These authorities seem to agree in thinking (1) that the capitalist is a thief, (2) that the manual worker is a wage slave, (3) that freedom (in the sense of being able to work as he likes) is every man's rightful birthright, and (4) that this freedom is to be achieved through the establishment of National Guilds. As to (1) Messrs Bechhofer and Reckitt speak on page 99 of their book of the "felony of Capitalism" as a matter that need not be argued about. Mr Cole makes the same assumption by observing on page 235 of the work already mentioned that "to do good work for a capitalist employer is merely, if we view the situation rationally, to help a thief to steal more successfully." Well, this view of capital and the capitalist may be true. Mr Cole is a highly educated and gifted gentleman, and a Fellow of Magdalen. He may have expounded and proved this point in some work that I have not been fortunate enough to read. But as the abolition of the capitalist is one of the chief aims put forward by these writers it seems a pity that they should thus first assert that he is a thief to be stamped out, instead of explaining the matter to old-fashioned folk who believe that capitalists are, in the main, the people (or representatives of the people) who have equipped industry, and enormously multiplied its efficiency and output, and so have enabled the greater part of the existing population of this country (and most others) to come into being. But to the Guild Socialists the identity of robbery with capitalism seems to be so self-evident that it needs no proof. Next, as to the wage system. They seem to think that to earn a wage is slavery and degradation, but to receive pay is freedom. With the best will in the world I have tried to see where this immense difference between the use of two words, which seem to me to mean much the same thing, comes in in their view, but I have not succeeded. Perhaps you will be able to if I give you Mr Cole's own words. On page 154 of the book cited, he says that the wage system is "the root of the whole tyranny of capitalism," and then continues: "There are four distinguishing marks of the wage system upon which National Guildsmen are accustomed to fix their attention. Let me set them out clearly in the simplest terms, "1. The wage system abstracts 'labour' from the labourer, so that the one can be bought and sold apart from the other. "2. Consequently, wages are paid to the wage worker only when it is profitable to the capitalist to employ his labour. "3. The wage worker, in return for his wage, surrenders all control over the organisation of production. "4. The wage worker, in return for his wage, surrenders all claim upon the product of his labour. "If the wage system is to be abolished, all these four marks of degraded status must be removed. National Guilds, then, must assure to the worker, at least, the following things:--