produced by the ability of the few, and the ability of the few only;[31] and every advance in wages, and every addition to the general conveniences of life, which the labourers now enjoy, is a something over and above what they produce by their own exertions.  It is a gift to the many from the few, or, at all events, it has its origin in the sustentation and the multiplication of their efforts, and would shrink in proportion as these efforts were impeded.  If, then, the claims which socialists put forward on behalf of labour are really to be based, as the earlier socialists based them, on the ground that production alone gives a valid right to possession, labour to-day, instead of getting less than its due, is, if we take it in the aggregate, getting incomparably more, and justice in that case would require that the vast majority of mankind should have its standards of living not raised but lowered.

Is it, then, the reader will here ask, the object of the present volume to suggest that the true course of social reform in the future would be gradually to take away from the majority some portion of what they at present possess, and bind them down, in accordance with the teaching of socialists in the past, to the little maximum which they could produce by their own unaided efforts?  The moral of the present volume is the precise reverse of this.  Its object is not to suggest that they should possess no more than they produce.  It is to place their claim to a certain surplus not produced by themselves on a true instead of a fantastic basis.

Socialists seek to base the claim in question, alternately and sometimes simultaneously, on two grounds—­one moral, the other practical—­which are alike futile and fallacious, and are also incompatible with each other.  The former consists of the a priori moral doctrine that every one has a right to what he produces, and consequently to no more.  The latter consists of an assumption that those who produce most will, in deference to a standard of right of a wholly different kind, surrender their own products to those who produce least.  The practical assumption is childish; and the abstract moral doctrine can only lead to a conclusion the opposite of that which those who appeal to it desire.  But the claim in question may, when reduced to reasonable proportions, be defended on grounds both moral and practical, nevertheless, and the present volume aims at rendering these intelligible.  Let us return for a moment to Rousseau and his theory of the social contract.  We know to-day that never in the entire history of mankind did any such conscious contract as Rousseau imagined take place; but it is nevertheless true that virtually, and by ultimate implication, something like a contract or bargain underlies the relation between classes in all states of society.