COMPETITION IN VOL VED IN SOCIALISM 1 7 1 



organisers, had to act as State officials, or else not Book n 

 act at all, the practical experiments necessary to 

 show which officials were the fittest could be brought 

 about only by the State investing such and such of 

 them with a quasi-military power over so many 

 regiments of labourers for such and such a time, 

 which power would be renewed if they could per- 

 suade the State to reappoint them, or taken from 

 them if the State should be persuaded that some 

 other men, their rivals, would employ this power 

 more usefully. And this is precisely what the 

 proposals of the socialists come to. The whole 

 multitude of State officials who would direct 

 socialistic industry would, according to every 

 socialistic programme, be appointed, promoted, or 

 degraded to the ranks of ordinary workers in 

 accordance with the efficiency shown by them 

 in the practical command of labour. Some 

 socialists propose that these officials should owe 

 their appointment to a central governing body ; 

 others propose that they should owe them to 

 popular election ; but in either case, appointment, 

 promotion, or degradation would necessarily and 

 avowedly, if it did not depend on favouritism, 

 depend on the practical results which the different 

 men in question elicited from labour by their 

 different methods of directing it. In other words, 

 the whole system of socialistic production would 

 involve and depend on competition ; and the only 

 essential difference between this bureaucratic com- 

 petition under socialism and the competition of 



