Posted By Hilaire Belloc On June 18, 2011 7:20 PM
... [D]estitution means nothing else than the absence of property. ... To be paid a sufficient wage is not the same thing as to own; for he who pays the wage controls him who receives it.
The whole meaning of property is the economic freedom which it bestows upon the individual or family possessing it. ... A man who lives in his own house exploits no one. A man possessing his share in the factory in which he works exploits no one. A man possessing national bonds, the proceeds of which are equivalent to the taxes he pays for the meeting of the interest of national bonds, exploits no one. ... Some will have more, some less. ... It is the few taxing the many that [creates a sense of injustice]. All the theoretical injustice of attaching to exploitation one class by another lessens and nearly disappears where property is fully distributed. Where it is only income that is well distributed men are still under the thumb of whoever or whatever pays that income....
Of course, an exact distribution of ownership would be an ideal, and therefore impossible, state of affairs: but a condition of society in which the greater part of citizens owned enough to be economically free is practicable, and possible of attainment. So far from being an imaginary Utopian scheme it has been accepted for centuries throughout societies numbering millions and is to be found peaceably and successfully at work over the greater part of the civilized earth at this moment. Only where men are living under the curse of Industrial Capitalism is well divided property unfamiliar. ... Well distributed property is its own guarantee of survival. ...
Discovery and invention have, it is true, produced, much larger industrial units of production than our fathers knew—for instance in the way of ships, of land transport, and instruments and materials used for building. But discovery and invention also advantaged certain lesser units. There is no better example of this than the electronic motor and the facile distribution of electric power. These between them could have restored masses of small producers had they been taken advantage of in time.
... Where the nature of the new instruments makes small units impossible there is nothing to prevent those who work wit the large new units holding those units co-operatively as members of a Guild. ... The Guild is essentially an association of free owners who work co-operatively any instruments which is too expensive for separate ownership by a single member. ...
Let it be remembered that this aim of ours for the restoration of private property among a determining number of the community, the distribution of property among the masses of citizens who should thus be made free, does not contradict state ownership of certain functions. What it contradicts is the false doctrine of general or preponderant state ownership, or what is worst of all universal State ownership. The State exists for the family and the individual; not these for the State.
... Any free and well ordered state includes a proportion of State ownership which is based upon private ownership in the hands of as many citizens and families as possible at any rate, of so many as to make the principle determining character of society. ... The function of distribution should also follow the same lines. Where there must be concentration in a large unit, that unit should be organized as a Guild; but in the vast majority of cases a small unit of distribution—the small store—is sufficient.
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