Economic injustice is perhaps the most obvious evil of our present system.  It would be utterly absurd to maintain that the men who inherit great wealth deserve better of the community than those who have to work for their living.  I am not prepared to maintain that economic justice requires an exactly equal income for everybody.  Some kinds of work require a larger income for efficiency than others do; but there is economic injustice as soon as a man has more than his share, unless it is because his efficiency in his work requires it, or as a reward for some definite service.  But this point is so obvious that it needs no elaboration.

The modern growth of monopolies in the shape of trusts, cartels, federations of employers and so on has greatly increased the power of the capitalist to levy toll on the community.  This tendency will not cease of itself, but only through definite action on the part of those who do not profit by the capitalist rŽgime.  Unfortunately the distinction between the proletariat and the capitalist is not so sharp as it was in the minds of socialist theorizers.  Trade-unions have funds in various securities; friendly societies are large capitalists; and many individuals eke out their wages by invested savings.  All this increases the difficulty of any clear-cut radical change in our economic system.  But it does not diminish the desirability of such a change.

Such a system as that suggested by the French syndicalists, in which each trade would be self-governing and completely independent, without the control of any central authority, would not secure economic justice.  Some trades are in a much stronger bargaining position than others.  Coal and transport, for example, could paralyze the national life, and could levy blackmail by threatening to do so.  On the other hand, such people as school teachers, for example, could rouse very little terror by the threat of a strike and would be in a very weak bargaining position.  Justice can never be secured by any system of unrestrained force exercised by interested parties in their own interests.  For this reason the abolition of the state, which the syndicalists seem to desire, would be a measure not compatible with economic justice.

The tyranny of the employer, which at present robs the greater part of most men’s lives of all liberty and all initiative, is unavoidable so long as the employer retains the right of dismissal with consequent loss of pay.  This right is supposed to be essential in order that men may have an incentive to work thoroughly.  But as men grow more civilized, incentives based on hope become increasingly preferable to those that are based on fear.  It would be far better that men should be rewarded for working well than that they should be punished for working badly.  This system is already in operation in the civil service, where a man is only dismissed for some exceptional degree of vice or virtue, such as