A Critical Examination of Socialism by William Hurrell Mallock
page 47 of 271 (17%)
page 47 of 271 (17%)
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determine the subsequent results of every impress of the type on paper;
one mind thus, by directing the labour of others, imparting the quality of much wealth or of little or of none, to every one of the ten thousand copies of which the edition is composed. Similarly when a man invents, and brings into practical use, some new and successful apparatus such, let us say, as the telephone, the same situation repeats itself. The new apparatus is an addition to the world's wealth, not because so many scraps of wood, brass, nickel, vulcanite, and such and such lengths 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 nothing at all to do. The apparatus is successful, and an addition to the world's wealth, because the designs of the inventor, just like the author's manuscript, constitute a multitude of injunctions proceeding from a master-mind, which is not the mind of those by whose hands they are carried into execution. And with the direction of labour generally, whether in the production of machinery or the use of the machinery in the production of goods for the public, the case is 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 refuse, in accordance with the manner in which all this labour is directed by faculties specifically different from those exercised by the manual labourers themselves. And now we are in a position to sum up in a brief and decisive formula |
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