lt from this doctrine indirectly than it is by the
direct reassertion of the formal doctrine itself. One of the members of
the Parliamentary Labour party in England celebrated his success at the
polls by a letter to the _Times_, proclaiming that socialism was a
moral quite as much as an economic movement, and that an object which to
socialists was dearer even than the seizure of the riches of the rich,
was the achievement of "economic freedom," or, in other words, the
"emancipation of labour," or, in other words again, the abolition of the
system which he described as "wagedom." I merely mention the particular
letter in question in order to remind the reader of these familiar
phrases, which are current in every country where the theory of
socialism has spread itself.

Now, what does all this talk about the emancipation of labour mean? It
can only mean one or other of two things: either that the economic
prosperity of every nation in the future will depend on the emancipation
of every average mind from the guidance of any minds that are in any way
superior to itself, or are able to enhance the productivity of an
average pair of hands--a proposition so ludicrous that nobody would
consciously assent to it; or else it means a continued assent to the
theory which fails to correlate labour with directive ability at all,
and so never raises the question of whether the latter is necessary or
no.

What, then, becomes of that chorus of vehement protestations, with which
my critics in America were all so eager to overwhelm me, to the effect
that socialists to-day recognise as clearly as I do that "common manual
labour," as Mr. Hillquit puts it, "is impotent to produce the wealth of
modern nations," apart from the "organisation and control" of the minds
most competent to direct it? That the more intellectual socialists of
to-day do recognise this fact--some with greater and some with less
distinctness--is the very point on which I am anxious to insist. We
shall have abundant opportunities for considering it later on. For the
moment, however, I pause to ask them the following question.
Recognising, as they do, and eagerly proclaiming as they do, whenever
they address themselves to those who are capable of serious dispute with
them, that the original theory of socialism, which was the creed of such
bodies as the International, is absolutely false in itself, and in many
of the expectations which it stimulates, why do not they set the