CHAPTER III.
THE ROOT ERROR OF THE MARXIAN THEORY.
ITS OMISSION OF DIRECTIVE ABILITY.
ABILITY AND LABOUR DEFINED In approaching the opinions of another, from whom we are about to differ, we gain much in clearness if at starting we can find some point of agreement with him.

In the case of Marx we can find this without difficulty, for the first observation which our subject will naturally suggest to us is an admission that, within limits, his theory of production is true.

Whatever may be the agencies which are required to produce wealth, human effort is one of them; and into whatever kinds this necessary agency may divide itself, one kind must always be labour, in the sense in which Marx understood it--in other words, that use of the hands and muscles by which the majority of mankind have always gained their livelihood.
It is, moreover, easy to point out actual cases in which all the wealth that is produced is produced by labour only.

The simplest of such cases are supplied us by the lowest savages, who manage, by their utmost exertions, to provide themselves with the barest necessaries.

Such cases show that labour, wherever it exists, produces at least a minimum of what men require; for if it were not so there would be no men to labour.