ich each man fights
for his own hand. Competition does not mean that there should be no
combination, but that there should be no monopoly. So long as a trade
or a profession is open to every one who chooses to take it up, its
conduct will be equally regulated by competition, whether it be
competition as between societies or individuals, or whether its profits
be divided upon one system or another between the various classes
concerned. Co-operators, of course, may look forward to a day in which
society at large will be members of a single co-operative society; or,
again, to a time in which every industrial enterprise may be conducted
by the State. Supposing any such aspiration to be realised, the
question still remains, whether they would amount to the abolition or
still only to the shifting of the incidence of competition. Socialists
tell us that hitherto the labourer has not had his fair share of the
produce of industry. The existing system has sanctioned a complicated
chicanery, by which one class has been enabled to live as mere
bloodsuckers and parasites upon the rest of society. Property is the
result of theft, instead of being, as Economists used to assure us, the
reward of thrift. It is hoped that these evils may be remedied by a
reconstruction of society, in which the means of production shall all
be public property, and every man's income be simply a salary in
proportion to the quantity of his labour. If we, then, ask how far
competition would be abolished, we may first make one remark. Such a
system, like every other system, requires, for its successful working,
that the instincts and moral impulses should correspond to the demands
of the society. Absolute equality of property is just as compatible
with universal misery as with universal prosperity. A population made
up of thoroughly lazy, sensual, stupid individuals could, if it chose,
work such a machinery so as to suppress all who were industrious,
refined and intelligent. However great may be the revenue of a nation,
it is a very simple problem of arithmetic to discover how many people
could be supported just above the starvation level. The nation at large
would, on the supposed system, have to decide how its numbers and wants
are to be proportioned to its means. If individuals do not compete, the
whole society has, presumably, to compete with other societies; and, in
every case whatever, with the general forces of nature. An indolent and
inefficient majori