Marx's writings clearly indicate that land owning as a dominant social status declined with the final breakdown of feudal society and the imposition of capitalism on its ruins. The industrial capitalist, employing many hundreds or thousands of workers, has supplanted the feudal over-lord. Today the workers enter the spheres of production, etc., not merely on "the land", but in vast factories or mills where they are exploited by the owners of giant machinery and the various appliances necessary to the output of wealth. The immediate employer or capitalist is the exploiter of the workers he engages. He has to hand back to them, in the form of money—wages only a portion of the value of their product. The remainder is his own property immediately considered; but. as is well known, he may not own the land or the factory where his production takes place, hence he is compelled to pay rent for the privilege of using these to their owners. From out of what does he pay? Answer, out of the unpaid labour of the workers. From the surplus left over after the wage bill of the workers has been met, a portion of the wealth may be handed to the landlord, and still another portion to the lender of money.
But where, however, our capitalist owns his own factory site and does not have recourse to loans of money whereby interest charges have to be met. he takes and holds the surplus himself. The all- important point to the workers is that no matter which position applies, it would not matter a brass farthing to their position as an exploited class.
Even were it possible to tax the holders of land out of existence, as the land tax advocates insist, it would solve no problem towards social ownership, such as we Socialists are seeking to establish.
(From an article Socialism and Land Ownership by R. Reynolds. Socialist Standard. October 1934)
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