that either personal or real property is personally or really made by its owner is not less apparent. Most modern property consists of shares, or bonds, or other pieces of paper, the value of which is based upon the estimated future earnings or profits of some industrial, commercial, or financial business. These values are liable to fluctuate with every change in the current market for the goods or services the business produces, or with the public confidence-in the future of the enterprise. Such property may be worth twice as much, or half as much, next year as it is now, without any action on the part of its owner. Yet the property owner, though aware of these changes due to the conduct of others, is apt to regard his stocks and shares as a fixed property, because the nominal value inscribed on the share certificates does not change, and he regards claims of taxing authorities as invasions upon his rightful ownership. He does not recognise the part played by the economic community in making and changing the amount of his property.
If, however, we regard, as we must, this economic system as 'social' in its operation, we come to the conclusion that A.'s income or fortune, which he imagines himself to have made, is in reality determined or made by the activities of the whole economic system operating through the machinery of markets.
This is, of course, an elementary lesson in economic science. But it has been necessary to set it out explicitly because it is almost universally ignored by members of the owning classes, who denounce alike
