We see that the land nationalizer claims to remove, and the land
reformer in general to abate, the evil of poverty by securing for those
dependent on the fluctuating value and uncertain tenure of wage-labour
an equal share in those land-values, the product of nature and social
activity, which are at present monopolized by a few. Now the quality of
monopoly which the land nationalizer finds in land, the professed
socialist finds also in all forms of capital. The more discreet and
thoughtful socialist in England at least does not deny that the special
material forms of capital, and the services they render, may be in part
due to the former activity of their present owners, or of those from
whom their present owners have legitimately acquired them; but he
affirms that a large part of the value of these forms of capital, and of
the interest obtained for their use, is due to a monopoly of certain
opportunities and powers which are social property just as much as land
is. The following statement by one of the ablest exponents of this
doctrine will explain what this claim signifies--
"We claim an equal right to this 'inheritance of mankind,' which by our
institutions a minority is at present enabled to monopolize, and which
it does monopolize and use in order to extort thereby an unearned
increment; and this inheritance is true capital. We mean thereby the
principle, potentiality, embodied in the axe, the spade, the plough, the
steam-engine, tools of all kinds, books or pictures, bequeathed by
thinkers, writers, inventors, discoverers, and other labourers of the
past, a social growth to which all individual claims have lapsed by
death, but from the advantages of which the masses are virtually shut
out for lack of means.
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