Redistribution

“ Such laborers also most readily become competitors for any kind of a job, and so affect current wages of those still retaining their places. This emphasizes the unequal distribution of wealth, and leads multitudes to call for a redistribution, by fair means or foul. This increases the distrust of community [pg 176] and the disposition to hoard wealth in the form of money, while checking every desire to build for the future. ”

“ The full proof of the possibility of effecting such an artificial redistribution, without fatally diminishing the production of wealth, may be left to thoughtful reformers who have leisure to construct a new system of political economy, resting on principles not yet fully discovered. ”

“ The ground problem in economics is not to destroy property, but to restore the social conception of property to its right place under conditions suitable to modern needs. This is [Pg 189] not to be done by crude measures of redistribution, such as those of which we hear in ancient history. It is to be done by distinguishing the social from the individual factors in wealth, by bringing the elements of social wealth into the public coffers, and by holding it at the disposal of society to administer to the prime needs of its members. ”

“ Each social stratum would pay according to its prosperity, and the only redistribution that would in effect occur would be that the childless people of each class would pay for the children of that class. ”

“ And one of the principal reasons why we favor a graduated income tax, which increases by geometrical progression as the income increases, is that it automatically keeps the wealth of the country in a constant sort of redistribution, and acts as a check upon that excessive accumulation which is recognized by all intelligent thinkers as one of the most serious perils and intolerable evils of our present era of class legislation. ”

“ Whether we like it or not, the conclusion must be that through no orderly political process short of amendment of the Constitution can we reasonably expect the Government to effect redistribution of wealth through the device of shorter work hours at a maintained wage. ”

“ In accordance with the variations in demand and supply and the rise and decay of industries, the introduction of labour-saving machinery, &c., labour requires continual redistribution. That redistribution is at present automatically effected largely through the rise and fall of wages. A rise in the wages of industries which require more labour, and a decline in the wages of industries which require less labour, cause labour to turn from shrinking to growing industries. ”

“ The redistribution of populations and employments which this would entail is a price a majority of civilized nations refuse to pay: its incidental loss and misery impress their imagination too deeply. ”

“ To-day the masses have their hands on the principal levers for shattering this top crust of the social sphere and seem resolved to press them.
The problem for the solution of which they now menacingly clamor is the establishment of an approximately equitable principle for the redistribution of the world's resources—land, capital, industries, monopolies, mines, transports, and colonies. Whether socialization—their favorite prescription—is the most effectual way of achieving this object may well be doubted, but must be thoroughly examined and discussed. ”

“ Unequal redistribution of wealth to reinforce a rigid class structure Freedom of movement and a free economy gives people equal opportunity to pursue life All are equal under the eyes of the government except the ruling class, which is in charge of the redistribution of wealth PRICES Redistribution of wealth through government oversight. ”

“ We may, therefore, say that the utmost results which could possibly be secured to the individual by a general confiscation and a general redistribution of wealth, would be represented by the condition of a childless man and wife, with thirty-eight shillings a week, which they could spend entirely on themselves: for all the wealth of the nation that was not absorbed in supplying such incomes to men and women who were childless, would be absorbed in supporting the children of those who had them ”

“ In like manner the upper and middle classes, whose employments are of a pecuniary character, if any, are also not seriously affected; and when avowed socialistic sentiment is met with among these upper and middle classes it commonly turns out to be merely a humanitarian aspiration for a more "equitable" redistribution of wealth—a readjustment of ownership under some new and improved method of control—not a contemplation of the traceless disappearance of ownership. ”

“ Action of this kind would so disturb the whole network of economic relations as to bring ruin at once to the whole body politic, and particularly to the smaller interests indirectly affected. In a society such as ours a catastrophe falling upon the State from outside might indirectly do good by making such a redistribution possible. ”

“ If a member of the commune is known to make by handicraft or by trading a much larger income than his fellows, he is made to pay a larger share of the communal burdens. "Come, now, Sidor," some influential member will say to him in the communal assembly at the time of the periodical redistribution of land, "you make a nice heap of money every year, while we, poor orphans, toil hard and gain little; the land has become barren and the times are hard; you must take a double share." ”

“ The great public works which at present afford occasional relief for thousands would still be possible, only provision would be made for the redistribution of the masses of labour thus withdrawn from the ordinary channels as soon as the public work in question was completed. ”

“ This is very easily done on one side, and the contrary on the other; redistribution can accomplish either desideratum—surplus or no surplus. However, the Government seems to be in a pretty state between their moderate and their violent adherents, and though they may scramble through this session, and hustle Parliament to an end, it is difficult to see how they will ever [358] pass the ordeal of another, for they can neither continue in their present course nor adopt any other with safety. ”

“ Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. ”

“ The smaller proprietors,—nine hundred and fifty thousand in number,—who take between them two-thirds of the rental, are in little immediate danger of having their rights attacked. The only rental therefore—namely, that of the larger proprietors—which can be looked on, even in theory, as the subject of redistribution, is too insignificant, being less than thirty million pounds, to appreciably affect our calculations when we are dealing with thirteen hundred millions. ”

“ Their chief economic [Pg 109] propositions are: land to be held by individuals or companies for such time and in such allotments as they use only; redistribution to take place as often as the members of the community shall agree; what constitutes use to be decided by each community, presumably in town meeting assembled; disputed cases to be settled by a so-called free jury to be chosen by lot out of the entire group; members not coinciding in the decisions of the group to betake themselves to outlying lands not occupied, without let or hindrance from any one. ”

“ It would be well if the endless friction which attends redistribution courts and commissions could be saved by some automatic system under which sudden local inequalities could be speedily and finally adjusted. ”

“ There still remains, however, the difficult question as to how far the communal right of property in the land and the periodical redistributions to which it gives rise, impose hurtful restrictions on the peasant's liberty of action in the cultivation of his fields, and deprive him of the natural inducements to improve his land. ”

“ It is equally difficult to doubt that a division of landed property may be carried to such an extent as to destroy all the benefits to be derived from the accumulation of capital and the division of labour, and to occasion the most extended poverty. ”

“ In order to lighten the pressure of rates, and, at the same time, gradually to diminish, and finally to absorb, the growing mass of pauperism and surplus population, it is the duty of the Government to appropriate its present surplus revenue, and the proceeds of national or public property, to the purchasing of lands, and the location thereon of the unemployed poor. The rents accruing from these lands to be applied to further purchases of land, till all who desired to occupy land, either as individual holders or industrial communities, might be enabled to do so. ”

“ What has the State done to bring about a more just distribution of the product of labor? Has it made any attempt by legislation or otherwise to protect the workingman against the superior power of capital or to set a limit to the social inequality that is growing from day to day? ”

“ A reduction in the amount taken from the aggregate produce of a community by taxation would be simply equivalent to an increase in the power of net production. It would in effect add to the productive power of labour just as do the increasing density of population and improvement in the arts. And as the advantage in the one case goes, and must go, to the owners of land in increased rent, so would the advantage in the other. ”

“ These masses of surplus population have been called our reserves of labour. Now a reserve of labour, to be of any use, ought to be available when it is wanted, but these reserves as they are called do not come to the large towns in times of prosperity. They flock to large towns in times of distress, and therefore, far from being reserves of labour, they are simply reserves of pauperism, and the large towns instead of receiving any benefit from their labour are simply charged with their support. ”

“ Whatever money he earns by labour or by investment he can, after paying such taxes on it as the State demands, hand on to any heirs whom he may name.
“The system is thus based on private property, competition, individual effort, individual responsibility and individual choice. Under it, all men and women are more or less often faced by problems which [93] they have to decide and, according as their decision is right or wrong, their welfare and that of their dependents will wax or wane. ”

“ It lays in addition every year and indefinitely a considerable tax on the product of the workman and farmer in the form of rent for farms, ground rent, rent of land in the cities, taxes for the payment of the public debt, industrial profit, commercial profit, and interest on stocks and bonds.
"Therefore in our present society, the work of the workers is not their exclusive property.... the proletarian does not own his own body absolutely.... ”

“ For, since the distribution of wealth is a division, in ascertaining what fixes the share of the produce that goes as rent, we ascertain also what fixes the share that is left for wages, where there is no cooperation of capital; and what fixes the joint share that is left for wages and interest, where capital does cooperate in production. ”

“ There may be also a certain class of industries, like the post-office, streets and roads, railways, sewers, water supply, in which the state goes still farther in its sovereign function of redistributing property among the people, and, by means of public monopoly of owner- ship and operation at cost or free of charges, attempts to place the poorer classes and sections upon an equal basis with wealth- ier classes and sections in the use of these services. ”

“ Deduction shows that this cause must necessarily produce periodical industrial depressions, and induction proves the conclusion; while from the analysis which has thus been made it is seen that the necessary result of material progress, land being private property, is, no matter what the increase in population, to force laborers to wages which give but a bare living. ”

“ But it is also equally the case, where, for the deficiency of the power of labouring, there is an adequate substitute, in income derived either from capital or from property in land. The unborn, when they come to be born, bring with them a pair of hands, which will soon become competent to labour. Capital cannot be acquired until long after. ”

“ Thus, to relieve labor and capital from all taxation, direct and indirect, and to throw the burden upon rent, would be, as far as it went, to counteract this tendency to inequality, and, if it went so far as to take in taxation the whole of rent, the cause of inequality would be totally destroyed. Rent, instead of causing inequality, as now, would then promote equality. Labor and capital would then receive the whole produce, minus that portion taken by the state in the taxation of land values, which, being applied to public purposes, would be equally distributed in public benefits. ”

“ Capital is but a form of labor, and its distinction from labor is in reality but a subdivision, just as the division of labor into skilled and unskilled would be. In our examination we have reached the same point as would have been attained had we simply treated capital as a form of labor, and sought the law which divides the produce between rent and wages; that is to say, between the possessors of the two factors, natural substances and powers, and human exertion—which two factors by their union produce all wealth. ”

“ However, even if the menace of population is avoided, even if the general level of production is raised, and if, besides, the distributive outcome laid down as a goal for the policy of wage settlement is attained, nevertheless, there would remain a considerable measure of inequality of wealth. ”