PERMANENT NATURE OF WAGE-SYSTEM 173 



competition. We may, accordingly, dismiss it from Book n 

 our consideration ; and such being the case, there 

 remains for us the absolute certainty that if society is as a permanent 

 to make any further industrial advance, or if it is to progressive 

 save itself from a relapse into industrial helplessness, sc 

 the capitalistic wage-system, and with it capitalistic 

 competition, or, in other words, the competitive 

 struggle for domination, must both of them be con- 

 tinued under some form or other ; nor, although they 

 may be modified in an indefinite number of their de- 

 tails, is there any apparent possibility of ever modi- 

 fying them in any of their essentials. Indeed, the 

 great moral to be drawn from the facts that have been 

 here elucidated is that if any one institution in the 

 modern world threatens to be permanent, that institu- 

 tion is the capitalistic wage-system ; and all proposed 

 alterations in it we may set down as impossible in 

 precise proportion as the socialists attach value to 

 them. The foolish dreamers who imagine that they 

 can overthrow it, consider only its outer aspect, and 

 not the forces of which it is the expression. It is we might 



.. , 11- i reduce society 



perfectly true that this system might at any given to ashes, but 

 time, and in any given country, be paralysed or an d capitalistic 

 reduced to ashes ; but the forces that would over- ^^dse" 

 throw it would be essentially non-productive. The a e ain out of 



' r them ; 



men who destroyed it would find themselves power- 

 less without it, and would be obliged to submit to, 

 and assist in, its reconstruction. For the outer form 

 of capitalism is not what capitalism is, any more 

 than a painter's brush is the power that paints 

 great pictures. Capitalism, in its essence, is merely 



