Socialism provides for the collective ownership of all means of production, distribution and exchange. This means that the State--using the term as “collective” State, of course--would organize all these industries and would operate them upon a collective, which means a democratic, basis. Under such conditions it is doubtless true that every man would have an equal opportunity to earn a living, but it is absurd for anybody to assert that this equality of opportunity would also mean absolute freedom of choice. If you want evidence in support of this statement, you can get it--and Socialist testimony at that. In 1906, the Fabian Society of London--an organization composed of absolutely orthodox Socialists--issued a leaflet entitled, “Socialism and Labor Policy.” Let us see what they have to say about the freedom of choice we shall have under the collective régime. “Everybody should have a legal right to an opportunity of earning his living in the society in which he has been born,” we read, “but no one should or could have the right to ask that he should be employed at the particular job which suits his peculiar taste and temperament. Each of us must be prepared to do the work which Society wants doing, or take the consequences of refusal.” Again, Sydney Webb, in his “Basis and Policy of Socialism” (p. 71), says: “Instead of converting every man into an independent producer, working when he likes and where he likes, we aim at enrolling every able-bodied person directly in the service of the community, for such duties and under such kind of organization, local or national, as may be suitable to his capacity and social function. In fact, so far are we from seeking to abolish the wage system, so understood, that we wish to bring under it all those who now escape from it--the employers, and those who live on rent or interest--and so make it universal. If a man wants freedom to work or not to work just as he likes, he had better emigrate to Robinson Crusoe’s island, or else become a millionaire. To suppose that the industrial affairs of a complicated industrial State can be run without strict subordination and discipline, without obedience to orders, and without definite allowances for maintenance is to dream not of Socialism, but of Anarchism.” And Sydney Webb is not alone in these conclusions. Ramsay MacDonald, who is certainly one of the most conservative of Socialists, expresses the same spirit when he tells us that “trade must be organized like a fleet or education system” (“Socialism and Society,” p. 172); while Suthers answers this particular “objection” by expressing the most genuine contempt for those who would protest against the kind of slavery that collectivism would introduce. He reminds us that the people themselves would then be masters. Who would oppress the people? The people themselves? Like so many other Socialists, he will not see that slavery is slavery under whatever guise it may operate.