But though supply thus depends on the domination of the few, and rises and falls with the ability with which that domination is exercised, it is itself at the same time under the domination of the many. Some industrial genius may make a colossal fortune by directing the labour of some thousands of men to the production (let us say) of a new species of beer; but his enterprise will succeed only because millions of men like the beer, and demand it under the direction of their own taste alone. The tastes of the many, of course, exhibit many varieties. Where a million men demand beer, another million will demand whisky; and there are many commodities, such as guns, golf balls, and cricket bats, the demand for which is confined to comparatively small classes. But the point here insisted on is, not that every member of the community demands the same commodities, but that whatever commodities are demanded, are demanded in each case in accordance with the spontaneous wishes of individuals, and that the total force of the demand is the cumulative result of a number of actions and desires which happen to be spontaneously similar. The commodities supplied to them have, in other words, to be accommodated to a genuinely democratic order; and if the consuming democracy does not consider them suitable, it virtually, by refusing to buy them, condemns them to be destroyed. Thus if we direct our attention to consumption, the few—the directors of industry—are the servants of the many; though if we direct {242} our attention, as we did previously, to production, the many, in the capacity of workers, are the servants or subjects of the few. And now let us turn back to the domain of politics. We shall find that we do so possessed of a new clue to the true nature and extent of the powers of the many there. For we shall find that in civil government, just as in economic production, the process involved is a process of supply and demand; and that whilst there is a certain kind of political demand in respect of which the many are paramount, and act as a true democracy, their power in the business of supply is never more than partial, and is in most cases illusory. The first point of which we must here take notice is this—that though the analogy between economic production and civil government is a genuine one, it is not to be found in the phenomena in which we should naturally be tempted to look for it. What we should naturally be inclined to do would be to take the demand for laws and policies as the counterpart to the demand for commodities, and the framing of such laws and the carrying out of policies as the counterpart to economic supply; the first of these, like the demand for commodities, being simple and spontaneous; the second difficult, like the manufacture of them. But in arguing thus we should be wrong.