admission, the intellectual socialists of to-day are in virtual but
unacknowledged agreement with this further portion of the present
argument also.

In order to demonstrate that such is the case, let me briefly call
attention to a point on which we shall have to dwell at much greater
length presently--namely, that these socialists, though they reject the
theory of production on which morally and intellectually the earlier
socialism based itself, persist in making promises to the labourers
precisely of the same kind as those with which the earlier socialism
first whetted their appetites. In especial besides promising them
indefinitely augmented wealth, they continue to promise them also some
sort of _economic emancipation_; and many of these socialists, in
explicit accord with their predecessors, declare that what they mean by
emancipation is the entire abolition of the wage-system.

Prominent among this number are Mr. Sidney Webb and his colleagues, who
are certainly the best educated group of socialistic thinkers in
England. Mr. Webb, in particular, is a man of conspicuous talent, and
few writers can afford a more favourable illustration than he does of
the lines along which the socialistic theory of society is compelled, by
the exigencies of logical thought, to develop itself. Now, in proposing
to abolish the wage-system, Mr. Webb and his fellow-theorists do not do
so without specifying a definite substitute; and when we come to
consider what their substitute is, we shall find that it implies, on
their part, a full recognition of the function which wage-capital, as
the instrument of ability, performs in modern production.

Now, the reader must observe that, in indicating the nature of the
function in question--namely, that of providing a means by which the