Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/188

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to the dangers of State control, and, in those services, such as the post office, which were already publicly administered, discontent was growing because the State and municipal employees found that they were no less wage slaves than the employees of private profiteers." And on page 114: "The crying need of our days is the need for freedom. Machinery and Capitalism between them have made the worker a mere serf, with no interest in the product of his own labour beyond the inadequate wage which he secures by it. The Collectivist State would only make his position better by securing him a better wage, even if we assume that Collectivism can ever acquire the driving-power to put its ideas into practice: in other respects it would leave the weaker—[presumably a misprint for "worker"] essentially as he is now—a wage slave, subject to the will of a master imposed on him from without. However democratically-minded Parliament might be, it would none the less remain, for the worker in any industry, a purely external force, imposing its commands from outside and from above. The postal workers are no more free while the post office is managed by a State department than Trade Unionists would be free if their Executive Committees