Slavery in a Land of Liberty: Civil Liberty and Wage Slavery in Britain

by Malcolm Hill (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2000

  $3.27

  This is text on history and political thought, acknowledging what has been achieved in English history and showing what injustices need eradication before Britain can call itself a just, free, and prosperous democracy. Taking the idea of John Locke, the great English philosopher, that the fundamental purposes of society are to preserve the civil and economic liberties of the individual, this book assesses the great civil liberties have been won by the people struggling over centuries against the monarchy, Parliament and the judiciary. But civil liberty represents only half the liberty that a free man requires in a just democracy. Millions are forced to take jobs which they loathe and earn insufficient earnings to support families and retirement. This condition of poverty, instead of being mitigated by the welfare state, has been intensified by the burden of taxation, imposed by Government in order that they can provide for responsibilities which are inherently personal at the taxpayers' expense. It is assumed that it is graduated according to wealth but taxation falls heaviest on the weakest through the price system. In a just democracy a job performed under conditions of wage-slavery would be replaced by independent status and livelihoods.