Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/49

 lays in addition every year and indefinitely a considerable tax on the product of the workman and farmer in the form of rent for farms, ground rent, rent of land in the cities, taxes for the payment of the public debt, industrial profit, commercial profit, and interest on stocks and bonds.

"Therefore in our present society, the work of the workers is not their exclusive property.… the proletarian does not own his own body absolutely.… He has hardly left the factory, the mine, or the yard, where part of his effort has been expended in the creation of dividends and profits for the benefit of Capital, he has hardly gone back to the poor tenement where his family is huddled together, when he is face to face with another tax, with other dues in the shape of rent. And besides this, State taxation … pares down his already twice diminished wage, and this not only to provide for the legitimate running expenses of a civilized society and for the advantage of all its members, but to guarantee the crushing payment of interest on the public debt, for the profit of the same capitalist class or for the maintenance of armaments at once formidable and useless.… When finally the proletarian tries to buy, with the remnant of wages left to him after these inroads, the commodities which are necessities of daily life, he has two courses open to him. If he lacks time or money