m consists essentially of one demand--that the
land and other instruments of production shall be the common property
of the people, and shall be used and governed by the people for the
people."[280] "We suggest that the nation should own all the ships,
all the railways, all the factories, all the buildings, all the land,
and all the requisites of national life and defence."[281]

According to the Socialist doctrines which have been given in Chapter
IV, private property is the enemy of the workers. Therefore they quite
logically demand that all private property must be abolished. "The
problem has to be faced. Either we must submit for ever to hand over
at least one-third of our annual product to those who do us the favour
to own our country without the obligation of rendering any service to
the community, and to see this tribute augment with every advance in
our industry and numbers, or else we must take steps, as
considerately as may be possible, to put an end to this state of
things."[282] "The modern form of private property is simply a legal
claim to take a share of the produce of the national industry year by
year without working for it. Socialism involves discontinuance of the
payment of these incomes and addition of the wealth so saved to
incomes derived from labour. The economic problem of Socialism is thus
solved."[283]

A general division of the existing private property among all the
people is not intended, because it is considered to be impracticable.
"Socialism does not consist in violently seizing upon the property of
the rich and sharing it out amongst the poor."[284] "Plans for a
national 'dividing up' are not Socialism. They are nonsense. 'Dividing
up' means individual ownership. Socialism means collective
ownership."[285] "It is obvious that, in the present stage of economic
development, individual ownership is impossible. All the great means
of production are collectively owned now. Individual liberty based
upon individual property is therefore out of the question, and the
emancipation of the working class can only be achieved in social
freedom, based upon social property, through the transformation of
privately owned collective property into publicly owned collective
property."[286]

Starting from these premisses, the Socialists arrive at the demand
that "all the means of production and distribution, all the machinery,
all the buildings, everything that is necessary to provide the
fundamental nece