themselves have created is "ill-distributed," as we call it--that is,
unjustly taken away from them.

When the workers are society they will regulate their labour, so that
the supply and demand shall be genuine, not gambling; the two will
then be commensurate, for it is the same society which demands that
also supplies; there will be no more artificial famines then, no more
poverty amidst over-production, amidst too great a stock of the very
things which should supply poverty and turn it into well-being. In
short, there will be no waste and therefore no tyranny.

Well, now, what Socialism offers you in place of these artificial
famines, with their so-called over-production, is, once more,
regulation of the markets; supply and demand commensurate; no
gambling, and consequently (once more) no waste; not overwork and
weariness for the worker one month, and the next no work and terror
of starvation, but steady work and plenty of leisure every month; not
cheap market wares, that is to say, adulterated wares, with scarcely
any GOOD in them, mere scaffold-poles for building up profits; no
labour would be spent on such things as these, which people would
cease to want when they ceased to be slaves. Not these, but such
goods as best fulfilled the real uses of the consumers, would labour
be set to make; for profit being abolished, people could have what
they wanted, instead of what the profit-grinders at home and abroad
forced them to take.

For what I want you to understand is this: that in every civilized
country at least there is plenty for all--is, or at any rate might
be. Even with labour so misdirected as it is at present, an
equitable distribution of the wealth we have would make all people