Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/99

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surplus value. I intend to call it unearned income. The legally recognized existence of unearned income proves in itself that our law of property does not even aim at obtaining for the labourer the whole product of his industry."

Thus, Dr. Anton Menger, approaching the problem from a different point of view, seems to agree with Mr. Cole, quoted in my last chapter, that the capitalist is a thief who lives upon the work of others whom he deprives of their full reward for the work that they do. It may be noted that he admits himself that the occupation of most countries was effected by conquest and settlement, and he seems to regard neither of these forms of activity as involving any labour, or entitling those who carried them out, and their heirs who followed them, to any reward for the exertions then made. In fact, as has already been pointed out, military service was a form of labour which was called for by the community at the time when it was fashionable, and therefore seems to be just as much entitled to its reward as that of many popular novelists, popular entertainers and popular swindlers of to-day whom the demands of the public enrich to the astonishment of detached observers.

It may also be noted that the two essentials of the ideal law of property assumed by