The Online Library of Liberty

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• Introduction.
• Biographical and Critical.
• Author’s Preface to the First French Edition.
• Author’s Preface to the English Edition.
• Book I.: Evolution and Retrogression.
• Chapter I.: Social Retrogression.
• Chapter II.: Socialist Programmes.
• Chapter III.: Character of Political and Intellectual Progress.
• Chapter IV.: Character of Social Progress.
• Chapter V.: The Evolution of Property.
• Chapter VI.: Doctrinal Contradictions of the Socialists.
• Chapter VII.: Practical Self-contradiction of the Socialists.
• Book II.: Socialistic Sophisms.
• Chapter I.: Labour and Wealth.
• Chapter II.: On the Limits of Collectivist Society.
• Chapter III.: The Law of Supply and Demand.
• Chapter IV.: The %u201ciron Law%u201d of Wages.
• Chapter V.: Integral Wages.
• Chapter VI.: To Each According to His Needs.
• Chapter VII.: The Abolition of Wages.
• Chapter VIII.: Machinery.
• Chapter IX.: Excessive Production.
• Chapter X.: Economic Crises.
• Chapter XI.: Cheapness.
• Chapter XII.: The Game of the Gullible.
• Chapter XIII.: Socialistic Methods.
• Chapter XIV.: Facts Compared With Socialist Statements.
• Chapter XV.: Redistribution of Wealth.
• Book III.: Socialistic Legislation.
• Chapter I.: Putting Socialistic Sophisms In Force.
• Chapter II.: The Regulation of Child Labour.
• Chapter III.: Female Labour and the Law.
• Chapter IV.: Compulsory Idleness of Lying-in Women.
• Chapter V.: National Labour and Foreign Workmen.
• Chapter VI.: Trade Syndicates.
• Chapter VII.: Registry Offices.
• Chapter VIII.: Nature of %u201clabour Laws.%u201d
• Book IV.: Socialistic Morality and Respect For the Law.
• Chapter I.: Contempt For the Law.
• Chapter II.: Servile Labour and Free Labour.
• Book V.: Strikes and Social War.
• Chapter I.: Cost and Consequences of Strikes.
• Chapter II.: The Causes of Strikes.
• Chapter III.: During the Strike.
• Chapter IV.: Social War.
• Book VI.: Responsibilities.
• Chapter I.: Parliament and Strikes.
• Chapter II.: Subsidies to Strikers.
• Chapter III.: The Executive, the Judicature, and Strikes.
• Chapter IV.: Liberty and Anarchy.
• Chapter V.: The Socialism of Employers.
• Chapter VI.: Militarism, Protection, and Socialism.
• Conclusion.

CHAPTER V.

THE EVOLUTION OF PROPERTY.

Collectivism is its Primitive Form—Agrarian Communes—Nothing is to remain held under joint-ownership.

The Socialist ideal, as depicted by the programmes which we have quoted, is Collectivism; and even some of those who do not go quite so far as this, advocate the buying up of the land by the State, under the name of land nationalisation.

Have societies converted individual into collective ownership, so that, in invoking the example of the past, we may say that in this we recognise progress? Is not the phenomenon which results from progress the reverse of this? Amongst hunting and nomadic tribes, a horde wanders across an expanse of land more or less extensive, and, when the tribe settles down, the ownership remains undivided among its members. At Rome, according to Mommsen, the agrarian commune was the first form of land administration in Italy; and everywhere, in ancient China as well as in Germany, and in Great Britain before the Norman Conquest, we find the agrarian commune, which has survived down to the present day in the Russian mir, amongst the southern Slavs, in Croatia, Servia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Dalmatia, and Herzogovnia, but which always disappears upon the approach of a railway.

If the Collectivists of Gotha and Erfurt, or of the Bourse du Travail, would just propose to a French peasant to throw open his land—to offer it to the Mayoralty of his Commune, he would answer them according to the principle of justice which he understands better than any other: Nothing is to remain held in common.1 And he is quite right, for this joint-ownership is the negation of his own individuality.

[1]Nul n’est tenu de rester dans l’indivision, a legal aphorism applying to inheritance; literally, “No one is bound to remain in joint-ownership.” The French peasant may say this without perhaps seeing that this principle begs the point in dispute; that it would mean that all the pictures in the Louvre, all the national buildings, lands, and other property must be sold; that what it is important not to hold in common is, not the fee simple of land, but its use; and that, in so far as his land is mortgaged, he has already parted with its fee simple.—Ed.