competition from abroad, which, by introducing lowpriced goods into this country, prevented the homegrown capitalist from fleecing the public indefinitely.1 As for the consumers' strike, its sphere is, equally obviously, limited. It can operate well enough in such things as grand pianos. If grand pianos get too expensive, people cease to buy them; but people cannot cease to buy necessaries just because they are expensive. Thus the monopolist has us in his grip; and he proceeds to do what we have taught him to regard as the correct and virtuous thing-to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market. We suffer; and, as long as we tolerate it, we deserve to suffer. The true wisdom is that which proposes to break the vicious circle by nationalising industry, and thus reaping all the benefit of profits for the community, either in remission of prices or in remission of taxes. Various admirable economists (Henry George,2 for instance, and Mr J. A. Hobson3) have attempted to draw a distinction between legitimate interest and illegitimate or excessive profit; and Henry George attempted to identify the former with the natural expansion of capital. This is surely a fallacy, a confusion of two distinct things. The expansion of capital, as we have seen, takes place by the sheer forces of productive labour. What proportion of that expansion is reaped by the private owner of capital is a question independent of the expansion itself; and it may be taken as a necessary law of capitalist society that the capitalist will always reap as much as he can get. He is, indeed, practically bound to do so while the 1 Cf. Chapter XXIV., end. 2 Henry George, Progress and Poverty, Book III., Chapter 3. 'J. A. Hobson, Democracy after the War, Allen & Unwin, 1917. system lasts. If we are sincere in our condemnation of the profiteer, let us direct it against the system which warns him that, while it lasts, if he does not fleece others, others will fleece him. It is not for us to throw stones at the profiteer; it is for us to abolish him. XXIV THE DANGER AND THE WAY OUT We have built our civilisation on competition; it is maintained by force; and those who insist on confining their appeal to competition and force are challenging they know not what. If Labour's plea for a finer and fuller life is to be met by the mere threat of force; if, to all reason and all morality, there is always to be retorted-even if only by implication-the one sneer: 'It is up to you to show yourselves the physically stronger,' then, sooner or later, Labour will be compelled to accept the challenge. Labour is the physically stronger, because of its numbers and because it produces all the wealth of the world, and it will have no great difficulty in proving itself so. But it does not want to have to do that. The bare mention of direct action throws members of the capitalist public into a panic; and, in panic, the capitalist urges and provokes the very evil that he fears. To sum up, Capitalism stands condemned, not only in theory, but in fact. It is breaking down before our eyes. It is condemning the majority of the population, both working-class and middle-class, to less than their share they produce and do not receive and they are increasingly determined to put an end to this state of things. If Capitalism takes the form of cutthroat competition, it may force prices down, In but it keeps wages down too. If it is consolidated into combines and monopolies, it may concede some nominal rise in wages, but it can always keep the rise in prices just in advance of the rise in wages. either or any case, the profiteer profiteers, and the public suffers. Organised Labour has a plan, specific and practical, for a peaceful revolution. It proposes, in brief, to nationalise industry, and secure, for the workers within each industry, control of the conditions of that industry. That some industries are easier to nationalise than others; that municipalisation, and the co-operation of consumers, are also vital elements of reconstruction; that the details of 'control' call for, and are receiving, elaborate consideration in the various schools of Socialism-all this is true, and important; but none of it affects my single argument, which is, first and last, that redistribution of the national income by communal ownership and workers' control is an urgent and inevitable economic necessity. I have given the facts. On those facts, we have a plain choice. We can accept the redistribution, and have a peaceful revolution. We can, by illegitimate and violent means, resist the redistribution, and have a bloody revolution. There is no third way. APPENDIX I COST OF LIVING Labour Gazette Figures and Trades Union Congress Labour Gazette figures for August, 1919, to September, 1920, showing percentage of increase in the general cost of living since 1914 The following Resolution was unanimously adopted at the special Trades Union Congress held at the Central Hall, Westminster, on December 9, 1919 :~ 'That this Congress protests against the Government's continued indifference to the abnormal profiteering engaged |