Therefore, the Socialist cannot establish the right of labour to the full product of industry until he proves that this so-called right could be reduced to practice consistently with individual and social welfare. In other words, he must show that to give the entire product to the labourer would be a reasonable method of distribution. Now the arrangement by which the Socialist proposes to award the whole product of labour is the collective ownership and operation of the means of production, and the social distribution of the product. If this system would not enable the labourer and the members of society generally to satisfy their wants to better advantage than is possible under the present system, the contention that the labourer has a right to the entire product of industry falls to the ground. The question will be considered in the following chapter. FOOTNOTES: [114] Cf. Engels, "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific," pp. 45, 46; and Hillquit-Ryan, "Socialism: Promise or Menace," 103, 104, 143-145. [115] Cf. Hillquit-Ryan, op. cit., pp. 75, 76. [116] "Capital," pp. 1-9. [117] Op. cit., p. 117; Humboldt Edition. [118] Skelton, "Socialism: A Critical Analysis," pp. 121, 122. [119] Cf. Skelton, loc. cit. [120] The exaggerated claims made on behalf of social productivity in the matter of land values have been examined in a previous chapter. Similar exaggerations with regard to capital will be considered in chapter xii. CHAPTER XI THE SOCIALIST SCHEME OF INDUSTRY "Never has our party told the workingman about a 'State of the future,' never in any way than as a mere utopia. If anybody says: 'I picture to myself society after our programme has been realised, after wage labour has been abolished, and the exploitation of men has ceased, in such and such a manner,--' well and good; ideas are free, and everybody may conceive the Socialist State as he pleases. Whoever believes in it may do so; whoever does not, need not. These pictures are but dreams, and Social Democracy has never understood them otherwise."[121] Such is the official attitude of Socialism toward descriptions of its contemplated industrial organisation. The party has never drawn up nor approved any of the various outlines of this sort which have been defended by individual Socialists. It maintains that it cannot anticipate even the essential factors in the operation of a social and industrial system which will differ so widely from the one that we have to-day, and which will be so profoundly determined by events that are in the nature of the case impossible to prognosticate. _Socialist Inconsistency_