Collectivism; Economic history; Great Britain -- Economic policy; Industrial policy; Social history; Socialism
There remains one last remark to be made upon the concrete side of my
subject. I have in this last section illustrated the tendency towards the
Servile State from actual laws and actual projects with which all are
to-day familiar in English industrial society, and I have shown how these
are certainly establishing the proletariat in a novel, but to them
satisfactory, Servile Status.
It remains to point out in a very few lines the complementary truth that
what should be the very essence of Collectivist Reform, to wit, the
translation of the means of production from the hands of private owners to
the hands of public officials, is nowhere being attempted. So far from its
being attempted, all so-called "Socialistic" experiments in
municipalisation and nationalisation are merely increasing the dependence
of the community upon the Capitalist class. To prove this, we need only
observe that every single one of these experiments is effected by a loan.
Now what is meant in economic reality by these municipal loans and national
loans raised for the purpose of purchasing certain small sections of the
means of production?
Certain Capitalists own a number of rails, cars, etc. They put to work upon
these certain Proletarians, and the result is a certain total of economic
values. Let the surplus values obtainable by the Capitalists after the
subsistence of the proletarians is provided for amount to £10,000 a year.
We all know how a system of this sort is "Municipalised." A "loan" is
raised. It bears "interest." It is saddled with a "sinking fund."
Now this loan is not really made in money, though the terms of it are in
money. It is, at the end of a long string of exchanges, nothing more nor
less than the loan of the cars, the rails, etc., by the Capitalists to the
Municipality. And the Capitalists require, before they will strike the
bargain, a guarantee that the whole of their old profit shall be paid to
them, together with a further yearly sum, which after a certain number of
years shall represent the original value of the concern when they handed it
over. These last additional sums are called the "sinking fund"; the
continued payment of the old surplus values is called the "interest."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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