THE PRODUCER'S RIGHT TO HIS PRODUCTS 289 



very little, than on the quasi-scientific assertion that Book iv 

 he gets less than he produces, and that consequently 

 the wealth of his employers is merely his own for they appeal 

 wealth stolen from him. "All wealth is due to each producer 

 labour; therefore to the labourer all wealth is due" L produces as 

 has formed from the first, and still forms the text ^3^ and 



from which the socialists always preach when permanent 



1 desire in man ; 



addressing the labouring classes ; and the use of 

 this text as the watchword of popular agitation is 

 obviously an admission that, as a producing agent, 

 man is motived so exclusively by the desire to 

 possess what he produces, or else its fair equivalent, 

 that he naturally resents the idea of producing any- 

 thing merely in order that others may take it away 

 from him. Indeed, this doctrine that the desire for 

 the product, and the producer's sense that he has a 

 right to it, form the only motive for production 

 possible for a free man, formed the unquestioned 

 basis of the entire socialistic psychology so long as 

 the theory of Marx was held by the socialists to be 

 unassailable, according to which wealth was the 

 product of average labour, and the common or 

 average labourer was the sole true producer. It 

 was only as time went on, and the socialists were and never 



, , it i i r i questioned 



slowly compelled to recognise the few to be pro- this so long as 

 ducers of wealth just as truly as the many, that thai the sole 

 the socialists began their attempts to get rid of the ^labourer. 3 

 doctrine which a very little while ago they regarded 

 as axiomatic the doctrine that each producer has 

 a right to his own products, and that his hope of 

 possessing it is his principal motive for its produc- 



19 



