alth, by bringing the elements
of social wealth into the public coffers, and by holding it at the
disposal of society to administer to the prime needs of its members.

The basis of property is social, and that in two senses. On the one
hand, it is the organized force of society that maintains the rights of
owners by protecting them against thieves and depredators. In spite of
all criticism many people still seem to speak of the rights of property
as though they were conferred by Nature or by Providence upon certain
fortunate individuals, and as though these individuals had an unlimited
right to command the State, as their servant, to secure them by the free
use of the machinery of law in the undisturbed enjoyment of their
possessions. They forget that without the organized force of society
their rights are not worth a week's purchase. They do not ask themselves
where they would be without the judge and the policeman and the settled
order which society maintains. The prosperous business man who thinks
that he has made his fortune entirely by self help does not pause to
consider what single step he could have taken on the road to his success
but for the ordered tranquillity which has made commercial development
possible, the security by road, and rail, and sea, the masses of skilled
labour, and the sum of intelligence which civilization has placed at his
disposal, the very demand for the goods which he produces which the
general progress of the world has created, the inventions which he uses
as a matter of course and which have been built up by the collective
effort of generations of men of science and organizers of industry. If
he dug to the foundations of his fortune he would recognize that, as it
is society that maintains and guarantees his possessions, so also it is
society which is an indispensable partner in its original creation.

This brings us to the second sense in which property is social. There is
a social element in value and a social element in production. In modern
industry there is very little that the individual can do by his unaided
efforts. Labour is minutely divided; and in proportion as it is divided
it is forced to be co-operative. Men produce goods to sell, and the
rate of exchange, that is, price, is fixed by relations of demand and
supply the rates of which are determined by complex social forces. In
the methods of production every man makes use, to the best of his
ability, of the whole available