ent private holders of the desired "means of production." This tempered discretion of the "moderates" does not however exhaust ordinary socialist opinion. Long before we reach the audacities of the I. W. W. on this issue, we meet throngs of those in good party standing who make short shift of Fabyan prudencies. Among those who have dealt repeatedly and explicitly with this issue of compensation is Belfort Bax, a man of learning and one of the most prolific of socialist writers. In his volume on The Ethics of Socialism is a chapter on "Justice." It contains this passage, which I give with his own italics. After proving to his own satisfaction that the "means of production" to be taken over "are no longer in the hands of the producers," he says:
"Now, Justice being henceforth identified with confiscation and injustice with the rights of property, there remains only the question of 'ways and means.' Our bourgeois apologist admitting as he must that the present possessors of land and capital hold possession of them simply by right of superior force, can hardly refuse to admit the right of the proletariat organized to that end to take possession of them by right of superior force. The only question remaining is how? And the only answer is how you can. Get what you can that tends in the right direction, by parliamentary means or otherwise, bien entendu, the right direction meaning that which curtails the capitalist's power of exploitation. If you choose to ask further how one would like it, the reply is so far as the present writer is concerned, one would like it to come as drastically as possible, as the moral effect of sudden expropria-
