Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/80

 Mr. Ramsay Macdonald in his very interesting little book on The Socialistic Movement, one of the volumes of the Home University Library, gives another version of this criticism of rent as a charge on industry. On page 56, "Income from land," he says, "is not of the nature of reward for services rendered. It used to be. Land was granted by the sovereign to his captains who, in return for their possessions, rendered military service to the state, and in addition paid certain taxes, so as to provide the king—who was the embodiment of the state—with what income he required." On page 159 he says that "the type of unearned income is rent. The Socialist therefore propose to tax it, and when he is told that by doing so he is differentiating one kind of property from another, he replies that this is so, the reason being that land is differentiated from every other kind of property by its own nature. The aim of this tax is to secure the economic rent for the state, because it is the state that creates the value which economic rent represents." This is the argument on which those depend who draw this difference between rent and interest, rent being in their opinion a profit which is made by the State, and ought to belong to the State, while interest