what they are doing nevertheless. In their frantic efforts to save themselves, the capitalist class is doing nothing less than undermining its very existence, cutting out the ground from under its own feet, abolishing, not only the basis of capitalism, but the basis of all class-society—private property. This fact has not been noticed hitherto and given the attention which it deserves, because, again, of the question of income which has obstructed our vision. Because our big capitalists get the benefits, the income, of our corporations, it has not been noticed that they don't own the property from which these incomes and' benefits are derived. In looking with rapturous gaze or hateful abhorrence at the enormous fortunes of our kings, barons, and lesser gentry, the startling fact has been lost sight of that these fortunes are mere titles to revenue and not to property. The law recognizes this fact clearly. The great John D. Rockefeller, ruler of the great Standard Oil and all its domain, has no more title to any part of the property of the great corporation of which he is the master than the poorest elevator boy employed in one of its buildings, and should he attempt to appropriate a dollar's worth of it by using it for himself, the law will treat it as a case of conversion, or larceny, of somebody else's property.
And let no one say that this is mere legal formality. Legal forms always express economic realities. Sometimes they survive their substance and become mere empty forms. In such cases they are records of past economic realities. When they are not records of the past they always express present reality. In this case the form is full of substance. It not only expresses a present reality, but, as it happens, presages the future. As yet the collective form substituted by the capitalists is crude and undeveloped as to form, and the collective bodies are still "private," that is, the benefits derived therefrom are enjoyed by private individuals. The proper distribution of the benefits, that distribution which is suited to the new form of ownership, which in itself is only an expression of the new form of production, will follow as
