It is substantially the same doctrine which we have met with so often—viz., that labor alone is the source of wealth, and if capitalist and landlord could be swept out of existence the entire social product would go to the laborer. It resulted from a one-sided development of certain teachings of Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations.” “The produce of labor,” says Adam Smith, in one place—and, as will be seen, he means the entire product—“constitutes the natural recompense or wages of labor. “In that original state of things which precedes both the appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock, the whole produce of labor belongs to the laborer. He has neither landlord nor master to share with him. “Had this state continued, the wages of labor would have augmented with all those improvements in its productive powers to which the division of labor gives occasion. All things would gradually have become cheaper. They would have been produced by a smaller quantity of labor; and as the commodities produced by equal quantities of labor would naturally, in this state of things, be exchanged for one another, they would have been purchased likewise with the produce of a smaller quantity.”[189] Repeat this to the man toiling and moiling for a bare subsistence, while he crouches before the employing capitalist surfeited in luxury; or to the poor tenant farmer, whose half-starved family can hardly find the wherewithal to cover their nakedness, while his absentee landlord indulges in the extravagant pleasures of a gay capital—and do you imagine that from it he will be slow to draw a very natural conclusion, and one fraught with tremendous practical consequences? If that originally and naturally belonged to him which another now enjoys, will he not long to return to the state of nature? As he reflects upon his wrongs and sufferings, will he not be filled with hatred towards that one who, as he thinks, unjustly and cruelly keeps him from the fruits of his labor? And as time goes on, and the hardships he endures sink more and more deeply into his mind, will he not finally, in desperation, resolve to put down his oppressor, be he landlord or be he capitalist, and to reverse, by the force of a strong right arm, an unnatural and artificial social organization? In that thought and in that determination originated social democracy. CHAPTER XIII. THE IDEA OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. Social democrats form the extreme wing of the socialists, though, at present, many of them are inclined to lay so much stress on equality of enjoyment, regardless of the value of one’s labor, that they might, perhaps, more properly be called communists. But as they are usually known as social democrats, and as the name is not likely to lead to misunderstanding, there is no reason why we should not adhere to the ordinary appellation, especially as there are those among them who do not favor equality. They ought scarcely to be called simply socialists.