ic scheme at all, but
which nevertheless multitudes of men who call themselves socialists
regard as being at once the most important and practicable parts of it;
and these I have in consequence reserved for separate treatment. They
are three in number, and are as follows:

The first relates to the remuneration of the ordinary manual labourer,
and deals with the question of what his just remuneration is. According
to Marx this question is easily settled. Of every thousand labourers
associated in any given industry, each produces, with few and
unimportant exceptions, a thousandth part of the whole exchangeable
product; and his just remuneration is a thousandth part of the value of
it. The intellectual socialists of to-day, while repudiating as we have
seen the doctrine that the labourer's claim to remuneration is limited
to the values produced by him, and contending that he has a further
right to the product of the ability of others, constantly declare that,
even according to the moral standard of Marx, he is usually defrauded at
present of a large part of his due; or that, in most if not all
industries, his wages represent but a part of the full value produced by
him. Whether this is so or not is a question not of theory but of fact,
and one which can only be answered by discovering some intelligible
basis on which the values produced by labour in a general way may be
estimated, as distinct from those produced by effort of other kinds.
With this question I shall deal in the following chapter.

The second relates to those forms of individual income which are covered
by the word interest, when used in a comprehensive sense. It being
admitted by the later socialists, in opposition to the earlier, that the
directive ability of the few is, in the modern world, a productive
agency no less truly than labour is, many of these socialists are now
anxious to concede that the man of ability is entitled to such values,
no matter how large, as are due to the active exercise of his own
exceptional powers; but they contend that, as soon as his personal
activity ceases, his claim to any influx of further wealth should
therewith cease also. Let him spend his accumulations, they say, on his
own gratifications as he will; but neither he nor his descendants can be
suffered in moral justice to hold or apply them in such a manner that
they will renew themselves, and yield an income to recipients who do
nothing to make them fructify. To number