A Critical Examination of Socialism

N OF DIRECT

AND LABO

ation which our subject will naturally suggest to us is an admission that, within limits, his theory of production is true. Whatever may be the agencies which are required to produce wealth, human effort is one of them; and into whatever

rest necessaries. Such cases show that labour, wherever it exists, produces at least a minimum of what men require; for if it were not so there would be no men to labour. Such cases show also another thing. The most primitive races possess rude implements

tain districts of Germany. "They labour early and late," he says, quoting from a German eulogist. "They plod on from day to day and from year to year, the most untirable of human animals." The German writer admires them as men who are their own masters. Mill holds them up as a shining and instructive example of the magic effect of ownership in intensifying human labour. In any case such men are examples of two things-of labour operating as the sole productive agency, and also of such labour self-intensified to its utmost pitch. And what does t

uxuries undreamed of by the labourer of earlier times might easily be made as abundant for every household as water. In other words, if we take a million men, admittedly consisting of labourers pure and simple in the first place, and the same number of men exerting themselves under modern conditions in the second place, the industrial efforts of the second million are, hour for hour, infinitely more productive than the industrial

ctive in proportion to the hours devoted to it, how has it happened-this is our crucial question-that the amount of labour which pr

s a whole has itself become more productive. But to say this is merely begging the question. To what is this development of knowledge, of methods, and of machinery due? Is it due to such labour as that of the "unti

ch they recognise as implied in it, or which we may see to be implied in it ourselves. And if we consider the theory of Marx in this way, we s

he expressly admits also that mind is in some cases a more efficient director than in others, and is able to train the hands and muscles of the labourer, so that these acquire the quality which is commonly called skill. Ruskin, who asserted, like Marx, that labour is the sole producer, used in this respect a precisely similar argument. He defined s

f the most coveted articles of the wealth of the modern world, are not typical of it; and from the point of view of the majority, they are the part of it which is least important. The goods whose value is due to exceptional craftsmanship-such as an illuminated manuscript, for example, or a vase by Benvenuto Cellini-are always few in number, and can be possessed by the few only. The distinctive feature of wealth-production in the modern world, on the contrary, is the multiplication of goods relatively to the number of the producers of them, and the consequent cheapening of each article individually. The skill of the craftsman gives an exceptional value to the particular arti

ur being divided, so that each man devotes his life to the doing of some one thing. Thus if ten ordinary men were to engage in the business of pin-making, each making every part of every pin for himself, each man would probably complete but one pin in a day. But if each man makes one part, and nothing else but that, thus repeating incessantly a single series of motions, each will acquire the knack of working with such rapidity that the ten together will make daily, not

ind that it is quite impossible to explain merely by a further division of average and equal labour. Such a further division has no doubt been an element of the process; but it is an explanation which itself requires explaining. Even in Adam Smith's time two other factors were at work, which have ever since been growing in magnitude and importance; and the secret of modern production lies, we shall find, in these. I call them two, but fu

entify certain faculties as essential to the ultimate result, which affect the work of the labourers, but which do not emanate from themselves. Any three men of average strength and intelligence might make a potter's wheel together, or build a small boat together, as they frequently do now, their several tasks being interchangeable, or assigned to each of them by easy mutual agreement. The business of directing labour has not separated itself from the actual business of labouring. Each man knows the object of what he does, and can co-ordinate that object with the object of what is done by his fellows. But when the ultimate result is something so vast and complicated that a thousand men instead of three have to co-operate i

of this process as a whole into two kinds of activity represented by two different groups. We have no longer merely-although we have this still-an increasing division of labour;

ousand. Now, apart from its negligible value as so many tons of waste paper, each pile of books represents economic wealth only in proportion to the quantity of it for which the vendors can find purchasers. Hence we have in the present case two piles of printed paper which, regarded as paper patterned with printer's ink, are similar, but one of which is wealth to the extent of three thousand pounds, while the other is wealth

es of minute orders, which modify from second to second every movement of the compositors' hands, and determine the subsequent results of every impress of the type on paper; one m

ths of wire are shaped, stretched, and connected with sufficient manual dexterity-for the highest dexterity is very often employed in the making of contrivances which turn out to be futile-but because each of its parts is fashioned in obedience to certain designs with which this dexterity, as such, has no

again the same. We have manual labour of a given kind and quality, which assists in producing what is wanted or not wanted-what is so much wealth or simply so much

y higher than some forms of direction. The difference is one not of degree, but of kind, and includes two different psycho-physical processes. Labour, from the most ordinary up to the rarest kind, is the mind or the brain of one man affecting that man's own hands, and the sin