volumes which is of large, of little, or of no value commercially, not
according to the dexterity with which this labour is performed, but
according to the manner in which the author's mind directs it.

Than any human being who is capable of perceiving that the literary
quality of a book is largely affected by the fact of the book's not
being rubbish, should seriously suppose that the saleable value of
editions--whether they are editions of a popular novel, or of a treatise
on the conchology of Kamchatka, is proportionate to the number of
letters in them arranged in parallel lines--for Mr. Hillquit's argument
means neither more nor less than this--is, let me repeat, incredible.
What, then, is the explanation of his indulging in a performance of this
degrading kind? The explanation is that he, like so many of his
colleagues, though recognising personally that labour among "modern
nations" depends for its higher productivity on the picked men who
direct it, cannot bring himself to renounce, when he is making his
appeal to the masses, the old doctrine that they are the sole producers;
and accordingly having started with the ostentatious admission that
directive ability is as essential to production as labour is, he
endeavours by his verbal jugglery with the case of a printed book to
convey the impression that labour produces all values after all; and he
actually manages to wind up with a repetition of the old Marxian moral
that the profits of ability mean nothing but labour which has not been
paid for.[7]

One of my reasons, then, for beginning the present examination of
socialism with exposing the fallacy of principles which the intellectual
socialists of to-day are so eager to proclaim that they have long since
abandoned, is the fact that these principles are still the principles of
the multitude; that for practical purposes they are those which most