THE INDUSTRIAL TYPE OF SOCIETY. 605 



severally and independently occupying themselves as they 

 please ; are to be prevented from competing with one another 

 in supplying goods for money; are to be prevented from 

 hiring themselves out on such terms as they think fit. There 

 :an be no artificial system for regulating labour which does 

 not interfere with the natural system. To such extent as 

 men are debarred from making whatever engagements they 

 like, they are to that extent working under dictation. Xo 

 matter in what way the controlling agency is constituted, it 

 stands towards those controlled in the same relation as does 

 the controlling agency of a militant society. And how truly 

 the regime which those who declaim against competition 

 would establish, is thus characterized, we see both in the fact 

 that communistic forms of organization existed in early 

 societies which were predominantly warlike, and in the fact 

 that at the present time communistic projects chiefly originate 

 among, and are most favoured by, the more warlike societies. 

 A further preliminary explanation may be needful. The 

 structures proper to the industrial type of society must not 

 be looked for in distinct forms when they first appear. Con 

 trariwise, we must expect them to begin in vague unsettled 

 forms. Arising, as they do, by modification of pre-existing 

 structures, they are necessarily long in losing all trace of 

 these. For example, transition from the state in which the 

 labourer, owned like a beast, is maintained that he may work 

 exclusively for his master s benefit, to the condition in which 

 he is completely detached from master, soil, and locality, and 

 free to work anywhere and for anyone, is through gradations. 

 Again, the change from the arrangement proper to militancy, 

 under which subject-persons receive, in addition to main 

 tenance, occasional presents, to the arrangement under which, 

 in place of both, they received fixed wages, or salaries, or 

 fees, goes on slowly and unobtrusively. Once more it is 

 observable that the process of exchange, originally indefinite, 

 has become definite only where industrialism is considerably 

 developed. Barter began, not with a distinct intention of 



