‘The Parasitic Power of Property’ by Scott Nearing from International Socialist Review. Vol. 15 No. 9. March, 1915.

ALL historic civilizations have developed a propertied class, which enjoyed leisure and luxury. To provide this leisure and luxury, the great body of citizens, serfs, and slaves labored, suffered, fought, and died. The Western World has produced the most effective means ever devised (transferable income yielding titles to property) for enabling one group in the community to live upon the work done by the others.

Perhaps the most menacing of all American institutions is the perfected organization which enables the few to live at the expense of the many. In three centuries the United States, in company with Western civilization, has produced, or at least tolerated, a system which automatically takes from the values created in the industrial processes a certain proportion, and places it in the hands of any person or any association which at that particular time happens to hold the key which unlocks the Golden Flood— the key of property ownership.

This income is not paid as a reward for virtue; people receive it who are vicious. It is not paid in return for meritorious social service; some of those who receive it are notoriously anti-social in all of their dealings. It is not paid for abstinence; many of the recipients of property income never knew what it was to abstain. It is not paid for saving; there are people with vast incomes who during their entire lives have never done anything except spend. It is not paid for productive effort; children, disabled persons, idlers, and wastrels are among its recipients. There is one thing and one thing only for which property income is paid, and that is that the ownership of a piece of property which is so scarce and so desired by another that he is willing to give a return for it. Today the ownership of property gives to the owner a royalty privilege. He may always invest it and receive five per cent on it. It is virtual power to tax, exercised by an individual owner of property against the productive activities of the community, and exercised because the owner now owns a piece of property.

Society does not ask of property owners the question: “Where did you get it, gentlemen?” The social mechanism which pays a bonus for property ownership knows no morals and no language. It proceeds on the one principle, “To him that hath shall be given,” by virtue of which the owners of property are royally rewarded.

The time has come when the facts must be faced honestly. Those who talk so glibly about the drunkenness and riotous living among workingmen, who are convinced that the workers get all they earn, and that even if they did get more, they would squander it anyway; those who defend property interests and property income are not interested in widows and in orphans, are not interested in bringing about an adjustment which will conform to the demands of human decency and social justice. They do not wish to know whether there is income enough to go around, but rather whether there is income enough to pay the producers what they demand, and then, or even before then, to pay to the owner of property a share of the products of industry in return for their property ownership. The question as it is asked by the long-headed defenders of vested power is simply this, “Is there enough income to pay interest on the bonds of the country (some 34 billions of them) and thus keep business stable; to pay wages and salaries to the producers of wealth, and keep the world going; and to return a dividend to the owners of stocks, and where separately held, to the owners of land—to the first because of an investment of capital; to the second as a recompense for holding as his own a part of the earth’s surface?” That is the real question as it is really asked. Thus far the answer has been steadily affirmative. There have been suggestions and protests, but the question has generally met with favorable consideration.

What will be the answer to the demand of vested incomes in the future? What new note will sound in response to their proposition? What will be their proposition?

As the country grows in numbers, in wealth, and in producing power, the proposition advanced by the owners of vested interests must of necessity take on a different form. Instead of asking whether there is enough wealth created in the productive processes to pay interest, dividends and rent, they must ask, “Will the producers of wealth shoulder a constantly increasing burden?” These land values are rising; the amount of capital in the country per productive worker and per capita of the population is growing constantly greater. As producers, will they carry the increased load? As consumers will they pay the increased tax on their prices?

Were the tax demanded by property a fixed one, the question might be settled once and for all, but the tax is increasing, actually and proportionately, hence the new aspect which the issue assumes.

There is income enough to go around. If all of those who participate in the production of wealth received an equal share of the wealth produced, the whole of American society would be able to live on a standard of splendid comfort. If even the present proportions were maintained between wages and salaries, if some were high paid and some low paid for their share in productive activity, there is income enough created to provide for every family in the United States a decent living (concretely, in industrial centers, $750 per year in moderate-sized towns, and $900 to $1,000 a year in great cities), and to pay many more families than now receive it a standard of comfort and even of luxury.

Is there income enough to go around? Indeed there is! The immediate trouble lies in the fact, not that there is not enough to go around, but that it is not made to go around.

Instead of going around, a large percentage of the values created in industry go straight into the coffers of property holders who are, almost universally the well-to-do. These values never even start around, but they are directed by the self-acting system of property control to those who own property.

Income is measured in terms of power and not in terms of worth. The masses of mankind, whose only power lies in their numbers and the organization into effective working bodies, would do well to ponder the difference and to understand the necessity for transferring power from the few who have to the many who need.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v15n09-mar-1915-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf