heir hands the simultaneous tasks of all of
them, no matter how various these tasks may be.

CHAPTER IV

THE ERRORS OF MARX, CONTINUED.
CAPITAL AS THE IMPLEMENT OF ABILITY

The human activities and faculties, then, which are involved in the
production of modern wealth, are not, as Marx says--and as the orthodox
economists said, whom he rightly calls his masters, and as their
followers still say--of one kind--namely, those embodied in the
individual task-work of the individual, to which Marx, Ricardo, and Mill
alike give the name of "labour"; they are of two kinds. And this,
indeed, the earlier economists recognised, as we may see by Mill's
casual admission that the progress of industrial effort depends before
all things on thought and the advance of knowledge. But they recognised
the fact in a general way only. How thought and knowledge affected the
industrial process they made no attempt to explain, otherwise than by
comprehending them on occasion under the common name of labour, which
they assigned throughout most of their arguments to manual task-work
only.

Now, it is doubtless true that, as a mere matter of verbal propriety,
this general sense may be given to the word "labour," if we please; but
if in discussing the efforts which produce wealth we admit that these
efforts are not of one kind but two, and if the word "labour" is, in
nine cases out of ten, employed with the definite intention of
designating only one of them, it is impossible to reason about the
industrial process intelligibly, so long as we apply also the same name
to the other. We might as well use the word "man"--as with reference to
some problems we are perfectly right in doing--to designate both men and
women, and then attempt to discuss the relations between the two sexes.

For the directive faculties, so essentially distinct from those to which
universal custom has allocated the name of labour, it is difficult to
find a name equally convenient and satisfying. In default of a better, I
have, on former occasions, applied to it the name of Ability; and this
will serve our purpose here--especially as it is a name which has been,
of recent years, applied by many of the more thoughtful socialists
themselves to certain activities of a mental and moral kind, which their
conception of labour cannot be made to include, but which they are
beginning to recognise as playing some part in production. We must
remember, however, that we are using it