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the small sums round it. And the same capitalists who in all directions seize what they can get, try to persuade the small owners to beware of Socialism, because it is ready to tear their property from them. What a shameful falsehood! Socialism only teaches the way in which in a future time people will try to re-establish justice and a more equal condition of life for the whole community; while the owners of small property are being robbed of the little they own, not by Socialists—they have neither the power nor the desire to do so—but by the rich capitalists.
And this way is well-organised labour.
This certainly includes expropriation of those who have expropriated the mass of the people, and restitution of all means of production to those who made them. Socialism is the true and only friend of the man of small means, for it is the party of the working people. Large property is the natural enemy of small property, as long as it has not been able to seize and devour it.
Moreover, Socialism, far from intending to abolish any property to-day or to-morrow, only predicts that there will be a time, not suddenly provoked, but brought on by historical development, when the working people will insist upon their right to the product of their own work, against the privilege which property enjoys with regard to the work of others.
The conception of "property of capital" will be transformed gradually into the conception of "property of work."
Nowhere, you will perceive, is abolition of property thought of by Socialists, and nobody, I trust, will object to the change just mentioned. The development of mankind to greater perfection never was and never will be arrested by the prevailing laws concerning property. For instance, it was not arrested, when humanity demanded abolition of slavery, by the pretended divine right of the slave owners. And if such rights and laws demand that humanity stop its progress, such demand is madness. Laws and rights concerning property are subjected to constant changes, when such changes are in the interest of progress. But even in our better institutions injustice is ruling, and the change just spoken of will abolish that injustice and lead mankind to a higher state of perfection. At the bottom of our institutions there is a remnant of slavery; as soon as capital shall cease to govern, wage-labour and the rest of slavery will be abolished.
Freedom and equality will then be no longer empty and cheap phrases, but will have a meaning; when all men are really free and equal, they will honour and advance one another. The working man will then no longer be deprived of the fruit of his work, his property, and everybody who will work will be able to spend a good deal more in food, clothing, lodging, recreation, pleasure and instruction than he can spend at present.
If the Socialists had nothing to offer to the suffering people but the consolation that Communism will bring help at some future time, when the condition of life, nearly unbearable now, will have become quite so, this consolation would be poor. Long enough a future state of bliss has been held out to suffering mankind, in
