There is a growing feeling, which I entirely share, against allowing those services which are in the nature of monopolies to pass into private hands.

[Mr.Churchill has expressed the regret that the railways are not in the hands of the State.] There is a pretty steady determination, which I am convinced will become effective in the present Parliament to intercept _all_ future unearned increment, which may arise from the increase in the speculative value of the land."[14] (Italics mine.) Mr.Churchill's declared intention ultimately "to intercept _all_ future unearned increment" of the land is certainly a tremendous step towards collectivism, as it would ultimately involve the nationalization of perhaps a third of the total wealth of society.

With railways and monopolies of all kinds also in government hands, a very large part of the industrial capital of the country would be owned by the State, and, though all agricultural capital, and therefore the larger part of the total, remained in private hands, we are certainly justified in calling such a state of society _capitalist collectivism_.
But not one of the elements of this collectivism is a novelty.

Railroads are owned by governments in most countries, and monopolies often are.
The partial appropriation of the "unearned increment" is by no means new, since a similar policy is being adopted in Germany at the present moment, and is favored not by the radicals alone, but by the most conservative forces in the country; namely, the party of landed Prussian nobility.

Count Posadovsky, a former minister, has written a pamphlet in which he urges that the State should buy up the land in and about the cities, and also that it should fix a definite limit beyond which land values must not rise.