Red River prospector. (Red River, Taos County, N.M.) 1900-190?, 1907-03-28
Uhr Tallaru nf tIrr
Drram nj ttF Snrtalistu
BY PROF. w. H. MALLocK. M. A.,
OF England.

@ONCURRENTIY with their demands form larger share in the
worlds products, the Socialists demand a radical change in
the whole organization Of production. They demand what they
"a call the emancipation of labor, and by the emancipation Of
k labor they mean emancipation from what they have been taught
|KMN8 to call wagedom.
E&@% What this cry means W e ar now able to see clearly. It
means, if it means anything, the emancipation of the average
mind from the guidance Of any mind that is in any way
superior to itself or is able to enhaace the productivity Of an
average pair Of hands.
Concentration Of wealth is due not to average labor, but to distinc-
tive magnitude Of operation, to increasing concentration Of intellect on
the process of directing labor in more eAcacious manner. Emancipation
Of all this, which he termed "ahiity,D may be questioned as being unwise.
Such being the case, the curious thing is this-that these very Social
lists, who are 50 loud in demanding that labor should be thus emancipaed,
show us, whenever they are asked for any constructive policy, that they,
TOO, admit the necessity of direction and control themselves. They do
not propose that men shall relapse into the primitive condition in which
each man works with his hands, as best he can, in isolation. AS l said
before, if they are asked for an illustration Of the kind of system which
they would introduce if they got their way, they invariably refer us to a
state institution like the post office. The Intellectual simplicity of the men
who argue thus is astonishing.
If all production were organized like a state post Office, there would,
it is true, be no private capitalist; but would the hborer have achieved
the economic freedom, the emancipation, which Socialists at present take
SO much pleasure in talking about? The laborers would, on the con-
trary, be unfree and unemancipated, in precisely the same sense in which
they are mfree and anemancipaed now; and to an even greater degree.
Many thoughtful Socialists have perceived this for themselves though
substitutes for the wage system. Only two known alternatives have been
invented by mantle corvee system, by which peasants owned the land
but were compelled to devote a part Of their time and energies to their
employer, the state; and the second alternative, slavery.
Capitalism, regarded under its productive aspect, is essentially a
device for imposing, by means of wages given Or withheld in accordance
70 the industrial obedience of the wage-earner, the intellect and the knowl-
edge resident in an exceptionally gifted minority on the manual operations
Of the average majority Of mankind; and when Socialists talk about
emancipation and economic freedom, the only meaning which their Ian
guage can really bear is the emancipation of the average man from the
aid and guidance Of any intellect that is in any way superior to his own.
Further, when we ask the Socialists to explain their constructive pro-
gramme, we find that this talk about freedom is privately repudlated by
themselves. and that they propose either to continue the wage. system I'M
der a thin verbal disguise or else to abolish the wage system and put uni
vcrsal slavery in its stead.