ground that it would, on the admission of some of its most thoughtful
exponents, be obliged to re-establish slavery as the price of
emancipation from "wagedom." I have commented on this fact solely with
the view to showing that the nature of the alternative to the
wage-system thus proposed indicates a full recognition, on the part of
those proposing it, of the nature and necessity of the functions which
the wage-system performs at present--namely, that of supplying the means
by which the ablest minds in the community secure from the mass of the
citizens the punctual performance of the industrial tasks required of
them. I am not even insisting that such a slave-system as Mr. Webb
contemplates is logically essential to the theory of intellectual
socialism at all. On the contrary, as may be seen from a letter
addressed to myself by a member of a socialistic body at Chicago, many
socialists, as to this matter, are opposed to Mr. Webb altogether.
Socialists, says my correspondent, speaking for himself and his
associates, have no objection whatever to the system of "wagedom" as
such; nor do they wish to see the direction of labour "enforced by the
power of the law." They recognise, he says, quoting my own words, that
production under socialism, just as under the present system, will be
efficient in proportion as labour is directed by the best minds "which
can enhance the productivity of an average pair of hands." They object
to the wage-system only in so far as it is a means by "which the
employing class can make a profit out of the labourers"; and the only
change which in this respect socialists desire to introduce is to
transfer the business of wage-paying from the private capitalist to the
state--the state which will have no "private interests to serve," and
consequently no temptation to appropriate any profits for itself.
Socialists, he continues, subject to this proviso, would leave the
wage-system just as it is now. The state would pay those who worked, and
in accordance with the work they did; but the idle or refractory it