fit into his place quite naturally; so that all civilized nations
would form one great community, agreeing together as to the kind and
amount of production and distribution needed; working at such and
such production where it could be best produced; avoiding waste by
all means. Please to think of the amount of waste which they would
avoid, how much such a revolution would add to the wealth of the
world! What creature on earth would be harmed by such a revolution?
Nay, would not everybody be the better for it? And what hinders it?
I will tell you presently.

Meantime let us pass from this "competition" between nations to that
between "the organizers of labour," great firms, joint-stock
companies; capitalists in short, and see how competition "stimulates
production" among them: indeed it does do that; but what kind of
production? Well, production of something to sell at a profit, or
say production of profits: and note how war commercial stimulates
that: a certain market is demanding goods; there are, say, a hundred
manufacturers who make that kind of goods, and every one of them
would if he could keep that market to himself; and struggles
desperately to get as much of it as he can, with the obvious result
that presently the thing is overdone, and the market is glutted, and
all that fury of manufacture has to sink into cold ashes. Doesn't
that seem something like war to you? Can't you see the waste of it--
waste of labour, skill, cunning, waste of life in short? Well, you
may say, but it cheapens the goods. In a sense it does; and yet only
apparently, as wages have a tendency to sink for the ordinary worker
in proportion as prices sink; and at what a cost do we gain this
appearance of cheapness! Plainly speaking, at the cost of cheating
the consumer and starving the real producer for the benefit of the
gambler, who uses both consumer and producer as his milch cows. I