ABSTRACT
IN dealing with Taxation under Collectivism we must first inquire into the characters differentiating the services that ought to be supported by taxation from those vastly more numerous services that ought to be supported only by payments from the persons who choose to take the benefit of them, and only in proportion to that benefit. The Collectivist State, i t must be borne in mind, will carry on as national concerns practically all economic services, industrial and professional ; and i t is therefore necessary to discover the principle according to which services that ought to be supported by taxation can be distinguished from all others. Communists openly declare that their ideal is to have all services " free," which can only mean of course that all services must be supported by taxation. This would lead inevitably to forced labour and rationing, which, if society were not totally wrecked, would result in waste, inefficiency, and virtual slavery. One of the best ways of combatting the pernicious doctrines of Communism is to formulate the fundamental principle of taxation, for i t justifies the making of only a few of the national services " free," to use the word in the communistic sense, and by implication excludes all the others from that category. Let us consider one or two concrete cases of the two classes of services, and try to discover the distinctive features according to which they should be placed in the one class or the other.
