They resemble each other because both, in so far as they subserve progress, subserve it for precisely the same reason. They are both contrivances by which the superior few may secure, so far as industry is concerned, the implicit obedience of the many. On the private lives of the many their effects will be widely different; but so far as concerns their direct connection with industry—their operation on men during the actual processes of production—slavery and the capitalistic wage-system differ only in this: that the one secures the required industrial obedience by operating on men’s fears; the other secures it by operating on their desires and wills. Thus the slaves who built the pyramids had each some specified task—the making of so many bricks, the cutting of such and such stones, or the fixing of bricks and stones in such and such situations—which had to be performed if the pyramids were to be built at all. So, too, if the Hotel Metropole at Brighton was to {158} be built at all, the bricklayers, masons, and other workmen who built it had to perform tasks of a precisely similar kind. But obedience to orders on the part of the Egyptian slave was secured by the knowledge on his part that disobedience would be punished by some form of chastisement, and very likely of torture, whilst obedience on the part of the Brighton workman was secured by the knowledge on his part that, unless he chose to yield it, one way, at all events, of earning a livelihood would be closed to him. It is this latter method of securing industrial obedience that is made possible by the capitalistic wage-system; and it is primarily for this reason that what is called capitalism is an agent of progress, and has developed itself in progressive communities. As for capital itself, this, as we all know, performs part of its functions by assuming the form of machinery, buildings, bridges, railways, and a variety of structures and appliances which are grouped together under the general head of _fixed capital_ by economists. But these structures and appliances are themselves the result of the previous influence of great men on the industrial actions of the many; and as it was by means of wage-capital that this influence was secured, the primary and most essential functions which capital fulfils, and which really form the essence of the capitalistic system, are to be found by considering capital as employed in the payment of wages.