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ARISTOCRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book II 

 Chapter 3 



The wage- 

 system is the 

 only efficient 

 means of com- 

 petition of this 

 kind. 



The socialists, 

 though they 

 affect to be 

 opposed to 

 competition 

 altogether, 



and find serviceable, renew and increase by their 

 payments the capital which has been disbursed by 

 him, and renew and increase his control over other 

 men's labour along with it. 



Now if the wage-system is the sole alternative to 

 slavery as a means by which the great man controls 

 the actions of the ordinary man, it is still more 

 obviously the sole alternative to slavery as a means 

 by which one great man, in controlling them, shall 

 compete against another great man. Indeed, we 

 may speak still more strongly. We may say not 

 only that it is the sole alternative means, but that 

 it is the sole efficient means. And if we desire a 

 proof of this, all we have to do is to repeat our 

 former procedure, and consider how the socialists 

 propose to supply its place. 



It is, no doubt, true that when we first begin this 

 consideration it does not appear that we should 

 derive from it much direct enlightenment ; because, 

 if we may go by what the socialists themselves tell 

 us, one of their principal objects is to abolish com- 

 petition altogether. Their protestations, however, 

 with regard to this matter betray a most curious 

 and most amusing confusion of thought. They 

 declare that competition must be abolished because 

 it inflicts misery on the majority that is to 

 say, on the weakest in what they call the "cut-throat 

 struggle" But, as was shown at great length in 

 the last chapter, competition means two, and two 

 absolutely distinct things one being a struggle 

 to live, the other a struggle to dominate ; and 



