ocialistic economy, ever to be
kept in mind, is Adam Smith's definition of wages: 'The produce of
labour is the natural recompense or wages of labour.' From this
'natural recompense' rent and profit are, in Socialist eyes,
unnatural, illegitimate abstractions, to be recovered and added to
wages as speedily as possible."[126] "Profit is the result of unpaid
labour; it is the produce of the working man, for which the latter
receives no equivalent. If he received his proper and just share, if
the capitalist could not deprive him of this, then the capitalist
could make no profit."[127]

Not only are "rent" and "profit" illegitimate abstractions, but they
are downright theft. Every landowner, every banker, every
manufacturer, every shopkeeper is a thief. All business for profit is
swindling. "Land-rent and capital-rent are thefts from the produce of
labour."[128] "The manufacturer aims primarily at producing, by means
of the labour he has stolen from others, not goods, but profits."[129]
"What is successful business but cheating? What is the whole basis of
capitalist industry but the use of the means of production, not for
the legitimate end of producing wealth for use, but for the purpose of
making profit for the few by despoiling, sweating, pillaging, and
murdering the many?"[130]

Even the more moderate Socialists complain that work is carried on by
the employers only "at a profit to themselves," and they wish to
abolish this state of affairs, which, they argue, is demoralising to
the working men, and is the cause of low wages and unemployment. "The
workman is called into the workshop when capital can profitably employ
him, and turned adrift again the moment capital finds it can no longer
turn his services to profitable account. He is not consulted as to
when he shall be employed or when cast adrift. His necessities and
those of his dependents are no concern of anyone save himself. He has
no right to employment, no one is under obligation to find him work,
nor is he free to work for himself, since he has neither the use of
land nor the command of the necessary capital."[131] "So long as
industry is carried on for profit instead of for use, for gain instead
of for need, so long must the evils of low wages and no wages go
on."[132]

The grievance that the manufacturers manufacture "not for use but for
profit" is ridiculous. The manufacturers manufacture things which the
public will buy and use. There is consequently no