WAGE-CAPITAL A MEANS OF GUIDANCE 163 



disposal of this or that superior. Such a system, if Book n 

 applied to modern industry, would have, no doubt, 

 many incidental disadvantages ; but if only a number 

 of independent peasant-proprietors could be forced 

 to give half their time to the proprietor of a 

 neighbouring factory, and during that time to work 

 in it under his orders, the entire use and necessity of 

 wage-capital would in theory, at all events, be gone. 

 The same thing is also true of slavery, between 

 which and the wage-system the corvee system stands 

 midway. Like the peasant - proprietor, who is 

 forced to give part of his labour to his over-lord, 

 the slave is supplied with the necessaries of life 

 independently of his obedience to the* detailed 

 orders of his task-master. The peasant maintains 

 himself by tilling his own fields ; the slave-owner 

 feeds his slave just as he would feed an animal. In 

 neither case is the giving or the withholding of a 

 livelihood used as the motive or sanction by which 

 industrial obedience is ensured. Obedience is 

 ensured by the direct application of force, or the 

 knowledge on the slave's part or the peasant's that 

 force will be applied if necessary. 



It will, no doubt, be urged by some that whatever so-caiied "co- 

 assistance is afforded by the talents of the few to the 

 industrial efforts of the many, may be secured by dis 

 a third means, which is neither slavery nor yet the 

 wage-system that is to say, by what is called the 

 system of " co-operation." Co-operative production, 

 however, when it differs in anything except in name 

 from production as carried on under the ordinary 



