y
Mehring, 1902. See a translation of the letter by Dr. Harriet E.
Lothrop, _International Socialist Review_, May, 1908.

[159] I note that my friend, Mr. J. R. Macdonald, M.P., "Whip" of the
Labour Party in the British House of Commons, so misrepresents Marx in
his admirable little book, _Socialism_, page 54.

[160] Italics mine.--J. S.

[161] The italics are mine. The passage occurs on page 186, Vol. I, of
_Capital_, Kerr edition. In the last of the series of lectures printed
in his book, Mr. Mallock attempts a reply to the criticism of an
American Socialist, Mr. Morris Hillquit who quoted this passage from
Marx to show that Mr. Mallock was in error in saying that Marx regarded
manual labor as the sole source of wealth. He evades the real point,
namely, that Marx clearly included mental as well as physical labor in
his use of the term, and with an ingenuity equaled only by the
disingenuousness of the argument, seeks refuge in the fact that it does
not cover the special "directive ability" which is a special function,
"a productive force distinct from labor." The trick will not do. The
fact is that Marx clearly and precisely covers that point in another
place. The reader is referred to Chapter XIII of Part IV, Vol. I, of
_Capital_, pages 363-368, Kerr edition, for a brilliant and honest
treatment of the whole subject of the place of the "directing few" in
modern industry. We shall treat the matter briefly later on.

[162] Italics mine.--J. S. The passage occurs in Lecture III, page 36.

CHAPTER VIII

OUTLINES OF SOCIALIST ECONOMIC THEORY

I

The _geist_ of social and political evolution is economic, according to
the Socialist philosophy. This view of the importance of man's economic
relations involves some very radical changes in the methods and
terminology of political economy. The philosophical view of social and
political evolution as a world-process, through revolutions formed in
the matrices of economic conditions, at once limits and expands the
scope of political economy. It destroys on the one hand the idea of the
eternality of economic laws and limits them to particular epochs. On the
other hand, it enhances the importance of the science of political
economy as a study of the motive force of social evolution. With Marx
and his followers, political economy is more than an analysis of the
production and distribution of wealth; it is a study of the principal
determinant factor in the social and p