Municipal ownership is a further step, but even this will not carry us
far because the capital suitable for municipal management on existing
lines is but a small fraction of the whole, and because municipal
control does not directly affect the amount of capital in the hands of
the capitalists who are always expropriated with ample compensation.
We have made some progress along another line. Supertax, death duties,
and taxes on unearned increment do a little to diminish the wealth of
the few: old age pensions, national insurance, and workmen's
compensation do something towards mitigating the poverty of the poor.
But it must be confessed that we have made but little progress along the
main road of Socialism. Private ownership of capital and land flourishes
almost as vigorously as it did thirty years ago. Its grosser cruelties
have been checked, but the thing itself has barely been touched. Time
alone will show whether progress is to be along existing lines, whether
the power of the owners of capital over the wealth it helps to create
and over the lives of the workers whom it enslaves will gradually fade
away, as the power of our kings over the Government of our country has
faded, the form remaining when the substance has vanished, or whether
the community will at last consciously accept the teaching of Socialism,
setting itself definitely to put an end to large-scale private
capitalism, and undertaking itself the direct control of industry.
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