GOVERNMENT IX 



capital l ad libitum. Individualism, on the other 

 hand, admitting the inevitability of the struggle, 

 is too apt to try to persuade us that it is all for 

 our good, as an essential condition of progress to 

 higher things. But that is not necessarily true ; 

 the creature that survives a free-fight only 

 demonstrates his superior fitness for coping 

 with free-fighters not any other kind of super- 

 iority. 



The political problem of problems is how to 

 deal with over-population, and it faces us on all 

 'sides. I have heard a great deal about the 

 tyranny of capital. No doubt it is true that 

 labour is dependent on capital. No doubt if, out 

 of a thousand men, one holds and can keep all the 

 capital, 2 the rest are bound to serve him or die. 

 But if, on this ground, labour may be said to be 

 the slave of capital, it would be equally just to 

 say that capital is the slave of labour. A naked 

 millionaire, with a chest full of specie, might be 

 set down in the middle of the best agricultural 

 estate in England ; but unless somebody would 

 work for him, he would probably soon perish from 

 cold and hunger, having previously lost everything 

 for lack of protection. The state of things attri- 

 buted to the tyranny of the capitalist might be 

 far more properly ascribed to the self-enslavement 



1 The term " vital capital '' is defined in an essay on ' < 

 and Labour " published in Ti 1890), which 



could not conveniently be included in this volume. 

 Using the term in its more restricted sense. 



