Apart from the fact that, according to their constructive programme, private capitalism would be abolished, and the sole capitalist would be the state, the socialistic system of production, as they have now come to conceive of it, would, in respect of the vital forces involved, be merely the existing system continued under another name, with a directing minority composed of exceptional men on the one hand, and a majority composed of directed men on the other.  But in the minds of many socialistic thinkers the simplicity of the situation is obscured by the vagueness of the ideas which they associate with the phrase “the state.”  For them these ideas are like a fog, into which private capitalism disappears, and in which the forces represented by it lose all definite character.  The state, however, is in reality nothing but a collection of individuals; and if the state, besides being a political body, is to become the sole industrial capitalist also, state capitalism, just like private capitalism, will succeed or fail in proportion to the talents of those to whom capital is intrusted as a means of directing the labourers.

If, then, in any capitalistic country, such as Great Britain or America, the business of production could become socialised to-morrow, the best that could possibly happen would be the transformation of the present employers into so many state officials, who industrially would be the state itself.  The only difference would be that they would have lost all personal interest in the pecuniary results of the talents which they would still be expected to exercise.[9]

Now, if such a transformation of circumstances could be suddenly effected to-morrow, without any corresponding change in the dispositions of these men themselves, there is theoretically no reason for supposing that the process of production might not continue to be as efficient as it is now, so long as this precise situation lasted.  But it could not last.  It would be transitory in its very nature.  The present generation of industrial directors would die, and in order that the efficiency of the state as the director of labour might be maintained, other men would have to be discovered who were possessed of equal ability in the first place, and who in the second could be trusted or compelled to use it unremittingly to the utmost, in the absence of the main motive which has actuated such men hitherto.

Apart from the problems involved in these two requirements, neither the theory of production which is put forward, nor the productive system which is advocated, by the intellectual socialists of to-day, contains anything with which theoretically the most uncompromising of their opponents could quarrel.  It is on these two problems that everything will be found to turn—­one being the problem of how, under the conditions which socialism would introduce, the ablest men could be discovered, and invested according to their efficiency with the requisite industrial authority; the other being the problem of how, under the same conditions, it would be possible to secure from such men that full exertion of their talents, on which the material prosperity of the entire community would depend.