ion of
socialism as a party--or, as Gronluend, a disciple of Marx, calls it,
"its _idee mere_"--and which is still its foundation for the great
majority of socialists, we will now examine in detail, and, considering
how complex are the processes of production in the modern world, ask how
far it gives us, or fails to give us, even an approximately complete
account of them.

We shall find that, in spite of the plausibility with which the talent
of Marx invested it, this basic doctrine of so-called scientific
socialism is the greatest intellectual mare's-nest of the century which
has just ended; and when once we have realised with precision on what,
in the modern world, the actual efficiency of the productive process
depends, we shall see that the analysis of Marx bears about the same
relation to the economic facts of to-day that the child's analysis of
matter into the four traditional elements, or the doctrine of Thales
that everything is made of water, bears to the facts of chemistry as
modern science has revealed them to us.

CHAPTER III

THE ROOT ERROR OF THE MARXIAN THEORY.
ITS OMISSION OF DIRECTIVE ABILITY.
ABILITY AND LABOUR DEFINED

In approaching the opinions of another, from whom we are about to
differ, we gain much in clearness if at starting we can find some point
of agreement with him. In the case of Marx we can find this without
difficulty, for the first observation which our subject will naturally
suggest to us is an admission that, within limits, his theory of
production is true. Whatever may be the agencies which are required to
produce wealth, human effort is one of them; and into whatever kinds
this necessary agency may divide itself, one kind must always be labour,
in the sense in which Marx understood it--in other words, that use of
the hands and muscles by which the majority of mankind have always
gained their livelihood.

It is, moreover, easy to point out actual cases in which all the wealth
that is produced is produced by labour only. The simplest of such cases
are supplied us by the lowest savages, who manage, by their utmost
exertions, to provide themselves with the barest necessaries. Such
cases show that labour, wherever it exists, produces at least a minimum
of what men require; for if it were not so there would be no men to
labour. Such cases show also another thing. The most primitive races
possess rude implements of some kind, which any pair of hands can
fashion, just as any p