A Critical Examination of Socialism by William Hurrell Mallock
page 15 of 271 (05%)
page 15 of 271 (05%)
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its exercise.
The author's ignorance of the nature of the modern industrial process. His idea of steel. He confuses the production of wealth on a great scale with the acquisition of wealth when produced. The only really productive ability which he distinctly recognises is that of the speculative inventor. He declares that inventors never wish to profit personally by their inventions. Let the great capitalists, he says, who merely monopolise inventions, imitate the self-abnegation of the inventors, and Christian socialism will become a fact. The confusion which reigns in the minds of sentimentalists like the author here quoted. Their inability to see complex facts and principles, in their connected integrity, as they are. Such persons herein similar to devisers of perpetual motions and systems for defeating the laws of chance at a roulette-table. All logical socialistic conclusions drawn from premises in which some vital truth or principle is omitted. Omission in the premises of the earlier socialists. Corresponding omission in the premises of the socialists of to-day. Origin of the confusion of thought characteristic of Christian as of all other socialists. Temperamental inability to understand the complexities of economic life. This inability |
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