrived at are by no means admitted by the best statistical authorities.

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