Some Socialists suggest that the bonds given in exchange for property
acquired by the State might be cancelled later on. The property-owners
could be deprived of their possessions without any difficulty, either
gradually by taxation or at one blow by confiscation at the option of
the men in power. "When the entire capitalistic property takes the
form of State bonds, the property which it is impossible to ascertain
to-day would then be known to everybody. It would only be necessary to
decree that all bonds are to be registered in the name of the owner,
and it would be possible to estimate exactly the capitalist income and
the property of everyone. It would then also be possible to screw up
the taxes to any extent without fear of their being evaded by any
concealments. It would then be also impossible to escape them by
emigration, since it is the public institutions of the country, and in
the first place the State, from which all interest comes, and the
latter can deduct the tax from the interest before it is paid out.
Under these circumstances it would be possible to raise the
progressive income and property tax as high as necessary--if necessary
as high as would come very near, if not actually amount to,
confiscation of the large property."[307] The foregoing is a simple
plan of swindling property-owners out of their holdings.

Some of the more moderate Socialists argue: "There is much to be said
in favour of the liberal treatment of the present generation of
proprietors and even of their children. But against the permanent
welfare of the community the unborn have no rights."[308] On the other
hand, Bax, the philosopher of British Socialism, quite logically and
honestly states that the idea of compensation has no room in the
Socialist code of ethics, that the bourgeois idea of compensation on
grounds of justice is irreconcilable with the Socialist conception of
justice. He says: "Between possession and confiscation is a great gulf
fixed, the gulf between the bourgeois and the Socialist worlds.
Well-meaning men seek to throw bridges over this gulf by schemes of
compensation, abolition of inheritance, and the like. But the
attempts, as we believe, even should they ever be carried out
practically, must fall disastrously short of their mark and be
speedily engulfed between the two positions they are intended to
unite. Nowhere can the phrase 'He that is not for us is against us' be
more aptly applied than to the moral standp