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to spread Socialism. So far as they have been elected to executive office, they do this even now.-H. W. LEE, Secretary.'

"The Labour party is a federation of Socialist societies and trade union organisations. Trade unions are directly affiliated, their membership forming, together with the membership of the Socialist organisations, the membership of the Labour party. In some cases Socialist propaganda is conducted by the trade unions, several of them embracing the Socialist basis in their rules.J. S. MIDDLETON, for J. RAMSAY MACDONALD.'

"The Independent Labour Party is affiliated to the Labour party, which is a federation of trade unions, co-operative societies, and Socialist societies, for political action. The Independent Labour Party consists of individual members, and not of federated organisations. Our membership is only open to Socialists individually. Our association with the trade unions comes through the Labour party, with which both we and they are affiliated. The trade unions of Great Britain do not carry on any specific Socialist propaganda among their members, although several of the unions state in their constitution that they believe in Socialism. Many Socialist speeches are made from trade union platforms and demonstrations held under the auspices of trade unions.—FRANCIS JOHNSON, Secretary.'

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The foregoing three letters are most interesting and most important, and they should be carefully read because they prove that the forces of trade unionism and Socialism are commingling, and that the trade unionists may reckon upon the support of the Socialists whenever they come into conflict with capitalists. Although in constructive policy Socialism and trade unionism are as yet things apart, they possess a common working basis as soon as trouble occurs between capital and labour.

1 Social Democrat, September 1907, pp. 548, 549.

To increase the intimacy between them and the representatives of labour pure and simple, and to accustom them to co-operation, the Socialist cannot do anything better than to cause conflicts to arise between capital and labour. Therefore it is only natural that the Socialists will urge the trade unionists to make great, and ever greater, demands upon capital; that every concession will only be considered as a stepping-stone to a further concession. Every conflict between capital and labour, everything that will increase the dissatisfaction of the workers, will serve the Socialists, because it will cause the workers to believe in the doctrine of the Iron Law of Wages, in the Law of Increasing Misery, and in the promised Socialist paradise. Therefore the Socialists will do all they can to embitter the relations between capital and labour, and to bring about strikes. For instance, at the time when, in the autumn of 1907, the differences between the British railway companies and the men were acute, practically the whole Socialist press urged the railway servants to declare a strike, and the settlement of the difficulty by Mr. Lloyd George was greeted with derision and regret. Mr. Bell, who had accepted the settlement, was treated with contempt, and the result of the Railway Conference was declared to be the Sedan of the British trade union movement.1

Owing to the persistent agitation of the Socialists, the trade unions are becoming permeated with Socialism. Of late years there have been few great strikes in Great Britain, but, unless the relations between Socialists and trade unionists alter, it seems likely that great and violent industrial disputes will occur in the near future.

See the Labour Leader, Clarion, Justice, Socialist Standard, Socialist, &c., for November 1907.

CHAPTER VIII

SOCIALIST VIEWS AND PROPOSALS REGARDING LAND

AND THE LANDLORDS

BRITISH Socialists, as we have learned in Chapter IV.,' adopting the celebrated formula of Proudhon, have proclaimed "Property is theft," and they are of opinion that property in land is a particularly heinous form of theft. Therefore they demand the restitution of the land to the people, not as a matter of expediency but as a matter of right. "Man has a right only to what his labour makes. No man makes' the land.” 2 "Land is the gift of Nature. It is not made by man. a right to nothing but that which he has himself made, no man can have a right to the land, for no man made it." "3 "The land belongs by inalienable right not to any

body of individuals but to all.” 4

1 Page 81.

Now, if a man has

O high cliffs looking heavenward,

O valleys green and fair,

Sea cliffs that seem to gird and guard
Our island once so dear,

In vain your beauty now ye spread,
For we are numbered with the dead;
A robber band has seized the land,
And we are exiles here.

The ploughman ploughs, the sower sows.
The reaper reaps the ear;

The woodman to the forest goes
Before the day grows clear,

2 Blatchford, Merrie England, p. 61.

3 Ibid. p. 60.

L

• Washington, A Corner in Flesh and Blood, p. 60.

But of our toil no fruit we see ;
The harvest's not for you and me:

A robber band has seized the land,
And we are exiles here.1

Appealing to the passions, hatred, and greed of their followers, and relying on their credulity, Socialist leaders proclaim not only that the landlords are useless, but also that the people will have the land rent free as soon as the present owners have been expropriated. "The landlord, qua landlord, performs no function in the economy of industry or of food production. He is a rent-receiver; that, and nothing more. Were the landlord to be abolished, the soil and the people who till it would still remain, and the disappearance of the landowner would

pass almost unnoticed." 2 "Rent is brigandage reduced to a system. So long as the English people are content to be tenants-at-will on their own soil, and to pay for the privilege, they will remain virtually slaves." 3 "The tenant earns the rent. The landlord spends it. If the tenant had not to pay the rent he could spend it himself, and so it would get spent, and get spent by the man who earns it and has the best right to spend it." 4

Whilst some Socialist agitators are unscrupulous enough to make their followers believe that in the Socialist State they may have land for the asking, others are so unkind as to destroy that pleasing illusion. For instance, we learn from a Fabian pamphlet, "A Socialist State or municipality will charge the full economic rent for the use of its land and dwellings, and apply that rent to the common purposes of the community." " Another Socialist authority very pertinently remarks: "It is of

Clarion Song Book, p. 6.

2 Keir Hardie, From Serfdom to Socialism, p. 11.
3 Davidson, Book of Lords, p. 25.

Blatchford, Land Nationalisation, p. 9.

Sidney Webb, Socialism, True and False, p. 19.

not the least consequence to the person who rents the land whether he pays the rent for it to an individual or whether he pays it to the State," and therefore it is clear that statements such as "If the tenant had not to pay the rent he could spend it himself," are merely meant to deceive the simple. Tenants, instead of paying their rent to a human landlord, would have to pay it to an impersonal State or municipality, and the latter might prove as grasping and as heartless as rating committees

are now.

Others base their demand for the spoliation of landlords upon the Bible and upon the ideal of a "Divine brotherhood," forgetting that the Bible contains a commandment "Thou shalt not steal," as well as many warnings against lying, deceit, cant, and covetousness. One of the champion Bible-Socialists, for instance, writes: "If all men are brothers, as Christ undoubtedly taught, then the land, the source of wealth, the means by which men can earn their livelihood, should not be the property of any set of individuals, but should belong to the whole community. The fact of a man being born into the world gives him the divine right to the opportunity of earning his living, and that right cannot be enjoyed so long as there is a single man on earth deprived of access to the land from which to earn his bread. When the spirit of brotherhood prevails, it will be a simple and a natural thing to arrange that these things shall be used not in the interests of the few, but for the common good. There are innumerable signs that the hearts and minds of men are now turning in this direction, and that they are coming to see that the only just and permanent arrangement is the divine solution of working on the basis of universal brotherhood." There is a fraternity among Sicilian bandits. The "Divine

1 Socialism and the Single Tax, p. 7.

2 Ward, Are All Men Brothers? pp. 14, 15.

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