Studies in Socialism

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: iII THE RADICALS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY Democracy, undr the impetus given it by organised labour, ip evolving irresistibly toward Socialism, toward a-form of property whiih will deliver man from his exploitation by man, and bring to an end the regime of class government. The Radicals flatter themselves that...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: iII THE RADICALS AND PRIVATE PROPERTY Democracy, undr the impetus given it by organised labour, ip evolving irresistibly toward Socialism, toward a-form of property whiih will deliver man from his exploitation by man, and bring to an end the regime of class government. The Radicals flatter themselves that they can put a stop to this movement by promising the working classes some reforms and by proclaiming themselves the guardians of private property. They hope to hold a large part of the proletariat in check by a few reforming laws expressing a sentiment of social solidarity, and by their policy of defending private property to rouse the conservative forces, the petty bourgeoisie, the middle-classes, and the small peasant-proprietors, to oppose Socialism. In the first place, to subscribe to such formulas as these means a real intellectual falling off for a part of the democracy. How can men as cultivated as M. L6on Bourgeois and M. Camille Pelletan find any sense in the declaration of the Radical party that affirms the maintenance of private property? Used in this general and abstract fashion the phrase private property has no meaning whatever. In the course of human evolution private property has many times changed its form and its substance, its meaning and its scope. In the societies that preceded ours private property embodied itself in forms of oppression which have been definitely abolished once for all. Slavery was one of the forms of private property. In Athens and Rome there were public slaves, slaves of the city or the state; but most of the slaves were simply a part of the patrimony of the citizens. The property in slaves was part of private property. The slaves either cultivated the lands of their Greek or Roman master or they laboured for his p...