I zealously threw myself into this task, and had proceeded with it a considerable way--to the close of a thick first volume, containing a new treatment of the theory of value; but when at work on the classical theory of capital, I made a discovery which at once threw a ray of light into the obscurity that had until then made the practical realisation of the forms of social organisation impossible. _I perceived that capitalism stops the growth of wealth, not_--as Marx has it--_by stimulating 'production for the market,' but by preventing the consumption of the surplus produce; and that interest, though not unjust, will nevertheless in a condition of economic justice become superfluous and objectless._ These two fundamental truths will be found treated in detail in chapters xxiv. and xviii.; but I cannot refrain here from doing justice to the manes of Marx, by acknowledging unreservedly his service in having been the first to proclaim--though he misunderstood it and argued illogically--the connection between the problem of value and modern capitalism. I consider the theoretical and practical importance of these new truths to be incalculable. Not merely do they at once give to the theory of social evolution the unity and harmony of a definitive whole, but, what is more, they show the way to an immediate practical realisation of the principles formulated by this theory. If it is possible for the community to provide the capital for production with out thereby doing injury to either the principle of perfect individual freedom or to that of justice, _if interest can be dispensed with without introducing communistic control in its stead, then there no longer stands any positive obstacle in the way of the establishment of the free social order_.