1 60 



ARISTO CRA C Y AND E VOL UTTON 





Book ii does not represent capital as such. It represents 

 capital, in the form of the immediate means of sub- 

 sistence, as owned or controlled by a small number 

 of persons ; and its efficiency as a productive agent 

 resides in the bargain which it enables any great 

 and appor- man possessing it to make with ordinary workers 



tioned by them . . , 111 i 11 



amongst a bargain, not that they shall work such and such a 

 con- number of hours (for that they would have to do 

 were each man his own employer), but that they 

 shall do their work in accordance with the great 

 man's directions. 



Now this fact that the wage-system represents 

 the control of capital by the few and this is its 

 essential characteristic is the fact on which, more 

 than on any other, the socialistic opponents of the 

 modern wage-system insist. They are never weary 

 of insisting that it has its foundation in a monopoly. 

 But though they perceive the fact, they entirely 

 miss its significance. Karl Marx conceives of the 

 capitalists as 3. body of men who, so far as produc- 

 ^ on ls concerned, are absolutely inert and passive. 

 Owing to a variety of causes, he says, during 

 the past four hundred years all the means of pro- 

 duction have come under their control, and access 

 can be had to them only, as it were, through 

 gates, of which these tyrants hold the key. Out- 

 side are the manual labourers, who are the sole 

 producers of wealth, but who, without the means 

 of production, naturally can produce nothing - 

 not even enough to live on ; and the sole economic 

 function which the capitalist fulfils is to let the 



Marx 



