CHAPTER VIII.
THE ULTIMATE DIFFICULTY.
SPECULATIVE ATTEMPTS TO MINIMISE IT When socialism, says Mr.Sidney Webb, shall have abolished all other monopolies, there will still remain to be dealt with the most formidable monopoly of all--namely, "the natural monopoly of business ability," or "the special ability and energy with which some persons are born." The services of these monopolists, he sees and fully admits, would be as essential to a socialistic as they are to any other community which desires to prosper according to modern standards.

He sees and admits also that these exceptional men will not continuously exert or even develop their talents unless society can supply them with some adequate motive or stimulus.

Accordingly, since he maintains that no scheme of society would be socialistic in any practical sense which did not completely, or at least approximately, eliminate the motive mainly operative among such men at present--namely, that supplied by the possibility of exceptional economic gain--he fairly faces the fact that some motive of a different kind will have to be discovered by socialists which shall take the place of this.
I mention Mr.Webb in particular merely because he represents the views which all intellectual socialists are coming to hold likewise.

This specific problem of how to provide the natural monopolists of business ability with all adequate motive to develop and exercise their talents is engaging more and more the attention of the higher socialistic thinkers; and if we take together the passages in their writings which deal with it, it has by this time a voluminous literature of its own.
We shall find that the arguments brought forward by them in this connection divide themselves broadly into two classes, one of which deals with the problem of motive directly, while the other class aims at preparing the way to its solution by showing in advance that its difficulties are far less formidable than they appear to be.

Without insisting on the manner in which they are urged by individual writers, we will take these two classes of argument in the logical order which they assume when we consider their general character.
These preparatory arguments, with which we will accordingly begin, while admitting that some men are undoubtedly more able than others, aim at showing that the superiority of such men to their fellows is not so great as it seems to be, and that any claims made by them to exceptional reward on account of it consequently tend to reduce themselves to very modest proportions.
These arguments possess a peculiar interest owing to the fact that they have not originated with socialistic thinkers at all, but have been drawn by them from the evolutionary philosophy of the nineteenth century generally, in so far as it was applied to historical and sociological questions.