be more foolish
than the foregoing one?

An influential Socialist writer tells us: "The credits granted to the
citizens will be equal in all cases, without reference to skill,
intelligence, or the nature of the service performed; but no credits
will be given to the able-bodied shirkers, who will thus be starved
into doing their share of the world's work without other
compulsion."[1251] Other Socialist writers have put forth similar
views. This is a cheerful outlook for the free citizens of the free
Socialist Commonwealth. The workers will become "wage-slaves" in the
fullest sense of the term. They will have to submit to forced labour,
arbitrary wages, and arbitrary hours of labour, and those who do not
produce as much as the official overseers require--and they may have a
private grudge against some unfortunate worker who does his best--will
be starved until they work harder. The lot of savages ruled by the
knout, the kourbash, and the sjambok will be preferable to the lot of
men ruled by starvation in the free Socialist Commonwealth of the
future. The former have at least some liberty, while the latter will
be kept by officials, who will distribute food and force them to work
by rewards of food alternated by starvation, like performing dogs and
apes.

To carry on the business of the country the Socialist Government would
have to drop the principle of perfect freedom and to rely on coercion,
and it would be justified in doing so. If, as Mr. Blatchford has
repeatedly told us, "man has no right to himself because he did not
make himself," if man belongs not to himself and his family, but to
"society," it logically follows that society may compel him to work,
apportioning to him his task and his pay, without reference to his
wishes. Society being represented by its officials, elected or
appointed, these officials would absolutely dispose of the people.
Great Britain would be ruled like a gigantic convict prison.

The spirit in which even moderate Socialists already contemplate the
freedom of the individual may be seen from an address on Sweated
Labour which Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, M.P., delivered in Glasgow in
autumn 1907. He said: "There was no use tinkering with the problem.
Personally, he was not in favour of home work at all. To eliminate it
might seem a cold-blooded way of dealing with sweating, but it was the
only way that would give definite and final results. He would,
however, proceed carefully and scientifical