ctive
in the modern world in a manner in which it never was productive in any
previous period, because, whereas in earlier ages the strongest wills
and the keenest practical intellects were devoted to military conquest
and the necessities of military defence, they have, in the modern world,
to a constantly increasing degree, been deflected from the pursuits of
war and concentrated on those of industry. But the old principle remains
in operation still, of which military leadership was only one special
exemplification. Nations now grow rich through industry as they once
grew rich through conquest, because new commanders, with a precision
unknown on battle-fields, direct the minutest operations of armies of a
new kind; and the only terms on which any modern nation can maintain its
present productivity, or hope to increase it in the future, consist in
the technical submission of the majority of men to the guidance of an
exceptional minority. As for the majority--the mass of average
workers--they produce to-day just as much as, and no more than, they
would produce if the angel of some industrial Passover were henceforward
to kill, each year on a particular day, every human being who had risen
above the level of his fellows, and, in virtue of his knowledge,
ingenuity, genius, energy, and initiative, was capable of directing his
fellows better than they could direct themselves. If such an annual
decimation were inaugurated to-morrow in civilised countries such as
Great Britain and America, the mass of the population would soon sink
into a poverty deeper and more helpless than that which was their lot
before the ability of the few, operating through modern capital, began
to lend to the many an efficiency not their own. In other words, the
entire "surplus values"--to adopt the phrase of Marx--which have been
produced during the last hundred and fifty years, have been produced by
the ability of the few, and the ability of the few only;[31] and every
advance in wages, and every addition to the general conveniences of
life, which the labourers now enjoy, is a something over and above what
they produce by their own exertions. It is a gift to the many from the
few, or, at all events, it has its origin in the sustentation and the
multiplication of their efforts, and would shrink in proportion as these
efforts were impeded. If, then, the claims which socialists put forward
on behalf of labour are really to be based, as the earlier social