To reply that the Socialist order would be a democracy, and that the people could vote out of existence any distasteful regulation, is to play with words. No matter how responsive the governing and managing authorities might be to the popular will, the dependence of the individual would prove intolerable. Not the manner in which this tremendous social power is constituted, nor the personnel of those exercising it, but the fact that so much power is lodged in one agency, and so little immediate control of his affairs left to the individual,--is the heart of the evil situation. In a word, it is a question of the liberty of the individual versus the all pervading control of his actions by an agency other than himself. Moreover, the people in a democracy means a majority, or a compact minority. Under Socialism the controlling section of the voting population would possess so much power, political and economic, that it could impose whatever conditions it pleased upon the non-controlling section for an almost indefinite period of time. The members of the latter part of the population would not only be deprived of that immediate liberty which consists in the power to determine the details of their economic life, but of that remote liberty which consists in the power to affect general conditions by their votes. In the last chapter we saw that the claim to the full product of industry, made on behalf of labour by the Socialists, cannot be established on intrinsic grounds. Like all other claims to material goods, it is valid only if it can be realised consistently with human welfare. Its validity depends upon its feasibility, upon the possibility of constructing some social system that will enable it to work. The present chapter has shown that the requirements of such a system are not met by Socialism. A Socialist organisation of industry would make all sections of the population, including the wage earning class, worse off than they are in the existing industrial order. Consequently, neither the private ownership of capital nor the individual receipt of interest can be proved to be immoral by the Socialist argument. Since private ownership and management of capital are superior to Socialism, the State is obliged to maintain, protect, and improve the existing industrial system. This is precisely the conclusion that we reached in chapter iv with reference to private ownership of land. In chapter v we found, moreover, that individual ownership of land is a natural right. The fundamental considerations there examined lead to the parallel conclusion that the individual has a natural right to own capital. But we could not immediately deduce from the right to own land the right to take rent. Neither can we immediately deduce from the right to own capital the right to take interest. The positive establishment of the latter right will occupy us in the two following chapters. FOOTNOTES: