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individuals and it proves the mathematical 

 possibility of this by the substitution of the 

 social ownership for the individual ownership 

 of the means of production ; but that does not 

 mean that socialism will cause the disappear- 

 ance of all the useful and truly fructifying 

 conquests of the present or the preceding 

 phases of civilisation. 



Here is a characteristic example: the inven- 

 tion of industrial and agricultural machines. 

 This marvellous application of science to the 

 transformation of natural forces which ought 

 to have only beneficial consequences, has 

 entailed, and entails still, the misery and ruin 

 of thousands and thousands of workers. The 

 substitution of machines for human labour 

 has inevitably condemned masses of the work- 

 ing classes to the tortures of forced slack 

 seasons and to the hard law of a minimum 

 wage, scarcely sufficient to keep them from 

 dying of hunger. 



The first instinctive reaction of these un- 

 fortunates has been, and, unhappily, still is, 

 to destroy the machines, and see in them only 

 a means of undeserved damnation. 



But the destruction of the machines would 

 really be only a pure and simple reversion to 

 barbarism, and that is not the desire of 

 socialism, which represents a higher plane of 

 human civilisation. 



And this is how socialism alone can solve 

 this melancholy difficulty. Economic indi- 

 vidualism cannot do this by employing always 

 new machines, because therein is an evident 

 and irresistible advantage for the capitalist. 



