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OPPOSITION
129
critics of competition, who usually see only the factual re-
sults and advantages for the group and the formal anti-
thetic aspect of the relation between the competitors.
A competitive system is therefore not identical with a
system that is purely individualistic. The competitor
works, of course, for his own interests. But, as the contest
is fought by means of objective values or social services and
is usually advantageous to the group, it may be in the in-
terest of the group to foster competition. With reference
to the final aims of social life, the question of the advan-
tage or disadvantage of competition is a problem of social
technique, not a question of ultimate ends. The question
has been answered in different ways. On the one side stands
the group that advocates unlimited competition because it
believes in the efficiency of the competitive system. On the
other side stands the group of socialists, who deny that the
waste of energy and duplication which result from com-
petition are counterbalanced by the advantages of the
competitive system. They advocate a social technique
which is to operate with a system of co-ordinated and in-
tegrated services directed from a central point, instead of
a system of competing individual efforts. In between
stand different groups advocating restricted competition
in some fields and organized and co-ordinated services in
other fields. A comparison of these different systems is a
comparison of means, not of ends. A judgment and valua-
tion of their comparative merit should therefore be based
on their efficiency as means. But the intellectual capacity
for a theoretic valuation is usually lacking, and the result
is that in the controversies of the different groups senti-
ments and subjective preferences play a more important
part than differences of opinion about actual efficiency.!
t Soz., pp. 282-97.
