It will at once be noticed that it would be an impossibility for all the population to be capitalists just as it would be impossible for all of the population under a slave system to be slave-owners. Slave-owners could not exist unless some of the population were slaves.

 Likewise capitalists, living on incomes from property ownership, could not exist unless there were wage and salary earners, working for the capitalists. It will be noticed, too, that what the capitalists are concerned with is receiving their income from their investments and it matters little to them whether they receive it as rent from land, as dividends on shares in a private company, as interest on the stock of a public utility board such as London Passenger Transport Board, or as interest on money lent to the Government or to a Local Authority.

Now let us examine some of the arguments put forward by different groups of capitalists, bearing in mind that all the time each group of property owners sees things in the light of its own self-interest or what it believes to be its own self-interest.

The proprietor of the small business, in which he also very probably takes an active part in management along with his employees, usually opposes not only State control but also the monopolising activities of the big concerns. The small man only wants the State to intervene when it is a question of protecting him against his overpowering rivals. He claims that the small concerns are more enterprising and economical and he charges the big concerns and State enterprises with being bound up with “red tape” and bureaucratic methods.

The directors and shareholders in the big concerns while ready to make similar charges against Government monopolies defend their own form of organisation by claiming that the bigger the concern the more economical and efficient it can be. Only the large and wealthy organisations, they say, can afford to install expensive up-to-date machinery and organise research into new discoveries. They claim, too, that they are not merely profit-seeking bodies but are “servants of the public”, providing the best goods at the lowest prices.

Still more is made of this argument about being “servants of the public” by undertakings the activities of which are restricted by Acts of Parliament and by the supervision of appropriate Government Departments. Under this heading comes the London Passenger Transport Board. Others are the Port of London Authority, and Central Electricity Board. Broadly, those bodies are subject to some measure of Government control over the persons appointed to the boards of directors who manage them, over the fares, etc., they may charge to users, and over the interest rates that may be paid to the investors who purchase their Stocks. Usually these investors receive a fixed rate of interest and not, as on the ordinary shares of private companies, a dividend which may be higher one year and lower the next year according to the amount of profit that has been made.