etc. Besides it is impossible to expropriate the industrial capital and cry a halt before the money capital. The two are much too closely bound up together. The socialisation of the capitalist concerns (a short expression for their transition into national, municipal, and co-operative ownership), would lead, of itself, to the socialisation of a large portion of the money capital; when a factory or a farm is nationalised, their debts are also nationalised, that is, turned from private into national debts. If it is a joint-stock company, the shareholders become creditors of the State.
In addition there comes into consideration also the landed property. I am speaking here of property in land, not of agricultural farms. The large agricultural farms, managed on capitalist principles, will in the natural order of things pass through the same mill as the rest of the large industry. They will lose their labourers, and be forced to offer their concerns to the State or the commune for purchase, and thus they will be socialised. The small peasant farms may, on the other hand, well remain private property. I will return to this later.
And so we are not dealing here with farming, but with the property in land, apart from farming—that real estate, whether town or country, which allows its owner to draw ground rent, be it in the form of rent or lease or interest on mortgage.
What we said about the money capitalist applies also to the landlord. He, likewise, has no longer any personal functions to perform in economic life, and can be easily shoved on one side. Just as in the case of the private monopolies mentioned above, so too, in the case of private ownership in land, we find to-day even among the middle-class a demand for its socialisation, since this private monopoly becomes—especially in the towns—ever more and more oppressive and obnoxious. Here also, it needs only the requisite power to effect the socialisation. The victorious proletariat will provide this power.
The expropriation of the exploiting classes reveals itself as a simple question of power. It is the necessary outcome of the economic needs of the proletariat and will thus be the unavoidable result of its victory.
Chapter III.—Confiscation or Compensation?
With less certainty than the question of the necessity and the possibility of the expropriation of the expropriators, are we in a position to answer the question which follows as a corollary to it—Will the expropriation proceed as confiscation or as purchase? Will the owners be compensated or not? That is a question which it is not
