PROXIMATE DIFFICULTIES.

ABLE MEN AS A CORPORATION OF STATE OFFICIALS For the moment, then, we will waive the problem of motive altogether; we will assume that a society which denied to its able men any pecuniary reward proportionate to the magnitude of its products could provide them with a motive of some kind--we need not inquire what--which would prompt them still to exert themselves as eagerly as they do now; and we will merely consider how, a multitude of such men being given, the most efficient of them could be constantly selected as the official directors of labour, and the rest, in proportion to their inefficiency, be either dismissed or excluded.

In order to realise the difficulties which, in this respect, socialism would have to face, let us consider the manner in which the problem is solved now.
Under the system of private capitalism it solves itself by an automatic process.

In order that any man may direct the labour of other men, he must, under that system, be the possessor or controller of so much wage-capital.

Now this capital--this implement of direction--in proportion as it is employed, disappears, and is reproduced only by a subsequent sale of the products resulting from the labour in the direction of which it has been expended.