extension of such communism, the distribution of services to the general
public without charge, is due to-day, not to any acceptance of the
general principle, but to the fact that it is inconvenient or impossible
to attempt to distribute the cost of many services among individuals in
proportion as they take advantage of them.

Kautsky expresses the prevailing Socialist view when he says that the
_principle_ of equality, if distinguished from mere _artificial
leveling_, will play a certain role in a Socialist society. Without any
definite legislation in that direction the natural economic forces of
such a society will tend to raise low wages, and at the same time, by
the increase of competition for higher positions, to lower somewhat the
highest salaries. For if Socialists are opposed to any kind of
artificial equality or leveling, they are still more opposed to
artificial inequality, and all the initial advantages that arise out of
the possession of wealth or privileges in education will be done away
with.[303]

On the supposition that Socialism proposes a communistic leveling of
income, it has been stated very often by Socialists that it would be
necessary to abolish wages, but there is no authority for this either
from Karl Marx or from any of his most prominent successors. It is "wage
slavery" or "the wage system" that is to be abolished. In his letter on
the Gotha Program written in 1875 Marx said that there will be applied
to wages "the principle which at present governs the exchange or
merchandise to that degree in which identical values are being
exchanged"; that is to say, supply and demand, when it operates
_freely_, will give us a standard also in a Socialist system. There will
be no starvation wages, no inflated salaries, no "rent" of educational
advantages, no unearned income and no monopoly prices, but automatically
adjustable prices and wages will continue. In 1896 Jules Guesde, perhaps
the best known disciple of Marx in France, expressed nearly the same
idea in the Chamber of Deputies--"The play of supply and demand," he
said, "will have sufficed to determine without any arbitrary or violent
act, that problem of distribution which had seemed insoluble to you
before."

Here again we see that Socialism, in its aversion to all artificial
systems and every restriction of personal liberty is far more akin to
the individualism of Herbert Spencer than it is to the "State Socialism"
of Plato. Socialists expe