We must note, first of all, a general truth about the curious time we live
in. It will not be so difficult as some people may suppose to make the
Servile State look rather like Socialism, especially to the more pedantic
kind of Socialist. The reason is this. The old lucid and trenchant
expounder of Socialism, such as Blatchford or Fred Henderson, always
describes the economic power of the plutocrats as consisting in private
property. Of course, in a sense, this is quite true; though they too
often miss the point that private property, as such, is not the same as
property confined to the few. But the truth is that the situation has
grown much more subtle; perhaps too subtle, not to say too insane, for
straight-thinking theorists like Blatchford. The rich man to-day does not
only rule by using private property; he also rules by treating public
property as if it were private property. A man like Lord Murray pulled
the strings, especially the pursestrings; but the whole point of his
position was that all sorts of strings had got entangled. The secret
strength of the money he held did not lie merely in the fact that it was
his money. It lay precisely in the fact that nobody had any clear idea of
whether it was his money, or his successor's money, or his brother's money,
or the Marconi Company's money, or the Liberal Party's money, or the
English Nation's money.
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