_The Confusion of Thought involved in the Socialistic Conception of Labour._ [Sidenote ◆1 After what has now been said, every one will admit that Ability, as distinct from Labour, is as truly a productive agent as Labour is.] [Sidenote ◆2 But Socialists, even if they admit this fact, by their inaccurate thought and language obscure the meaning of the fact;] ◆¹ There is one point which now must be quite plain to every reader, and on which there is no need to insist further; namely, that Ability is as truly a productive agent as Labour, and that if Labour produces any part of contemporary wealth, Ability just as truly produces another part. This proposition, when put in a general way, will, after what has been said, not be disputed by anybody; but there are various arguments which readers of socialistic sympathies will probably invoke as disproving it in the particular form just given to it. Certain of these arguments require to be discussed at length; but the rest can be disposed off quickly, and we will get them out of the way first. ◆² They are, indeed, not so much arguments as confusions of thought, due largely to an inaccurate use of language. These confusions are practically all comprehended in the common socialistic formula which declares all production, under modern conditions, to be what Socialists call “socialised.” By this is meant that the whole wealth of the community is produced by the joint action of all the classes of men and of all the faculties employed in its production; and the formula thus includes, as Socialists will be careful to tell us, all those faculties which are here described as Ability. Now such a doctrine, if we consider its superficial sense merely, is so far from being untrue that it is a truism. But if we consider what it implies, if we consider the only meaning which gives it force as a socialistic argument, or indeed invests it with the character of any argument at all, we shall find it to be a collection of fallacies for which the truism is only a cloak. For the implied meaning is not the mere barren statement that the exertions of all contribute to the joint result, but that the exertions of all contribute to it in an equal degree; the further implication being that all therefore should share alike in it. [Sidenote ◆1 Making use of the same fallacy as that of Mill, which has been already criticised.]