Property and Inheritance.
of production persists; it will not be affected in
itself by any change in the ownership of the capital.
Hence the complete dependence of the propertyless
wage-earner on the organisation, on “ employment,”
to use the common expression, remains through all
the changes in the ownership of capital of which we
have experience. It makes no difference to the
munition worker, gua worker, whether he is dis-
charged by Woolwich Arsenal or Messrs. Vickers at
Barrow ; in either case his income ceases, because
his special skill is worthless outside the organisation.
Strikes occur in the Consumers’ Co-operative Move-
ment and in Municipal Trading undertakings, as
they do in private employment, and for the same
reason ; the worker’s economic position, qua worker,
being dependent entirely on the price and terms
which he can get for his special skill in the organisa-
tion to which that skill is adapted, he finds himself
in conflict with the persons who control that organisa-
tion, and, failing to come to terms amicably, stops
the organisation functioning in order to get his way.
Associations of workers for the undertaking of collec-
tive contracts, like the ill-fated Building Guilds,
disguise their dependence under a change of form
without affecting the substance; if their work is
wanted, and they can offer it on terms that the
persons wanting it can afford, their incomes are
secure ; if not, they are unemployed equally as much
as the private builder’s men.
The Concentration of Directive Authority
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Now, one of the most marked features of this
productive organisation, a feature first insisted on by
the great socialist writers like Marx, is the tendency
towards a concentration of directive authority in
fewer and fewer hands. This concentration is due