ppear to be, unfortunately, as many sects of Socialists as of
Christians, and if "Capital" were a more clearly written book I should
be of the opinion that it would be as much better for Socialists if all
other books on Socialism were destroyed as it would be for Christians
and Jews if all books on Theology were destroyed, except the Bible.
By Socialism I mean what some Socialist writers call "Scientific
Socialism." "Marxism," it might be called. "Humanism," I think Marx
would have preferred to call it, and I believe did call it, for he dealt
with abstract doctrine applicable to men and not to nations, and his
propaganda was the "International." Incidentally, as we pass on, we may
notice in this connection the dilemma of American Socialists which
they do not seem to realize. State Socialism has no logical place in
a Socialistic program, for it merely substitutes the more deadly
competition of nations for that of the individual, or even "trust"
competition now existing, while Humanism, or Marxism, tends to a uniform
condition of humanity which the American proletariat would fight tooth
and nail because they would rightly believe that for them it would at
present be a leveling down instead of leveling up.

Karl Marx was, of course, not the inventor of Socialism, nor was he, so
far as I know, the originator of any of its fundamental doctrines,--the
doctrine, for example, that all value is derived from Labor was part
of mediaeval clericism,--but be first reduced it to coherent form and
published it as a complete and definite system, and upon the issues,
substantially as he formulated and left them, must Socialism stand or
fall.

I must assume the members of the Ruskin Club to be familiar with the
Marxian fundamental propositions, which I do not state because I
shall confine my attack to the three derived propositions about which
discussion mainly centers. We certainly do not want an exercise in
serious dialectics after dinner, but I will say in passing that I do
not think that any of his fundamental propositions are true, or that his
theory of value has a single sound leg to stand on, and as for what he
calls "surplus value," I doubt whether there be such a thing. At any
rate he has not proved it, nor can it be proved, without taking into
consideration the enormous number of industrial failures, as well as the
more limited number of industrial successes--and there are no data for
that purpose. I may also mention as what se