CHAPTER XXXVIII

PUBLIC OWNERSHIP AND SOCIALISM

701. The Collective Public.-Public ownership is frequently spoken of as if it were Socialism. If the word "public" be properly understood, or if the word "government" be made to mean the same thing, then public ownership, or government ownership, that is, collective ownership, is a part of the Socialist program. But there may be public ownership under capitalism with no Socialism, and with no part of Socialism.1

702. Collective Ownership.-On the other hand, it is impossible to have Socialism without collective ownership of the means of production, so far as they are

1. "There is no completion of the Socialist theory until industry is so managed by the community that interest, rent and profit are 'socialized' are turned from private into public possessions. It is the Socialist's faith that, until this is done, a portion of what labor earns will go to those who have given no equivalent for it. To restore this unearned income to the whole people, the means of production-land and machinery-must pass to social ownership. The conservative cry against all this is that it destroys private property.' If it were charged that certain forms of private property would be destroyed, the criticism is just. There is in theory no destruction of private property further than that involved in these 'three rents.' [See Chapter 28.] A hundred forms of property (slaves, highways, toll-bridges) have changed and must change with advancing civilization. Communism in all its extremes destroys private property outright. Socialism safeguards it to to the extent of giving absolute rights to the individual over all products that he can hold for consumption."-Brooks: Social Unrest, pp. 278-279.

collectively used. The state of Kansas publicly owns a binding twine factory, but the binding twine trust privately owns all the raw material which the Kansas factory must use in order to produce binding twine. The result is that the state of Kansas has made a contract with the binding twine trust to buy all of its raw material from the trust,-and to sell all of its product to the trust. Here is an instance of public ownership which simply results in furnishing a factory for the free use of the binding twine trust, together with cheap labor, inasmuch as the factory is a part of the industrial equipment of the state penitentiary. While this is public ownership, it is not Socialism. Street car lines, railways, and postoffices, where owned and operated by the government, have nothing of democracy in their administration, or of equality of opportunity to become workers, which are essential features of the Socialist program. So long as the government is administered by a political party controlled by the capitalists, any industries administered by such a government cannot in any way be said to be either examples of Socialism or steps toward Socialism.

703. Bismarck.-The shrewdest and most powerful individual antagonist Socialism has yet had was Bismarck. He successfully urged the Prussian government to purchase all the railways in Prussia, and the process was begun in 1879. This sample of the tactics of Bismarck while battling against Socialism at least was not intended as a step towards Socialism.

704. Free Rides and Rents and Wages.-There are three groups of capitalists doing business in a great city. One owns the shops; another owns large blocks of tenement houses, and a third owns the street railways. For the general public to combine with the owners of the shops at one end of the line, and with the owners of the tenement houses at the other end of the

line to secure public ownership of the street railways, connecting the shops and the tenement houses, will not greatly benefit the public. What the people save in fares will be added to their rents at one end of the line, or taken from their wages at the other. Such public ownership is neither Socialism nor a step toward Socialism, if this language is understood to mean that it is in any way an illustration of the operation of what the Socialists propose.

705. A Concession in the Argument.-On the other hand, it may be said to be a concession to the Socialist's argument, and, indirectly, while in no way an example of Socialism, may tend to strengthen the proposals of the Socialists in the public mind. It suggests the socialization of productive property. In such a sense it is a step toward Socialism.

706. A Step in Evolution.-Socialism involves the organization, centralization and more perfect equipment of industry, together with collective ownership, democratic management, and equal opportunity. The work of organization, concentration and the perfection of the equipment essential to the inauguration of the co-operative commonwealth is being carried on under capitalism by the initiative of the capitalists themselves, under the necessary operation of economic laws. The process would continue without the support and even with the opposition of the Socialists.2

707. An Important Admission. The principle of collective ownership has so far been the point of the main controversy between the supporters of Socialism and the defenders of Capitalism. Every time the public goes into the gas business, into building electric

2. "When railroads were first introduced, people's minds revolted against the monoply of transportation thereby involved. Statutes were devised to make the track free for the use of different carriers, as the public highway is free to the owners of different wagons. But the economy of having all trains controlled by a single owner was soon apparent.

light plants, or power houses, or public ditches, or reservoirs, or in any way becomes a part owner in any of the great industrial plants of the world, the principle of collective ownership is conceded, and the Socialist side of the argument is thus strengthened in the public mind. In that sense, public ownership, while it is denied to be a step in the inauguration of Socialism, is a step in the abandonment of what has so far been the ground of the principal argument against Socialism.

708. Some Advantages.-It is not to be denied that the public in the long run is a better employer than the private corporation. Shorter hours, greater security of employment and better rates of wages are advantages which may be secured under public ownership for small portions of the workers. But none of these can result, except in the most indirect and roundabout way, in a general elevation of the working class; and none of them in any way affect, unless it be injuriously, the question of the industrial emancipation of the workers, that is, the making of their hours of labor, the distribution of their products and the security of their employment subject to the control of the workers themselves.

709. Public Ownership of the Means of Producing the Means of Life.-Again, it should be noticed that public ownership has so far been proposed only for means of communication or of transportation or of some public necessity of the most general use, but not as a rule seriously affecting the problem of subsistence,

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Then laws were passed compelling competition among owners of separ ate roads. Laws against pools, traffic associations, etc., followed. Many of these laws were failures from the outset; others have hastened consolidation to a point beyond the reach of special law; others did positive harm. The majority of thinking men have come to the conclusion that railroads are in some sense a natural monopoly and have classed them with water-works, gas-works and other 'quasi public' lines of business, as an exception to the general rule of free competition."-Hadley: Education of an American Citizen, p.

especially for the more poorly paid of the working class. The enterprises of Glasgow have been most widely mentioned as instances of public ownership, but public ownership in Glasgow has not attempted the public ownership of any of the principal means of producing the means of life. Public ownership, so far, has everywhere kept away from the public ownership of the raw materials, and the great machines, jointly used, as the means of producing the means of life. But public ownership, even under democratic management by the workers employed, undertaken in the administration of recognized public utilities, but to the exclusion of all enterprises directly engaged in producing the means of life, would still condemn a part of the workers to the petty tyranny of the private boss and subject all of the workers to the exploitation of the private capitalist controlling the privately produced necessities of life.

710. Industrial Democracy.-Public ownership nowhere proposes to provide for the self-employment and self-direction of all the workers. At this point lies the most radical difference between all schemes for public ownership and Socialism. The one attempts to organize a business, to hire its labor in the market, to subject it to the discipline of a boss in the employment of whom the workers have no voice, and by civil service examinations, to provide "Jobs" only for those who are best able to survive without them.

Socialism, on the other hand, will not undertake to organize the workers for the sake of an industry, but to organize and equip all the great industries for the sake of the workers, and-especially and primarily those industries most directly connected with the production of the means of life. This will be done, not with the view to employing only the picked and most efficient of the workers, but of giving equal opportunity to all