Socialism as it is : $b a survey of the world-wide revolutionary movementWalling, William English
History
Socialism as it is : $b a survey of the world-wide revolutionary movement
Walling, William English
Socialism
Another vast capitalist reform predicted by Socialists since the
Communist Manifesto (1847) is nationalization or municipalization of the
ground rent or unearned increment of land. At first Kautsky and others
were inclined to expect that nothing would be done in this direction
until the working classes themselves achieved political power, but it
has always been seen from the days of Marx that the industrial
capitalists had no particular reason for wishing to be burdened with a
parasitic class of landlords that weighed on their shoulders as much as
on those of the rest of the people. Not only do industrial capitalists
pay heavy rents to landlords, but the rent paid by the wage worker also
has to be paid indirectly and in part by the industrial capitalist: "The
quantity of wealth that a landlord can appropriate from the capitalist
class becomes larger in proportion as the general demand for land
increases, in proportion as population grows, in proportion as the
capitalist class needs land, _i.e._ in proportion as the capitalist
system of production expands. In proportion with all this, rent rises;
that is to say, the aggregate amount of wealth increases which the
landlord class can slice off--either directly or indirectly--from the
surplus that would otherwise be grabbed by the capitalist class
alone."[90]
The industrial capitalists, then, have very motive to put an end to this
kind of parasitism, and to use the funds secured, through confiscatory
taxation of the unearned increment of land, to lessen their own
taxation, to nationalize those fundamental industries that can only be
made in this way to subserve the interests of the capitalist class as a
whole (instead of some part of it merely), and to undertake through
government those costly enterprises which are needed by all industry,
but which give too slow returns to attract the capitalist investor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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