Section VIII. The Reformers and Reformed Are Alike Making for the Servile

The Reformers and Reformed Are Alike Making for the Servile State:--There are two types of reformers working along the line of least resistance--These are the Socialist and the Practical Man--The Socialist again is of two kinds, The Humanist and the Statistician--The Humanist would like both to confiscate from the owners and to establish security and sufficiency for the non-owners--He is allowed to do the second thing by establishing servile conditions--He is forbidden to do the first--The Statistician is quite content so long as he can run and organise the poor--Both are canalised towards the Servile State and both are shepherded off their ideal Collectivist State--Meanwhile the great mass, the proletariat, upon whom the reformers are at work, though retaining the instinct of ownership, has lost any experience of it and is subject to private law much more than to the law of the Courts--This is exactly what happened in the past during the converse change from Slavery to Freedom--Private Law became stronger than Public at the beginning of the Dark Ages--The owners welcomed the changes which maintained them in ownership and yet increased the security of their revenue--to-day the non-owners will welcome whatever keeps them a wage-earning class but increases their wages and their security without insisting on the expropriation of the owners.

Appendix on "Buying-Out" An Appendix showing that the Collectivist proposal to "Buy-Out" the Capitalist in lieu of expropriating him is vain.