For instance: the coal-mines and all the machinery of the coal-mines and the houses in which the miners live and the stores of food and the clothing, etc., which keep the miners alive while the coal is being mined, that is during the process of production--all these, which now belong to capitalists who make a profit out of the miners’ labour, would then belong to the State, which would allot the coal produced to all who needed it. So it would be with all farms, farming implements, and cattle and horses and the stores of food and clothing and houses necessary to the labourers on the land during the process of production. So it would be with all stone-quarrying and timber-felling, and carpentry and brick-making for the continued production of the houses necessary to the producers during production. So it would be with all corresponding material for making cloth for clothing. So it would be with everything which was made in the whole country. The officers of the State would share out the wealth produced, so that it would be consumed by all the citizens, and there would be an end to the exploitation of one man by another and to the uncertainty of living. Communism is simply that form of Socialism in which all that is thus shared out by the State would be shared equally, the State giving every family an equal share in proportion to the numbers of people which had to be supported in the family, from one upwards. The reason I have called Communism the logical and only possible ultimate form of Socialism is that there could be under Socialism no reason for any other form of distribution. Some time ago certain Socialists used to try to get out of this necessity for Communism, so as not to frighten rich people with their proposals for reform. They would say to a man who was making, say, £5,000 a year because he owned a lot of capital and land and had rents and profits coming to him from the work of his labourers: “You will have just as much under Socialism, for we recognise what a superior kind of person you are, and when the State shares out its wealth among its citizens it will give you as much as you have now, leaving the same difference between rich and poor, only seeing to it that the poor always at least have enough to live on. Where we give one ticket to the labourer to claim out of the common stores what he wants for a week we will give you fifty tickets, so that you will get fifty times as much if you like.” But of course this was nonsense, and was soon discovered to be nonsense. With everybody working for the State under orders all would naturally claim equality, and there would be no way of preventing their getting an equal share except force. In justice, supposing a Socialist state to arise, there could be only the Communist form of it. This scheme has never been put into practice, and when we look closely at it we shall discover, I think, why it never will be put into practice.