been multiplied and increased through the war, and that extravagance and luxury in expenditure are more conspicuous than ever they were, in the face of unprecedented lack of employment among the workers. (The Times in Ascot week had a leading article movingly arguing that all this is merely a plucky but hollow effort to make a show of gaiety under difficulties.) But even without this irritant it would in any case be, and it is, the policy of Socialism, in the interests of social health, to abate inequalities of means. Even non-Socialist Governments have diagnosed this national expediency so far as already themselves to resume by supertaxation more than half of the incomes of the excessively rich, as well as to differentiate between incomes from property and incomes from earnings. The country is none the less prosperous on that account. (We know the counter-arguments of super-tax payers.) Socialist policy desires indeed to eliminate, in an even greater degree than can be done by the most drastic income tax, class distinctions founded on wealth, but this not at all as a revenge' for past grievances or out of 'class hatred'; though I am afraid this distinction in motive will not substantially comfort those objectors who may be affected.

Whilst this aim is common to all the three sections into which Colonel Stanley divides Socialists, they are not disunited to any practical effect by differences of view with regard to State ownership or State control. It is true that in the earlier years of the period I have been dealing with those who were not Anarchist Communists, like William Morris (one of the most seminal and stimulating minds of the whole movement) inclined more than most Socialists would to-day towards complete State Collectivism. State ownership and State control is still pressed for from the economic side in regard to obviously national services—perhaps ten or twelve at most-such as coal-mining and the railways; but most British Socialists have long recognised that merely to substitute in all industries a bureaucracy for the private employer, over against a wage-earning proletariat, would not be an infallible solvent of industrial difficulties. It is therefore not correct to suppose, as Colonel Stanley appears to, and as Sir Alfred Mond (in the first House of Commons debate on Socialism) took for granted, that any school or section of the British Socialist movement is aiming at the establishment of what has been called the Servile State as a means of administering our economic resources in the interests of the whole community. Any such notion should be corrected by attention to the Syndicalist and guild-Socialist literature of the movement, and to the gradual evolution of the idea of a common control in the interests of the community through the federation of trades rather than through a political Cabinet.

The substance of the position is this. Those who believe that

British Socialism can be checked by enlightened argument are mistaken if they think that they can weaken it by combating red revolutionism, by arguing against Marxism or by denouncing Bolshevism. If they wish to discredit those they had better first muzzle the pitiably ill-informed, empty-headed, and vulgarminded women who are too often put up to declaim against them at Primrose League meetings, and then make some serious attempt to dispose of Lord Milner, who endorses Marx's main indictments of profiteering private capitalism. They had better leave the tilt against the Servile State to expert Individualists like Sir Alfred Mond, whose spiritual ancestors Conservatives of Colonel Stanley's type have honourably withstood in the past. What they have to deal with is not, as he suggests, a kaleidoscopic trio of incompatible theories, but a positive organic evolution of the tissue of the Socialist State, actuated by motives which may be formulated in those theories, to a very unimportant degree by the last mentioned, to an appreciable degree by a just and reasonable detestation of plutocratic civilisation, predominantly by the reasoned analysis of the failure of capitalist industrialism and the determination to transform the organisation of industry, and, perhaps most importantly of all, by a fourth, which Colonel Stanley ignores in his article-the determination of spirited men to supersede Mastership founded on property and private capital and aiming at private profit. The Labour Party, constituted as I have explained, is the growing body of the Co-operative Industrial State, productive and distributive, and its spirit and programme are consciously and determinately Socialist. It is still very far from having enrolled all the constituents of its necessary organisation, which must include much human capacity now in the service of private profit. Its members vote at elections, and will continue to vote, as members of a developing corporation, according to their understanding of the purpose of that corporation, which they approve, and not out of an intermittently stokedup enthusiasm for a Buff or a Blue or a Red political party candidate. They occupy their places in it as Trade Unionists, cooperators, municipal councillors, political voters, for the most part, because generations of struggle have taught them to believe that it offers the only way open to their class for the general improvement of their temporal conditions; but their leaders and most of their members are inspired as much by spiritual ideals as by temporal aims.

They know that their social ideals are fine, and not sordid, and they have faith-much more faith than their opponents—in the power of fineness. Their immediate practical policies, industrial or Parliamentary, are determined not by Marxian demonstrations, but by what they, as daily wage-workers, recognise to be the facts

about the conditions and reactions, for themselves, of the industrial system under which they live. Their intellectual leaders know, and are showing daily in Parliament that they know, much more about these, from high finance down to poor relief, than do wellintentioned nurslings of the propertied classes who have not lived in contact with those conditions.

Some of the Party's opponents frankly desire to cripple it—no matter the means-before it grows any stronger; some to argue with it their task is less simple than Colonel Stanley supposes, but to attempt it will assist their own education. It is not argument they have to find so much as the means of unpicking, without recourse to methods that can only exasperate, the living, growing tissue of industrial and co-operative organisation, or, as the most sanguine of Conservatives who appreciate this fact are urging, of modifying its immediate course of development by concessions to its demands for increased self-determination in industry. Only experienced and honestly public-spirited industrial experts had better attempt such a task. Such men have always existed, and no doubt do now exist, among the employing classes. Amateur politicians and subsidised lecturers are not likely to help Colonel Stanley's aim. And I think that the wisest among his Party recognise that they had better retire in good order. It is to be hoped for their own sakes that they will succeed in restraining the more insane vagaries of their Parliamentary and industrial champions, and will resist solicitations to reinforce themselves with the services of disengaged political filibusters.

SYDNEY OLIVIER.

THE CAPITAL LEVY: A DISPASSIONATE VIEW

It would be interesting and profitable if we could settle down to a discussion of the Capital Levy upon its own merits, laying aside the political bias and class hatred which have so often been introduced into the controversy. We have heard it said lately that at last 'economics has come into its own'; but, judging from the arguments advanced by supporters and opponents of the proposed levy on capital, one would almost be justified in the belief that economics had been relegated to the limbo of the pseudo-sciences. It is grievous to see men sacrificing reason to prejudice even on a subject which is merely of speculative interest; but when the economic future of the nation is involved the spectacle is positively alarming.

Socialists, finding the root of all social evils in the private ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, aim to abolish the existing system and set up in its place some form of public ownership. They regard the centralisation of industry and the concentration of capital as providing the foundation of a Socialist State, on the ground that the existence of great corporations with monopolistic or semi-monopolistic power not only deprives us of the control of competition, but also creates a form of business organisation which can without difficulty be transferred from private to public control. The attitude of the Socialists has been to regard this centralisation of industry as a movement which carries the economic organisation of society ever nearer to the point at which they desire it to arrive, and it seems only logical that they should approve this trend of affairs and do nothing to delay or impede the movement. The recent full dress debate in the House of Commons clearly shows that British Socialists have not abandoned the great ideal, while their persistent advocacy of the Capital Levy indicates that they have abandoned the logic which their theory involves.

A levy on fortunes of 5000l. and upwards will lighten the burden of future taxation and at the same time effect a more equitable distribution of wealth. This is the way of their reasoning. Yet it is obvious that, in so far as a levy achieves a redistribution of wealth, it tends toward the decentralisation of industrial

power and hampers the development of those industrial relations in which the Socialist ideals can be realised. Thus the question naturally arises, 'Why do the Socialists sacrifice their ideal to the political requirements of the moment?' There are several possible answers. Some Socialists probably have failed to observe the contradiction. Others, no doubt, being honestly convinced that the levy will bring a real relief to the national finances, consider that in the present instance the pressing burdens of the moment should be lightened even at the expense of postponing the arrival of the Socialist millennium. Still others are to be found who support the proposal because of its political value; being a measure which hits the wealthy classes of the community, the levy is calculated to win the support of the poor, who are numerically greater.

There is a shrewd suspicion among many people that the Socialist Party is attempting to build up its political strength by an appeal to economic jealousy and class prejudice. Evidence may be found to support this view, not only from speeches delivered in the House of Commons, but also from the public discussion on the Capital Levy which preceded the last General Election. The bulk of the Socialist Press is saturated with class hatred. The fact that these influences are being employed to popularise the levy proposal does not necessarily indicate that the measure would be against the best interests of the people as a whole. But that fact does cloud the issue. It creates extremists on the other side who rush in with arguments almost equally bad to increase the clamour that drowns the voices of those who plead for reason.

Sir Josiah Stamp, speaking at University College on the effects of a Capital Levy on the future of national revenue, said that, apart from the prognostications on the one side that industry would be encouraged and wealth increased, and those on the other hand that industry and saving would be demoralised, a levy would have certain automatic effects in reducing the yield of taxes charged at present rates, because it would reduce fortunes and incomes to be taxed in future. The greater this reduction of revenue and the more it tended to approach the reduction in expenditure, the less the scope for reducing taxes or spending money on new objects. If the loss on the one hand equalled the reduction in interest on the other, then all would agree that the game was not worth the candle. If the major part of the levy had to be employed, so to speak, in repairing its own ravages in future, then the case for it had gone.

The lecturer went on to say that a levy of 3,000,000,000l. would save a little over 140,000,000l. in interest, but against this was to be set a large reduction of future revenue. The levy would diminish the taxable property and income of the people to such an