THE THEORY OF MARX AND THE EARLIER SOCIALISTS SUMMARISED All radical revolutions which are advocated in the interests of the people are commended to the people, and the people are invited to accomplish them, on the ground that majorities are, if they would only realise it, capable of moulding society in any manner they please.

As applied to matters of legislation and government, this theory is sufficiently familiar to everybody.

It has been elaborated in endless detail, and has expressed itself in the constitutions of all modern democracies.

What Karl Marx did, and did for the first time, was to invest this theory of the all-efficiency of the majority with a definiteness, in respect of distribution of wealth, similar to that with which it had been invested already in respect of the making of laws and the dictation of national policies.
The practical outcome of the scientific reasoning of Marx is summed up in the formula which has figured as the premise and conclusion of every congress of his followers, of every book or manifesto published by them, and of every propagandist oration uttered by them at street-corners, namely, "All wealth is produced by labour, therefore to the labourers all wealth is due"-- a doctrine in itself not novel if taken as a pious generality, but presented by Marx as the outcome of an elaborate system of economics.
The efficiency of this doctrine as an instrument of agitation is obvious.

It appeals at once to two universal instincts: the instinct of cupidity and the instinct of universal justice.