rporate property without compensation, that will be done. And they
will have great historic precedents for their action. The Socialists of
Europe could point to the manner in which many of the feudal estates and
rights were confiscated, while American Socialists could point to the
manner in which, without indemnity or compensation, chattel slavery was
abolished.

So much is said merely by way of explanation, first, that the manner of
acquiring private and corporate property and making it social property
is not to be decided in advance, and secondly, that there are historic
precedents for confiscation. On the other hand, there is no good reason
why compensation should not be paid for such properties. You start! You
have been more shocked than if I had said we should seize the properties
and cut the throats of the proprietors! Be assured: I am not forgetting
my promise to be frank with you, nor am I expressing my personal opinion
merely when I say that there is nothing in the theory of modern
Socialism which precludes the possibility of compensation. There is no
Socialist of repute and authority in the world, so far as my knowledge
goes, who makes a contrary claim. I should regard it as unworthy to lay
down as the Socialist position views which were my own, and which were
not shared by the great body of Socialist thinkers throughout the world.
It is not less nor more than the truth that all the leading Socialists
of the world agree that compensation could be paid without doing
violence to a single Socialist principle, and most of them favor
it.[200]

Once more I shall appeal to the authority of Marx. Engels wrote in 1894:
"We do not at all consider the indemnification of the proprietors as an
impossibility, whatever may be the circumstances. How many times has not
Karl Marx expressed to me the opinion that if we could buy up the whole
crowd it would really be the cheapest way of relieving ourselves of
them."[201] Not only Marx, then, in the most intimate of his discussions
with Engels, his bosom friend, but Engels himself, in almost his last
days, refused to admit the impossibility of paying indemnity for
properties socialized, "_whatever may be the circumstances_."

Now, as to the difficulties--especially as to the widow's savings. The
socialization of non-productive wealth is not contemplated by any
Socialist, no matter whether it consist of the widow's savings in a
stocking or the treasures in the safe deposit vaults