m. It improved
under capitalism, because of the improvement in the machinery of
production, and it is destined to continue its progress so long as new
and better machines are made and this will be to the end.

Marxian socialism is a machine optimism. Under this socialism the number
and efficiency of machines would increase more rapidly than they have
under capitalism and feudalism, because its aim will be the production
of commodities for use within the shortest time by the least exertion at
the slightest risk of injury.

Up to the point of over production, that is, of glutting the markets, it
is to the interest of capitalism to encourage improvements in machinery,
but the ability to do this has been reached, as is evident from what we
hear at increasingly frequent intervals about an over production of
commodities.

What machinery we now have renders it possible to produce more
commodities than can be sold without employing all the labor power. But
the idle, starving slave is a danger to the idle, surfeiting master.
Hence, under capitalism there can be no further development of
machinery, at least not on a large scale.

An industrial government would have for its aim to produce enough of
everything for all with the least expenditure of energy and time. Hence,
the greatest benefactors and heroes under socialism would be the
inventors of labor saving, leisure giving machinery.

We hear much about the mental superiority of the representatives of the
master class over those of the slave class, but there is little or no
truth in it.

On the contrary, it can be shown that the invention of a great labor
saving, rapid-producing machine is, upon the whole, the greatest triumph
of the human mind and that nearly all among such machines are invented,
made, operated, kept in order and improved by the laborer.

Masters may be more cunning than slaves, but cunningness is not an
evidence of a high order of intellectual power. Many of the lower
animals are quite the equals, if not indeed the superiors, of
capitalists in this quality, but no animal is the equal of any man, not
to speak of the exceptionally skilled laborer, in the power to produce
efficient machines for the production and distribution of the
necessities of life.

Romanism began its career as a child of the feudal system for the
production and distribution of commodities for the profit of the owners
of the land and the means for its cultivation. The mission to wh