Supposing one man were to own all the means of production, and supposing he were to have in his possession one machine which could produce in an indefinite amount all that human beings need in order to live. Then there would be no economic reason why this one man should provide wealth for anyone except himself and his family. He might turn out enough things to support a few others whom he wanted for private servants or to amuse him, but there would be no reason why he should support the masses around him. Now it is true that we have not yet come, under Capitalism, to so extreme a case. But the moral applies, though modified, to Capitalism in its last stages, when very few men control the means of production, when machinery has become very efficient, and when the great mass of people are dependent upon employment by the capitalist for their existence. Consider that it is of the essence of Capitalism to keep wages down, that is, to buy labour cheap. Therefore, the labourer who actually produces, say, boots cannot afford to buy a sufficient amount of the boots which he himself has made. The capitalist controlling the boot-making machinery, when he has provided himself with a dozen pair of boots, and the working classes of the community with such boots as their wages permit them to buy, must either try to sell the extra boots abroad (and that outlet can’t last long) or stop making them. He has restricted the home market by the necessity of cheap labour, and you have the absurd position of men making more goods than they need, and yet having less of those goods available for themselves than they need: the labourer producing, or able to produce, every year enough clothing for ten years, and yet not being able to afford sufficient for one: the labourer producing or able to produce ten good overcoats, yet not able to buy one. So under Capitalism in its last stages you have the abnormal position of millions of men ready to make the necessaries of life, of machinery ready to produce those necessaries, of raw material standing ready to be worked up by the machinery if only labourers could be put on, and yet all the machinery standing idle, the wealth not being produced, and the mass who could produce it going hungry and ill-shod and badly clothed. And the more Capitalism develops the more that state of things will develop with it.