capitalist class owns the factories, workshops, &c., the worker
has become to that class a slave in the full and generally accepted
meaning of the word. "The effect of private property in land and
capital is in all essential respects the same as was the effect of
private property in human beings. In each case slavery is the result.
The form may have changed, but the substance remains."[106] "The
labourer to-day is a slave, and labour has become a mark of
bondage."[107] Except for a slight difference in outward form, the
British wage-slaves are no better off than were the black slaves on
the sugar plantations in the past. "Much as the 'free-born Briton' may
dislike to hear the painful truth recited, it is a fact, not to be
controverted, that four-fifths of our total population are bound as
completely and as miserably as ever was a black African slave to a
Western planter. There is no real freedom which is not economic
freedom. He is a slave who depends for his bread upon the will or the
whim of a man like himself, or of a number of such masters."[108] In
other words, capitalism and slave-owning are for all practical
purposes synonymous words, as may be seen from the Socialist
Catechism: "Q. What constitutes the chief difference between
capitalism and slave-owning? A. The fact that the capitalist goes
through the form of bargaining with the labourer as to the amount of
the portion of the produce that shall be returned to him.--Q. What is
this farce called? A. Freedom of contract.--Q. In what sense is it
free? A. In this sense--that the labourer is free to take what is
offered or nothing.--Q. Has he anything to fall back upon? A. He has
absolutely nothing in countries where the tyranny of capitalism is
untempered by any form of Socialism."[109]

To those working men who might object that it is a gross exaggeration
to say that the British worker is a slave, and that he is penniless,
the Socialist agitator answers: "What? You are a free man and not a
slave? There are no slaves in this country? What is a slave? One who
works at the bidding of another, and only by permission of another,
and for the profit of that other. Does not that fit your case exactly?
Do you work when you like and idle when you like? Not you! You work
when the capitalist requires your labour, when your services will be
useful in making a profit for him. When that is not the case you can
starve in the gutter, although there may be all the necessaries of