alistic countries generally labour gets, not less, but
far more than its due, if its due is to be measured by its own
products.

It is necessary to remember this; but its due is not to be
measured exclusively by its own products.

As will be seen in the concluding chapter.

CHAPTER XIII

INTEREST AND ABSTRACT JUSTICE

The proposal to confiscate interest for the public benefit, on
the ground that it is income unconnected with any corresponding
effort.

Is the proposal practicable? Is it defensible on grounds of
abstract justice?

The abstract moral argument plays a large part in the
discussion.

It assumes that a man has a moral right to what he produces,
interest being here contrasted with this, as a something which
he does not produce.

Defects of this argument. It ignores the element of time. Some
forms of effort are productive long after the effort itself has
ceased.

For examples, royalties on an acted play. Such royalties herein
typical of interest generally.

Industrial interest as a product of the forces of organic
nature. Henry George's defence of interest as having this
origin.

His argument true, but imperfect. His superficial criticism of
Bastiat.

Nature works through machine-capital just as truly as it does in
agriculture.

Machines are natural forces captured by men of genius, and set
to work for the benefit of human beings.

Interest on machine-capital is part of an extra product which
nature is made to yield by those men who are exceptionally
capable of controlling her.

By capturing natural forces, one man of genius may add more to
the wealth of the world in a year than an ordinary man could add
to it in a hundred lifetimes.

The claim of any such man on the products of his genius is
limited by a variety of circumstances; but, as a mere matter of
abstract justice, the whole of it belongs to him.

Abstract justice, however, in a case like this, gives us no
practical guidance, until we interpret it in connection with
concrete facts, and translate the just into terms of the
practicable.

CHAPTER XIV

THE SOCIALIS