3i6

SOCIALISM  IN  ENGLAND.

perfectly  true,  but  it  is  misleading,  to  say  the  least,  to  affirm
that  machinery  adds  nothing  to  value.  In  the  first  place,
wherever  there  is  a  monopoly—and  quite  apart  from  patents
and  combinations,  the  sagacious  and  enterprising  employer,  by
always  adopting  the  most  improved  machinery,  will  have
advantages  in  the  nature  of  a  monopoly—machines  do  add  to
exchange-value  ;  and  secondly,  the  important  thing  to  consider
is  the  use-value,  the  utilities  created  by  the  machines,  to  which,
indeed,  modern  civilization  owes  most  of  its  increased  wealth.
While  it  is  true  that  manual  labourers  have  not  shared  to  the
extent  one  would  wish  in  the  increased  produce  due  to
machinery,  it  is  not  true  that  they  do  not  share  in  it  at  all.
They  benefit  by  the  cheapening  of  articles  of  their  consumption, ­
  and  it  is  not  the  case  that  wages  are  necessarily  lowered
in  proportion.  On  the  contrary,  as  we  have  seen,  moneywages
  have  largely  increased  in  the  last  fifty  years,  while  this
cheapening  process  has  been  going  on.
It  is  unnecessary  to  criticise  Mr.  Hyndman’s  theories
further.  M.  de  Laveleye  has  already  dealt  with  them  by
anticipation.  But,  however  false  Mr.  Hyndman’s  analysis  may
be,  however  exaggerated  his  picture  of  the  present,  however
incorrect  his  estimate  of  the  future,  after  making  all  allowances
the  fact  still  remains  that  our  present  industrial  system  is  far
from  perfect.  There  is  a  growing  dissatisfaction,  not  confined
to  the  poor  and  the  Social  Democrats  alone,  with  the  present
distribution  of  wealth  ;  an  increasing  conviction  that  the
manual  labourers  do  not  obtain  the  share  to  which  they  are
justly  entitled  in  the  wealth  which  they  help  to  produce  ;  an
ever-deepening  belief,  not  merely  that  the  profits  of  the
employer  are  sometimes  inordinately  high  and  the  wages  of
the  labourer  often  disgracefully  low,  but  that  the  present
system,  which  seems  inevitably  to  breed  antagonism  between
employer  and  employed,  and  which  too  often  leaves  the  latter
at  the  mercy  of  the  former,  is  radically  at  fault.  How  to
change  this  system  for  the  better  is  really  becoming  a  vital
question.  Let  us  see  what  answer  the  Social  Democrats  give.
The  objects  of  the  Federation  may  be  found  most  concisely
stated  in  their  manifesto,  entitled  “Socialism  made  Plain.”