It would be checked as
completely as the higher criticism of the Bible would have been if the
only printer in the whole world were the Pope and the only publishing
business were managed by the College of Cardinals.
And what, under a regime of socialism, would be true of human thought,
a-seeking to embody itself in printed books or newspapers, would be
equally true of it as applied to the methods of industry, and seeking to
embody itself in multiplied or improved commodities.
Such, then, are the disadvantages which socialism, as contrasted with
the existing system, would introduce in connection with the problem of
how to detect, and how, having detected it, to invest with suitable
powers, the men whose ability is, at any given moment, calculated to
raise labour to the highest pitch of productiveness--how to give power
to these, and to take it away from others in exact proportion as their
talents, as exhibited in its practical results, fall short of the
maximum which is at the time obtainable.
This problem, as we have seen already, the existing system solves by its
machinery of private competition, and of independent capitals, which
automatically increase the powers of the ablest directors of labour, and
concurrently decrease or extinguish those of the less able.
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