he most scientific body of Socialists, and they have
been reprinted again and again down to the edition bearing the imprint
"43rd Thousand."

Socialism is eternally between the horns of a dilemma. It promises to
make all men happy. If it rewards men by results, the inefficient and
the lazy will be dissatisfied. If it rewards all men alike
(Communism), the efficient, able, and energetic will be dissatisfied.
Reward by result will, in the absence of self-regulating commercial
demand and supply, require an autocratic and absolute authority which
arbitrarily apportions the unequal rewards of labour. It would be the
tyranny of the few over the many, and would mean the abolition of
democracy. Communism, equal rewards for all, would lead to the tyranny
of the many over the few, and would stifle all motives to excel. Well
might the Fabians ask: "Since we are too dishonest for Communism
without taxation or compulsory labour, and too insubordinate to
tolerate task work under personal compulsion, how can we order the
transition so as to introduce just distribution without Communism and
maintain the incentive to labour without mastership?"[1066]
Unfortunately for the Socialists, that question is unanswerable. It is
likely always to remain so, and the impossibility of answering it
makes Socialism impossible. However, since Socialists wish to array
the masses against the classes, the poor against the rich, they
naturally incline, for tactical reasons rather than from honest
conviction, to Communism, the worst of all tyrannies, and the most
retrograde and inefficient of economic organisations.

"Communism in proposing the appropriation of the results of the
unequally productive labour for a uniformly equal distribution
according to needs, seeks to establish a universal and monstrous
appropriation by one set of persons of the surplus value belonging to
others. Socialism would, in short, do to a far greater degree the very
thing with which to-day it so indignantly and bitterly reproaches
capitalism."[1067] Whilst Mr. Keir Hardie and his numerous followers
enthusiastically support a free Communism in which "the rule of life
will be--From each according to his ability, to each according to his
needs,"[1068] "the Fabian Society resolutely opposes all pretensions
to hamper the Socialisation of industry with equal wages, equal hours
of labour, equal official status, or equal authority for everyone.
Such conditions are not only impracticabl