looms which wove those of Semiramis.




CHAPTER V

REPUDIATION OF MARX BY MODERN SOCIALISTS.
THEIR RECOGNITION OF DIRECTIVE ABILITY

In saying that, up to the point which our argument has thus far reached,
the more thoughtful among the socialists to-day concede and even assert
its truth, I have evidence in view of a very opposite kind. When I
delivered, as I did recently, a series of addresses on socialism to
various meetings in America, I approached the subject in the manner in
which I have approached it here. I began with the process of production
pure and simple, and I showed how crude and childish, as applied to
production in modern times, was the analysis of Marx and all the earlier
socialists. I showed, as I have shown here, that, the amount of labour
being given, the quantity and quality of wealth that will result from
its exercise depend on the ability with which by means of wage-capital
this labour is directed.

The two addresses in which these points were elaborated had no sooner
been delivered than, from all parts of the country, through newspapers
and private letters, and sometimes by word of mouth, socialists of
various types addressed themselves to the business of replying to me.
These replies, whatever may have been their differences otherwise, all
took the form of a declaration that I was only wasting my time in
exposing the doctrine that labour is the sole producer of wealth, and in