Is This Socialism?

IS T H I S S O C I A L I S M ? A SOCIALIST, we used to be told, is &s;one who has yearnings for the equal division of unequal earnings&s;. This description neatly slurred over the fact that the inequalities the Socialists were most intent on getting rid of did not arise out of earnings at all, but out of the possession of claims to income based on ownership and, above all, on inherited wealth. Socialists saw the gross inequalities of income as proceeding much more from the &s;rights of property&s; than from differential rewards in return for unequal services. Most of them did, no doubt, hold that the large disparities of earned incomes were due to a considerable extent to the existence of large unearned incomes, and that, if the latter were eliminated, it would become much easier to narrow differences in earned incomes. They denied the contention of many orthodox economists that differences in earned incomes corresponded to real differences in the value of services rendered, and were dictated by inexorable economic laws. They held, as against this view, that the high salaries and fees paid to professional and managerial workers were in part a reflection of the social inequality inherent in a social system which accepted unearned incomes based on property as legitimate and as carrying high prestige, and were in part due to the near-monopoly of higher education by the children of the well-to-do. They wished to diminish the inequalities of earned as well as of unearned income; but their main attack was concentrated on the inequality due to ownership. On that ground, in the main, they demanded the socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the elimination of the toll levied by individuals on the social product on the score of ownership.