In Great Britain, which gives us our best illustration, there are Liberals who claim that it is Socialistic and others who deny that it has anything to do with Socialism; Conservatives who accept part of the program, and others who reject the whole as being Socialistic; Socialists, who claim that their ideas have been incorporated in the last two Budgets, and other Socialists who deny that either had anything in common with their principles.
While it is certain that the present policy of the British government is by no means directed against the power or interests of the capitalist class as a whole, and in no way resembles that of the Socialists, were not Socialist arguments used to support the government's position, and may not these lead towards a Socialist policy?
Certainly some of the principles laid down seem at first sight to have been Socialistic enough.

For example, when Mr.Churchill said that incomes from dividends, rent, and interest are unearned, or when Mr.
Lloyd George cried out: "Who is responsible for the scheme of things whereby one man is engaged through life in grinding labor to win a bare and precarious subsistence for himself, and when, at the end of his days, he claims at the hands of the community he served, a poor pension of eight pence a day, he can only get it through a revolution, and another man who does not toil receives every hour of the day, every hour of the night, whilst he slumbers, more than his poor neighbor receives in a whole year of toil?
Where did the table of that law come from?
Whose fingers inscribed it ?"[24] Lord Rosebery has pointed to the extremely radical nature of Mr.Lloyd George's arguments.

The representatives of the Government had urged, he said, that the land should be taxed without mercy:-- "(1) because its existence is not due to the owner; "(2) because it is limited in quantity; "(3) because it owes nothing of its value to anything the owner does or spends; "(4) because it is absolutely necessary for existence and production."[25] Lord Rosebery says, justly, that all these propositions except the last apply to many other forms of property than land, as, for instance, to government bonds, and that it certainly would be Socialism to attempt to confiscate these by taxation.
Lord Rosebery's task would have become even easier later, when Mr.Lloyd George enlarged his attack on the landlords definitely into an attack against the idle upper classes, who with their dependents he reckoned at two million persons.

He accused this class of constituting an intolerable burden on the community, said that its existence was the symptom of the disease of society, and that only bold remedies could help.

The whole class of inactive capitalists he viewed as a load both on the non-capitalist, wage-earning, salaried and professional classes, and on the active capitalists.