its views, and to assist in bringing about a revolution, probably
accompanied by bloodshed and its own destruction? Such a thing has
never been. Such a thing will never be. People might be dissatisfied
and be ill-treated by the Socialist Government; they might be starved
to death or shot by the thousand; there might be risings and
rebellions and civil war in some parts of the country; the fleet might
be defeated and the colonies lost--yet not a word need appear in the
Socialist Government Press.

Some Socialists are childish enough to argue: "Though the printing
press will be a collective institution, it will be available to all.
Anyone, whatever unpopular opinions he may entertain, however hostile
to the administrators he may be, will be entitled to have anything
decent printed, provided he is ready to pay for the work done, or to
guarantee, or induce his friends to guarantee, that the cost will be
defrayed."[1266] "It would always be open to individuals or to groups
of individuals to publish anything they pleased on covering the cost
of publication. With the comparative affluence which would be enjoyed
by each member of the community, anyone who really cared to reach the
public ear would be able to do so by diminishing his expenditure in
other directions."[1267]

The Government would certainly neither print, nor circulate through
its post-office and newsagents, matter which it would consider to be
dangerous to its existence or seditious. The assertion that a private
individual in the Socialist Commonwealth might at his own expense
circulate his views throughout the country--there would be no more
millionaires but only wage-earners--is like asserting that a
bricklayer might with his savings pay off the British National Debt.

Lacking an independent public opinion, elections could be managed by
the officials through the official Press in their own interest;
elections would become a sham, and would no doubt soon fall into
disuse. The official class would become a caste of hereditary rulers
governing millions of serfs.

The foregoing makes it clear that in political as in economic matters
the Socialist State must fall a prey to the most complete absolutism
which the world has known, an absolutism which probably, through a
series of revolutions and civil wars, would at last end in anarchy. At
present a dissatisfied worker can change his employer, he can get
justice in the Law Courts, and in extreme cases he can put his