Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/279

Rh favor the idea that this common property is an individual property belonging to the king or ruler of the state whoever he may be. The public debts, public property and taxation are not the only forms in which Communism exists in our civilization. Certain kinds of credits are nothing but the rankest Communism. When one man lends another money from his pocket or offers him a draft secured by a mortgage upon his private fortune, which is accepted by a third person like so much cash, then it is practically an exchange of individual property. But when a bank offers unsecured notes in circulation—and in many banks the amount of unsecured notes is a third or more of the entire number of notes in circulation—and gives a man in exchange for his signature on a note, a number of these unsecured notes with which he can go forth and buy anything he wishes, then the transaction is an act of the most complete Communism. The bank does not give its saved-up labor, that is gold, but a certificate for certain labor to be performed in the future. The fact that the community will give up goods, receiving these unsecured notes in exchange, is a proof of the respect in which mankind holds this principle of human solidarity, and a recognition of the concomitant fact that the individual member of the community has a right to a share in the goods existing in it, even when he can not offer in exchange for this share any personally produced equivalent.

The absorption of all goods into the public property after the death of the accumulator, would lead to an almost inexhaustible public fund, without interfering with individual possession. Each member of the community would have then his individual and general property as he has his baptismal and family name. The public property with which he is born, is like his family name; the private fortune which he accumulates during the course of his