CHAPTER IV.
THE ERRORS OF MARX, CONTINUED.
CAPITAL AS THE IMPLEMENT OF ABILITY The human activities and faculties, then, which are involved in the production of modern wealth, are not, as Marx says--and as the orthodox economists said, whom he rightly calls his masters, and as their followers still say--of one kind--namely, those embodied in the individual task-work of the individual, to which Marx, Ricardo, and Mill alike give the name of "labour"; they are of two kinds.

And this, indeed, the earlier economists recognised, as we may see by Mill's casual admission that the progress of industrial effort depends before all things on thought and the advance of knowledge.

But they recognised the fact in a general way only.

How thought and knowledge affected the industrial process they made no attempt to explain, otherwise than by comprehending them on occasion under the common name of labour, which they assigned throughout most of their arguments to manual task-work only.
Now, it is doubtless true that, as a mere matter of verbal propriety, this general sense may be given to the word "labour," if we please; but if in discussing the efforts which produce wealth we admit that these efforts are not of one kind but two, and if the word "labour" is, in nine cases out of ten, employed with the definite intention of designating only one of them, it is impossible to reason about the industrial process intelligibly, so long as we apply also the same name to the other.

We might as well use the word "man"-- as with reference to some problems we are perfectly right in doing--to designate both men and women, and then attempt to discuss the relations between the two sexes.
For the directive faculties, so essentially distinct from those to which universal custom has allocated the name of labour, it is difficult to find a name equally convenient and satisfying.