] the "abolition of wage slavery," forever inscribed on
their banners, the average man is forced to the conclusion that the
Socialists are working for a system in which the workers will divide
their actual products and then barter the surplus for the surplus
products of other workers. Either that, or the most rigid system of
governmental production and a method of distributing rations and
uniforms similar to that which obtains in the military organization of
present-day governments. It is easily seen, however, that such plans do
not conform to the democratic ideals of the Socialists, on the one hand,
nor would either of them, on the other hand, be compatible with the wide
personal liberty herein put forward as characteristic of the Socialist
state.

The earlier Utopian Socialists did propose to do away with wages; in
fact, they proposed to do away with money altogether, and invented
various forms of "Labor Notes" as a means of giving equality of
remuneration for given quantities of labor, and providing a medium for
the exchange of wealth. But when the Socialists of to-day speak of the
"abolition of wages," or of the wages system, they use the words in the
same sense as they speak of the abolition of capital: _they would
abolish only the social relations implied in the terms_. Just as they do
not mean by the abolition of capital the destruction of the machinery
and implements of production, but the social relation in which they are
used to create profit for the few, so, when they speak of the abolition
of the wages system, they mean only the use of wages to exploit the
producers for the gain of the owners of the means of production and
exchange. Though the name "wages" might not be changed, a money payment
for labor in a democratic arrangement of industry, representing an
approximation to the full value of the labor, minus only its share of
the cost of maintaining the public services, and the weaker, dependent
members of society, would be vastly different from a money payment for
labor by one individual to other individuals, representing an
approximation to their cost of living, bearing no definite relation to
the value of their labor products, and paid in lieu of those products
with a view to the gathering of a rich surplus value by the payer.

Karl Kautsky, perhaps the greatest living exponent of the theories of
modern Socialism, has made this point perfectly clear. He accepts
without reserve the belief that wages, un