IV CAPITAL THE MOTHER OF LABOUR 181 



the game could be called his " wages " only in a 

 figurative sense ; as one sees if the term " hire," 

 which has a more limited connotation, is substi 

 tuted for "wage." If not, it must be assumed 

 that the savage hired himself to get his own 

 dinner; whereby we are led to the tolerably 

 absurd conclusion that, as in the " state of nature " 

 he was his own employer, the " master " and the 

 labourer, in that model age, appropriated the pro 

 duce in equal shares ! And if this should be not 

 enough, it has already been seen that, in the 

 hunting state, man is not even an accessory of 

 production of vital capital ; he merely consumes 

 what nature produces. 



According to the author of "Progress and 

 Poverty" political economists have been deluded 

 by a " fallacy which has entangled some of the 

 most acute minds in a web of their own spinning." 



It is in the use of the term capital in two senses. In the 

 primary proposition that capital is necessary to the exertion of 

 productive labour, the term " capital " is understood as including 

 all food, clothing, shelter, &c. ; whereas in the deductions 

 finally drawn from it, the term is used in its common and 

 legitimate meaning of wealth devoted, not to the immediate 

 gratification of desire, but to the procurement of more wealth 

 of wealth in the hands of employers as distinguished from 

 labourers (p. 40). 



I am by no means concerned to defend the 

 political economists who are thus charged with 

 blundering ; but I shall be surprised to learn that 

 any have carried the art of self-entanglement to 



