(1) Lassalle's "iron law of wages" is a deduction from a proposition of Ricardo, which is belied by the facts.

(2) Karl Marx' theory of surplus labour is derived from the same proposition of Ricardo; his theory of value is merely a plagiarism of a mutilated definition of Ricardo's measure of value.

(3) The theory of a social dichotomy contained in the "Communist Manifesto" is a proposition devoid of all reality.

(4) All the fundamental conceptions of German Socialism are à priori "conceptions which are not in accordance with the facts."

The founders and leaders of Socialist schools of thought have not sought after scientific truth for its own sake; they have all made truth subordinate to certain political conceptions.

BOOK VII

COLLECTIVIST ORGANISATION

CHAPTER I

COLLECTIVIST ORGANISATION AND ITS ECONOMIC

CONDITIONS

I.

i. Centralisation of all the means of production in the hands of the State-Schoeffle-"The Quintessence of Socialisni".

ii.

The Alpha and Omega of Socialism-Common property-Equality of all producers-All property private except property in goods employed in production-Abolition of money---Distribution of labourThe artistic professions-Bebel and "the executive" -Allurement and coercion-Condemnation to death by starvation.

iii. Existing government monopolies-Schoeffle's hypothesis-Waste.

iv.

Remuneration of labour-The time of social labour -Complicated accounts: How are they to be ascertained?—The artist and the right to workImpossibility of identifying the hour of labourPurchasing power-Everyone will not receive remuneration-Deductions from the integral product of

labour.

V. Arts and trades which supply luxuries-Literature and the drama.

vi.

Abolition of commerce Foreign purchases Imports-Abolition of a portion of exports. vii. Four types of distribution-Subjective demandSubjective and objective limits-Abolition of certain classes of demand by the State.

KARL MARX, Engels, Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue carefully guarded themselves against reproducing the Utopias of More, Campanella, Morelly and Cabet. Bebel was once questioned by a deputy belonging to the centre party with regard to the organisation of collectivist society. His answer was: "Do you think I am so indiscreet as to ask you for details of your Paradise?" Nevertheless Bebel himself in his book, "Die Frau und der Socialismus," has attempted to construct a pic

Q

ture of the society of the future which has involved him in some severe reprimands.

Herr Schoeffle, a gentleman from Wurtemberg, who was professor of political economy at the University of Tübingen and afterwards at Vienna from 1860 to 1868, and Austrian Minister of Agriculture and Commerce from February 7th to October 30th, 1871, finally retired to Stuttgart, and in 1874 published a work in four bulky volumes entitled "Bau und Leben des socialen Körpers" (structure and life of the social body) in which he entirely assimilated the social body to a biological organism. A part of it he devoted to an examination of the working of collectivist society according to the Gospel of Marx. This has been published separately and sold by tens of thousands, under the title of the "Quintessence of Socialism."

II.

Bebel says that every individual will select the occupation in which he desires to be employed; the large number of kinds of labour will permit of the satisfaction of the most various desires. But if there should be a surplus in one kind and an insufficiency in others, the executive "will adjust the matter and repair the inequality." Accordingly, the distribution of labour can only be effected by authority, otherwise the more agreeable and least exhausting occupations will attract everyone, while those which are difficult and dangerous will be avoided. In order to obtain workers for the latter, they must be remunerated on a higher scale. Will the executive have recourse to this means of attracting labour? If it does, the remuneration of labour will no longer be equal and we shall revert to the combinations of capitalist society. What will become of the difference between the industrious and the lazy, the intelligent and the stupid? Bebel replies boldly that there will be no such differences, because the distinctions which we associate with the