Chapter VIII. Compensation or Confiscation?

Some of the earliest advocates of nationalisation made no bones about their intention to take over, without compensation, the property of the capitalists. Thomas Spence, the Newcastle school-master, who appears to have been the first to state a case for land nationalisation (his lecture given in 1775 was republished in 1882 by H.M. Hyndman), did not saddle his scheme with the burden of providing for compensation. He claimed quite simply “that mankind have as equal and just a property in land as they had in liberty, air, or the light and heat of the sun”. He would have been surprised at the suggestion that the existing state of things could be remedied while leaving landowners still to receive their rents.

The Democratic Federation in 1881 and the Social Democratic Federation in 1884 similarly did not envisage compensation. The latter body aimed at the appropriation of industry and transport, etc., as well as land.

Even the Fabian Society in their 1884 Manifesto, while not committed to confiscation, appear to have been aiming at achieving the same thing by what they regard as a more diplomatic method.

They proposed that “the State should compete with all its might in every department of production” (History of the Fabian Society by E.R. Pease, p. 42). Mr. G.B. Shaw, who was largely responsible for the Manifesto, clearly aimed at acquiring the capitalists’ property by driving them out of business.

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