Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/66

 62 which labour cannot create without the aid of capital. A man can go into the forest and tear boughs off trees with his hands for his fires, but he cannot fell trees without an axe of some kind, which is capital. Capital, therefore, has its value, a simple fact which means that under the freest economic conditions, interest will be paid. It may be interest of five per cent., it may be of a tenth per cent., but the utility of capital in production will always have an appreciable value which the labourer who uses it will pay without suffering exploitation or injustice. Interest is therefore not of the nature of a monopoly toll. It is a payment for service rendered. This we may call pure interest. Risk may determine its amount, but no consideration but this can justify its existence.

But everything called interest is not of this nature, as a study of some businesses will show. Money-lending has acquired an evil reputation because many of its transactions are of the nature of illicit operations. It lives under great risks; its victims are in unusual straits, and in relation to them it is almost of the nature of a monopoly because their chances of succour are so few; it deals with a class of reckless borrowers who are willing to sacrifice the whole of the morrow for a moment of pleasure to-day; it is often dishonest. When we allow it high