The only domains of social activity, therefore, in which the means employed by the great man to control the actions of others so that ordinary men may be guided by the faculties of the exceptional—the only domains of activity in which these means, {156} thus employed, really require minute and careful discussion, and have really a direct bearing on the practical problems of the day—are the domain of economic production and the domain of political government. These, indeed, may be said to contain between them the whole of the questions with regard to which parties are divided—with regard to which those who believe that the conditions of civilisation may be indefinitely improved but can never be fundamentally altered, are divided from those who believe them to be capable of indefinite metamorphosis. This is specially true of the domain of economic production; for it is mainly on account of its connection with the production and distribution of wealth that political government excites so much popular interest and forms the subject of so much vehement controversy. And in every other domain of human activity equally, we shall find that the interests, the endeavours, and the disputes of men have an economic process as their basis, or economic progress as their object. The processes of production and commerce are, in fact, the central processes of every nation’s life. Government exists to foster them, and changes its form as these processes develop; whilst fleets and armies exist mainly for their protection, and more and more depend on the progress that takes place in them. It is, in short, in the domain of economics that all the social problems of the day either begin or end; and consequently in examining the means by which the great man influences others, the question which it is {157} really our first concern to examine relates to the means by which great men, whose greatness consists in the fact that they are exceptional in their powers of causing the production of wealth, and on whom consequently the wealth of the whole community depends, obtain a control over other men’s productive actions. This control can be secured in two ways only, or else in some way that is a combination or modification of both. One of these ways is slavery; the other is the capitalistic wage-system. Let us consider how the two resemble each other, and also how they differ.