erve capitalism or hope to rise into its ranks.

In its narrow sense the term "capitalist class" may be restricted to
mean mere idlers and parasites, but this is not the sense in which
Socialists usually employ it. Mere idlers play an infinitely less
important part in the capitalist world than active exploiters. It is
even probable that in the course of a strenuous struggle the capitalists
themselves may gradually tax wholly idle classes out of existence and so
actually strengthen the more active capitalists by ridding them of this
burden. Active exploiters may pass some of their time in idleness and
frivolous consumption, without actual degeneration, without becoming
mere parasites. All exploitation is parasitism, but it does not follow
that every exploiter is nothing more than a parasite. He may work
feverishly at the game of exploitation and, as is very common with
capitalists, may be devoted to it for its own sake and for the power it
brings rather than for the opportunity to consume in luxury or idleness.
If pure parasitism were the object of attack, as certain Socialists
suppose it to be, all but an infinitesimal minority of mankind would
already be Socialists.

Nor do Socialists imagine that the capitalist ranks will ever be
restricted to the actual capitalists, those whose income is derived
chiefly from their possessions. Take, for example, the class of the
least skilled and poorest-paid laborers such as the so-called "casual
laborers," the "submerged tenth"--those who, though for the most part
not paupers, are in extreme poverty and probably are unable to maintain
themselves in a state of industrial efficiency even for that low-paid
and unskilled labor to which they are accustomed. Mr. H. G. Wells and
other observers feel that this class is likely to put even more
obstacles in the path of Socialism than the rich: "Much more likely to
obstruct the way to Socialism," says Mr. Wells, "is the ignorance, the
want of courage, the stupid want of imagination in the very poor, too
shy and timid and clumsy to face any change they can evade! But even
with them popular education is doing its work; and I do not fear but
that in the next generation we will find Socialists even in the
slums."[234]

"Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such a
paralyzing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really
conscious of its own suffering," says Oscar Wilde. "They have to be told
of it by other