16 Transactions.—Miscellaneous. 
lord’s share of the common stock of wealth depends on different conditions 
than that of other capitalists. 
It thus appears that in a communistic society there is no such thing as 
capital in the sense of a fund for carrying on fresh production, or of a fund 
set aside for productive re-investment. The material requisites of produc- 
tion are labourers and implements only. The necessaries of life are 
required, as are also health, strength and intelligence, to enable labourers 
to work—but they are connoted by the word labourer, and need not be 
taken into consideration. There is one immaterial requisite which must, 
however, be considered, namely, the effective wish that wealth be produced, 
that is, a wish strong enough to overcome man’s natural repugnance to 
work. 
In a rude stage of society this wish is so weak that man will only labour 
under the immediate spur of hunger; his repugnance to making other people 
work is not so strong, and he makes his wife and slaves work even where 
the return from their labour is somewhat distant; the rude beginnings of 
agriculture are always the result of woman’s labour. It is doubtful whether 
there is, even now, a society so advanced in civilization that the production 
of wealth could be safely left to the average forethought of its members 
without the help derived from the pressure of immediate want. As society 
is at present organized, the great majority of the people, the labouring 
classes, are kept to their work by a pressure almost as strong as in the 
rudest societies; if they do not work to-day they will get no dinner 
to-morrow. In a commune, the punishment of idleness would be quite 
as certain but more distant. As long as the past year’s harvest lasted they 
would be equally well fed whether they worked or not; the results of their 
idleness or industry would not show themselves until after the following 
harvest, when it would be too late to make good any past errors. The wish 
that wealth be produced need not be so strong as in a commune; for wealth 
will be produced if the capitalists wish it, and they need not themselves 
labour to carry their wish into effect; it is sufficient that they induce other 
people to labour. 
The requisites of production are the same under present social arrange- 
ments as they would be in a commune; they are labourers, implements, and 
the wish to produce. If capital is, as it is stated to be, a requisite of pro- 
duction, it must be one or more of these, and is a worse than useless word, 
for it is never, in ordinary conversation, used with a meaning allied to that 
which would have to be given to it by definition. 
It is impossible, by reading Mill’s definitions as given | in Book L, 
chap. iv., to get any clear understanding of what he really means by 
PET D 
RA AA AA S AAA a RON E 
