A potent passage from Marx reproduced in Hermon Titus’ The Socialist.

‘Possessors, Not Owners’ by Karl Marx The Socialist (Seattle). Vol. 10 No. 479. July 24, 1910.

“That it is only the title of a number of persons to the possession of the globe which enables them to appropriate a portion of the Surplus Labor of society to themselves, and to do so to an increasing extent with the development of production, is concealed by the fact that the capitalized rent, this capitalized tribute, appears as the price of the land, and that the land may be sold like any other article of commerce.

“The buyer, therefore, does not feel that his title to the rent is obtained gratis, and without the labor, the risk, and the spirit of enterprise of the capitalist, but rather that he has paid for it with an equivalent. To the buyer, as we have previously remarked, the rent appears merely as the interest on the capital, with which he has bought the land and consequently his title to the rent.

“In the same way, the slaveholder considers a negro, whom he has bought, his property, not because slavery as such entitles him to that negro, but because he has acquired him just as he does any other commodity, by means of sale and purchase; but the title itself is only transferred, not created, by sale. The title must exist before it can be sold, and a series of sales cannot create this title by repetition any more than one single sale can.

“THE TITLE WAS CREATED IN THE FIRST PLACE BY THE CONDITIONS OF PRODUCTION. As soon as these have arrived at a point where they must shed their skin, the material source of the title, justified economically and historically and arising from the process which creates the material requirements of life, falls to the ground, and with it all transactions based upon it.

“FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF A HIGHER ECONOMIC FORM OF SOCIETY, THE PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF THE GLOBE ON THE PART OF SOME INDIVIDUALS WILL APPEAR QUITE AS ABSURD AS THE PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF ONE MAN BY ANOTHER.

“Even a whole society, a nation, or even all societies together, are not the OWNERS of the globe. They are only its POSSESSORS, its users, and they have to hand it down to the coming generations in an Improved condition, like good fathers of families.”

(In “Capital,” Vol. Ill., p. 901. Kerr’s Edition.)

There have been a number of journals in our history named ‘The Socialist’. This Socialist was a printed and edited in Seattle, Washington (with sojourns in Caldwell, Idaho and Toledo, Ohio) by the radical medical doctor, former Baptist minister and socialist, Hermon Titus. The weekly paper began to support Eugene Debs 1900 Presidential run and continued until 1910. The paper became a fairly widely read organ of the national Socialist Party and while it was active, was a leading voice of the Party’s Left Wing. The paper was the source of many fights between the right and left of the Seattle Socialist Party. in 1909, the paper’s associates split with the SP to briefly form the Wage Workers Party in which future Communist Party leader William Z Foster was a central actor. That organization soon perished with many of its activists joining the vibrant Northwest IWW of the time.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/thesocialist-seattle/100723-seattlesocialist-v10w479.pdf