PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. 



UNDER the name of profits, rent, interest upon capital, 

 surplus value, and the like, economists have eagerly 

 discussed the benefits which the owners of land or 

 capital, or some privileged nations, can derive, either 

 from the under-paid work of the wage-labourer, or 

 from the inferior position of one class of the com- 

 munity towards another class, or from the inferior 

 economical development of one nation towards another 

 nation. These profits being shared in a very unequal 

 proportion between the different individuals, classes 

 and nations engaged in production, considerable pains 

 were taken to study the present apportionment of the 

 benefits, and its economical and moral consequences, as 

 well as the changes in the present economical organisa- 

 tion of society which might bring about a more equitable 

 distribution of a rapidly accumulating wealth. It is 

 upon questions relating to the right to that increment 

 of wealth that the hottest battles are now fought 

 between economists of different schools. 



In the meantime the great question " What have 

 we to produce, and how ? " necessarily remained in the 

 background. Political economy, as it gradually emerges 

 from its semi-scientific stage, tends more and more to 

 become a science devoted to the study of the needs of 

 men and of the means of satisfying them with the 

 least possible waste of energy, that is, a sort of 

 physiology of society. But few economists, as yet, 



