A Critical Examination of Socialism

-work of the majority, some other technical word must be found to designate the directive faculties as applied to productive industry. The word here chosen, in default of a better, is "ability." Ability, then, being the faculty which directs labor, by what means does it give effect to its directions ? It gives effect to its directions by means of its control of capital, in the form of wage-capital. Ability, using wage-capital as its implement of direction, gives rise to fixed capital, in the form of the elaborate implements of modern production, which are the material embodiments of the knowledge, ingenuity, and energy of the highest minds. The human activities and faculties, then, which are involved in the production of modern wealth, are not, as Marx says?and as the orthodox economists said, whom he rightly calls his masters, and as their followers still say?of one kind?namely, those embodied in the individual task-work of the individual, to which Marx, Ricardo, and Mill alikegive the name of "labor"; they are of two kinds. And this, indeed, the earlier economists recognized, as we may see by Mill's casual admission that the progress of industrial effort depends before all things on thought and the advance of knowledge. But they recognized the fact in a general way only. How thought and knowledge affected the industrial process they made no attempt to explain, otherwise than by comprehending them on occasion under the common name of labor, which t... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.