SOCIALISTS ON COMPETITION 169 



the effects of the two on the majority are Book n 

 altogether different. To this fundamental truth Chapter 3 

 the socialists are completely blind. The struggle 

 to live, or, in other words, the struggle to 

 secure employment, no doubt, when it is severe, does 

 entail suffering on the strugglers. But this struggle, 

 though it often accompanies progress, under the 

 capitalistic system is not essential to it as is 

 shown by the fact that when such progress is 

 most rapid the struggle in question tends to dis- 

 appear altogether ; for the competition is then 

 amongst the employers to find labour, rather than 

 amongst the labourers to find employment. Now if 

 the struggle for employment could be obviated by 

 any kind of social reform, an indubitable benefit 

 would, no doubt, be conferred on the workers 

 generally. But just as this struggle for work or for 

 existence this struggle of one worker against 

 another is not essential to the capitalistic wage- 

 system, and certainly did not originate with it, and 

 just as that system would not necessarily be 

 abolished by its overthrow, so it is not the kind of 

 competition against which the socialists direct their 

 main attacks. Their main attacks are directed 

 against the struggle between the wage-payers, not 

 the wage-earners that is to say, against the struggle 

 not for existence, but for domination ; and the 

 struggle for domination has on the workers generally 

 no evil effects at all, except such as are occasional 

 and accidental. On the contrary, the workers are as 

 much interested in its maintenance as anybody ; for 



