In their endeavour to prove the possibility of an equalisation, absolute or approximate, of economic conditions, Karl Marx and the earlier socialists started with two main doctrines.  The one was a moral doctrine; the other was an economic.  The moral doctrine was that, as a matter of eternal justice, every man has a right to the whole of what is produced by him.  The economic doctrine was that, as a matter of fact, the only producers of wealth are the mass of manual labourers, and that, with certain unimportant exceptions, the economic values produced by all labourers are equal.  Hence he argued that all wealth ought to go to the labourers, and that all labourers were entitled to approximately equal shares of it.  The later socialists aim at reaching the same conclusion, and they start with two doctrines, a moral and an economic, likewise.  Having arrived, however, at a truer theory of production—­having recognised that labour is not the sole producer, and that some men produce incalculably more than others—­they have, in order to support their demand for an equality of possession, been obliged to supplement their repudiation of the economic theory of their predecessors, by repudiating their theory of eternal justice also, and introducing another of a wholly opposite character.  While Karl Marx contended that, in justice, production and possession were inseparable, the later socialists contend that there is no connection between them, and that it is perfectly easy to convert to this moral view every human being who is likely to suffer by its adoption.  Thus the difference between the earlier and the later socialists is as follows:  The earlier socialists started with a theory of justice which is in harmony with common-sense and the general instincts of mankind; and this theory was pressed into the service of socialism only by being associated with a false theory of production.  The later socialists start with a truer theory of production; and they reconcile this with their own practical programme, only by associating it with a false moral psychology.  In each case a fallacy is the basis of the socialistic conclusion; and without a fallacy somewhere—­a fallacy which is pushed about, like a mouse under a table-cloth—­no socialistic conclusion even tends to develop itself from the premises.

And what is true of the main arguments of the later, as of the earlier socialists, is equally true of their subsidiary arguments also, from those which refer to the generalisations of the sociologists of the nineteenth century, and base themselves on the confusion between speculative truth and practical, down to those which are drawn from the absurd psychological supposition that all motives are interchangeable, and that those which actuate the artist, the anchorite, and the soldier can be made to replace by means of a vote or a sermon those which at present actuate the masters of industrial enterprise.  On whatever argumentative point the socialists, as socialists, lay stress, there, under