Competition, then, between the directors of labour—or, as it is here defined, the struggle for industrial domination—is as much a part of the theoretical _régime_ of socialism as it is a part of the actual _régime_ of capitalism. The only differences between the two consist, firstly, in the means by which labour is directed, coercion being employed in one case, and in the other the inducement of wages; and, secondly, in the means by which the fittest director is placed in power, and the less fit deprived of it—an official body deciding the matter in the one case, and the mass of the consuming public deciding it in the other for themselves. Now we may safely say that the _régime_ of industrial coercion, or slavery, even though it should bear the name of socialism, is not in these days possible. It is impossible for two reasons—one, that it is out of harmony with the sentiments of the modern world; and the other—equally strong, though not so generally avowed—that it is an exceedingly clumsy and wasteful instrument of {173} competition. We may, accordingly, dismiss it from our consideration; and such being the case, there remains for us the absolute certainty that if society is to make any further industrial advance, or if it is to save itself from a relapse into industrial helplessness, the capitalistic wage-system, and with it capitalistic competition, or, in other words, the competitive struggle for domination, must both of them be continued under some form or other; nor, although they may be modified in an indefinite number of their details, is there any apparent possibility of ever modifying them in any of their essentials. Indeed, the great moral to be drawn from the facts that have been here elucidated is that if any one institution in the modern world threatens to be permanent, that institution is the capitalistic wage-system; and all proposed alterations in it we may set down as impossible in precise proportion as the socialists attach value to them. The foolish dreamers who imagine that they can overthrow it, consider only its outer aspect, and not the forces of which it is the expression. It is perfectly true that this system might at any given time, and in any given country, be paralysed or reduced to ashes; but the forces that would overthrow it would be essentially non-productive. The men who destroyed it would find themselves powerless without it, and would be obliged to submit to, and assist in, its reconstruction. For the outer form of capitalism is not what capitalism is, any more than a painter’s brush is the power that paints great pictures. Capitalism, in its essence, is merely {174} the realised process of the more efficient members of the human race controlling and guiding the less efficient; capitalistic competition is the means by which, out of these more efficient members, society itself selects those who serve it best; and no society which intends to remain civilised, and is not prepared