The social counterpart to the Darwinian struggle for survival is to be found in the struggle of labourers to find employment • 144 But this is not the struggle to which historical progress is due • 145 For the most rapid progress has taken place without any increased fitness in the labourers • 145 The progressive struggle in industry is confined entirely to the employers; • 146 and in every domain of progress it is confined to the leaders, to the exclusion of those who are led • 146 In the progressive struggle between great men, the mass of the community play no part whatever • 147 Let us take, for instance, two rival hotel-keepers • 148 One becomes bankrupt, and the other takes over his hotel and his staff • 148 The sole struggle is between the employers, not the employed • 148 The staff of the unsuccessful hotel-keeper gain, not lose, by being employed by the successful • 149 Historical progress, then, results from a struggle not for subsistence, but for domination • 149 CHAPTER III THE MEANS BY WHICH THE GREAT MAN APPLIES HIS GREATNESS TO WEALTH-PRODUCTION All gain by the domination of the fittest, except the few who fail to secure power for themselves • 151 We must consider, however, that the great men who struggle for domination would not do so without some strong motive; • 152 and also that they cannot dominate others except by some particular means • 153 Now the question of motive we will treat of hereafter. At present we will confine ourselves to the question of means • 153 These vary in each domain of social activity • 153 In some they are too obvious to need discussion • 154 We need consider what they are only in the domains of politics and wealth-production • 155 The question is most important in its bearings on wealth-production • 156 The great man in wealth-production can influence the actions of others by two means only—by the slave-system and the wage-system • 157 The slave-system secures obedience by coercion, the wage-system by inducement • 157 Wage-capital, not fixed capital, gives the primary power to capitalism as a productive agent • 158 Wage-capital is an accumulation of the necessaries of life, • 159 owned or controlled by a few persons, • 159 and apportioned by them amongst many, on certain conditions • 160 Karl Marx entirely misunderstood what these conditions are • 160 The essence of these conditions is that the many shall be technically directed by the few • 161 The question of how much the few appropriate of the product is a separate question altogether • 162 The _corvée_ system or slavery would make wage-capital superfluous; and this shows what the essential function of wage-capital is • 162 So-called “co-operation” is merely the wage-system disguised • 163 There are, then, only two alternatives—the wage-system and the slave-system; • 164 as we shall find by considering how the socialists can only escape the wage-system by substituting slavery • 165