Mar X on Mallock 
 
 of 
 
 Facts vs. Fiction 
 
 BY DANIEl. DE 
 
 LEON 
 
 A N Address Delivered in 
 Maennerchor Hall, New 
 York, Tuesday, January 21, 
 1908, Under the Auspices of 
 Section New York, Socialist 
 Labor Party : : : : : 
 
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 ^ ^ P. M. 
 
 KrxNCiSCO, CAiJK. 
 
 'i 
 
 \ 
 
 Marx 
 
 FACTS 
 
 ON Mallock 
 
 • • •• OR.. *. • 
 
 vs. FICTION 
 
 Workingmen and Workingwomen of New York; 
 
 First a word on the title of this address. A critical ac¬ 
 quaintance was much surprised, when he learned from me 
 that Marx had never written a line on Mallock. The title— 
 ‘Alarx on Mallock”—he thought was misleading. It is not. 
 Sound reasoning answers nonsense in advance, and is a 
 tommentary on ail future nonsense. The Eev. Jasper in the 
 South denied, in this generation, that the sun does not move 
 around the earth. “The sun do move!” declared the sapient 
 Jasper. An address entitled “Copernicus on Jasper” would 
 be to the point, although the Eev. Jasper did not bestow his 
 wisdom upon earth but many a century after the great as¬ 
 tronomer Copernicus had for all time settled the question 
 about the earth’s motion around the sun. It is so also with 
 Marx and Mallock. 
 
 There is another, a probable, misapprehension thaCl wish 
 to remove before entering upon my subject. I had a more 
 important, a vastly more important object in view, when I 
 accepted the invitation to deliver this address, than to over¬ 
 throw, refute, or confute Mallock. That vastly more im¬ 
 portant purpose is to unroll before you one of the most bril¬ 
 liant chapters of Marx’s “Capital”—a chapter in which eco¬ 
 nomics and sociology, history and the philosophy of history, 
 are so sublimely blended that to study that chapter is, in 
 itself, a liberal education. In unrolling that chapter before 
 you, Mallock will, happily, serve as a foil. The contrast will 
 
3 
 
 Marx on Mallock 
 
 set out Marx all the more radiant. Incidentally, of course, 
 Mallock will be eclipsed, or confuted, in point of fact and 
 in point of reasoning; but that is only incidentally. It can¬ 
 not, in this generation, be the main purpose of an address 
 on economics. 
 
 I hold in my hand a booklet issued by the public lecture 
 bureau of the National Civic Federation. The booklet is en¬ 
 titled ‘^Socialism.^’ It contains Mallock’s recent lectures 
 here in America against Socialism. It is the booklet which 
 the advertisements for this meeting recemmended you to read 
 in advance—especially its Sixth Lecture, which may be said 
 to sum up the others. I hope you have followed the recom¬ 
 mendation. It will greatly assist you in understanding the 
 issue. 
 
 The key-note to Mallock’s contention is that Marx—and 
 with him the Socialist propagandist—ignores, if he does not 
 deny, the existence and necessity of intelligence in the pro¬ 
 duction of the vast amount of wealth produced in modern 
 society. Not that Mallock claims that Marx ignores, or de¬ 
 nies, intelligence, and the necessity of such, on the part of 
 the operative in the operations of his hands. Not that. Mat- 
 lock’s contention is that Marx is blind to a special class of 
 intelligence, an intelligence that, as Mallock expresses it, 
 differs ‘‘not in degree, but in kind” from the intelligence that 
 the manual operative exercises, and which intelligence, dif¬ 
 ferent in kind, ig the actual source of the modern great out¬ 
 put in w^ealth. This particular intelligence Mallock calls 
 “ability,” “directive ability”; he locates the same in “The 
 Few,” the capitalists; and from these premises he concludes 
 that, seeing “The Few,” the capitalist class, are the fertile 
 source of the greatly increased output, that increased output, 
 or “increment,” as Mallock calls it, belongs of right to “The 
 Few,” the capitalist class, and not to the many, as Marx 
 claims. * 
 
 This is the substance of Mallock’s position. But let us 
 
 RBC 
 
 NcU 
 
Marx on Mallock 
 
 3 
 
 place Mallock upon the witness-stand by quoting him. liter¬ 
 ally as he elaborates his theory from step to step, from prem¬ 
 ises to conclusion, in the course of his lectures. 
 
 On page 11 of the booklet. Lecture 1, Mallock states the 
 ‘‘theory” or “doctrine” of Karl Marx in these words: 
 
 all wealth is due to the labor of the average majority—to that or¬ 
 dinary manual exertion which in all cases is so equal in kind that 
 an hour of it on the part of any one man is approximately as effica¬ 
 cious as an hour of it on the part of'any other. 
 
 In the course of the Ith and last lecture, which sum¬ 
 marizes his argument in detail, Mallock returns to the point, 
 and says on page 115: 
 
 I pointed out that, as an instrument of popular agitation, socialism 
 was based on the doctrine which Karl Marx managed to invest with 
 a semblance of scientitic truth, to the efl'ect that all wealth is pro¬ 
 duced by ordinary manual labor— 
 
 These two passages—I quote only these two, there are many 
 more—expressly claim that the Marxian doctrine is to the 
 effect that “all wealth is produced by ordinary manual labor,” 
 in other words, that manual labor is the sole })roducer of 
 wealth. This is the basis—the necessary and the false basis, 
 as I shall prove to you before I close—for the superstructure 
 of Mallock’s theory, which he proceeds to elaborate with the 
 following reasoning. 
 
 At the top of page 116 Mallock argues: 
 
 The doctrine of Marx, as to the all-productivity of labor is, so I 
 pointed out, virtually quite adequate to explain the production of 
 wealth in very early communities, and even in certain remote and 
 primitive groups to-day; but the amount of wealth per head of the 
 industrial population in such communities is proverbially small in 
 amount, and very meager in kind. It affords a contrast, and not a 
 parallel to, the amount and kind of wealth produced under the mod¬ 
 ern system. What is produced per head in the latter case is indeffn- 
 itely higher in quality, and more then ten times greater in quantity, 
 than what is produced in the former: and the question is, therefore, 
 what is the cause of the difference—the small out-put and’the great? 
 
 As will presently appear, when we shall enjoy the treat of 
 hearing Marx himself, with the exception of the introductory 
 
4 
 
 Marx on Malloch 
 
 sentence in the passage that I have just read, and in which, 
 as you will presently see, Marx is wrongly quoted—with the 
 exception of that introductory sentence, the Socialist has no 
 fault to find with the passage. It is in fact, as you will pres¬ 
 ently perceive, a page from Marxian economics, which Marx 
 states with infinitely more lucidity. But confining our¬ 
 selves to Mallock, for the present, his argument is:—Vast is 
 the contrast between the amount of wealth produced by prim¬ 
 itive, and the amount of wealth produced by modern society. 
 What, asks Mallock, is the reason, or the cause, of the differ¬ 
 ence? 
 
 Before answering the question, Mallock very correctly re¬ 
 sorts to the analytic method of elimination, by considering 
 and eliminating possible answers that might suggest them¬ 
 selves, and yet are mistaken. On the same page, 116, he 
 reasons: 
 
 No reference to skill or the exceptional craftsmanship of individuals 
 will provide us with any answer: for were exceptional skill, as we 
 see in the case of an illuminated missal, or a cup by Benvenuto 
 Cellini, whilst it will produce individual commodities of almost price¬ 
 less value, will produce only a few of them, and the cost of these 
 will be extravagant, whilst the kind of commodities which are typical 
 of modern production is a kind which is distinctly cheap and suscept¬ 
 ible of indefinite multiplication. Indeed, in the production of any 
 article of modern wealth, the necessity for rare skill is a draw-back, 
 and makes the supply of the supply at once costly and uncertain. 
 
 Again, as will duly transpire, no fault can be found with 
 the reasoning. It is Marxian, up to the handle—primitive or 
 pre-capitalist society yields a meager production of wealth; 
 capitalist society yields an abundance, and is even capable 
 of multiplying the abundance many fold. The individual 
 skill of the operative is not the cause of the increase; indeed, 
 the greater the skill that an article requires for its produc¬ 
 tion the smaller is the output thereof. Individual skill, or 
 the intellect of the individual manual laborer, being rather a 
 drawback to, than a promoter of, plenty, what is the cause of 
 the plentifulness in modern production? The next passage 
 
Marx on Mallock 
 
 5 
 
 from the testimony of witness Mallock furnishes his answer. 
 On that same page, 116, the witness avers: 
 
 The great factor which differentiates modern production from produc¬ 
 tion of all other kinds has nothing to do with the operation of or¬ 
 dinary or even skilled labor, but consists in the mental faculties by 
 which labor is directed: and to these faculties I give the name of 
 ability— 
 
 The answer contained in this passage is still rather vague; 
 but it leads up rapidly to something definite. “Ability,” the 
 fact that “ability” is needed does not yet locate the ability. 
 Further down, however, you will find the Mallockian point 
 clinched by a definition and the location of the ability. “Abil¬ 
 ity,” he proceeds to define as 
 
 indicating certain powers residing in the minds of THE FEW. 
 
 The cat is out. “The Few,” of course, are the capitalist 
 class. The remaining passages, on this particular head, I 
 shall go over rapidly. I cite them merely for the sake of 
 presenting Mallock’s position in all its fullness. 
 
 On page 117 ]\Iallock re-describes the limitations of manual 
 labor— 
 
 I further pointed out that between labor and directing ability the 
 difference was one not of degree but of kind, and that labor, whether 
 skilled or unskilled, stood for the mind of a man directing the 
 operations of his own private pair of hands, these operations ending 
 with the handiwork on which the man is engaged, and not affecting 
 the handiwork of any man excepting himself. 
 
 He then tersely contrasts manual labor with “ability”— 
 
 Ability, I said, on the other hand, stands for the minS of some one 
 man, not affecting any labor of his own hands at all, but influencing 
 simultaneously the labor of any number of other men. 
 
 Finally Mallock epitomizes his argument at the bottom of 
 page 117 in these words: 
 
 The productivity, in short, of the labor of the many in the modern 
 world depends altogethei on the directive faculties of the few. The 
 many do little more than supply a minimum, or a unit, which the 
 ability of the few multiplies. 
 
 and on page 118 in this form: 
 
 whilst the many, in modern a.s well as in primitive societies, produce 
 
6 
 
 Marx on MallocJc 
 
 a minimum of wealth, without which there would be no wealth to 
 increase, the increment, by which modern production is differentiated 
 from primitive, is due to the direction of the few, and not to the 
 labor of the many. 
 
 The practical conclusion of Mallock’s reasoning is reached 
 on page 123: 
 
 if once the functions of the directive ability, of the few are clearly 
 recognized and asserted, and if labor in the modern world is exhibited 
 as practically helpless without it, socialism, as an instrument of 
 popular agitation, would be paralyzed. 
 
 In order to put Mallockism to real good use—indeed, the 
 only use it can serve in popular enlightenment—that is, con¬ 
 trast it squarely with Marxism, I think it will be well to 
 sum up Mallock’s position, from his own words, before pro¬ 
 ceeding to take up Marx. 
 
 Marx, Mallock claims, sees only in manual labor, which 
 includes the individual skill of the individual worker, the 
 source of all wealth and wealth production: Marx errs: the 
 error will be perceived by eomparing and contrasting the out¬ 
 put of wealth in primitive soeiety with the output of wealth 
 in modern soeiety; in primitive society, where individual skill 
 was a faetor and even to-day, in the production of all articles 
 requiring high eraftsmanship, the output of wealth is meager: 
 in modern production, where, the less the individual skill, 
 all the more abundant is production, the output of wealth is 
 great: whenee the difference? The difference proceeds from 
 the circumstance that, in modern soeiety, a special intellectual 
 faculty is set into operation: that faculty is ‘^ability,” “di¬ 
 rective ability”; it is a faculty that differs, not in degree but 
 in kind, from any mental faculty that the manual workers 
 set in play: indeed, the manual workers lack that faculty: 
 that faculty resides in “The Few,” in the capitalist class: it 
 is, thanks to the faculty, whereby the capitalist can and does 
 affect any number of hands simultaneously, that the output 
 of wealth is so large in modern society: without this quicken¬ 
 ing faculty, labor in the modern world is practically help- 
 
Marx on Malloch 
 
 7 
 
 less; consequently, Marx erred when he claimed that the 
 manual workers, and they alone, produced all wealth, and, 
 therefore, that all wealth belonged to them: on the contrary, 
 seeing that the source of the difference between what labor, 
 undirected by capitalist ability, produces, and what labor, 
 directed by capitalist ability, yields, it follows that that dif¬ 
 ference belongs, scientifically and morally, to ‘‘The Few,’’ 
 to the capitalist class—thus sayeth Mallock. 
 
 With this picture clear before our minds, we may proceed 
 to take up Marx—and the facts in the case. Nevertheless, 
 before dropping this booklet, there is one more passage from 
 it to which I must refer. Clear though the position of Mal¬ 
 lock is, the passage I have in mind will help to make it still 
 clearer, and thereby offer an all-the-clearer target for the 
 Socialist’s answer. 
 
 Mallock takes up in this Vlth Lecture the answer made 
 to him in “The Worker” of this city, by Mr. Morris Hill- 
 quit, who, Mallock says, he was told was the “intellectual 
 Ajax” of American Socialists. The starting point, the basis 
 of Mallock’s position and reasoning is, we have seen, the 
 allegation that Marx considers nothing but the manual and 
 mental efforts of the individual manual laborer. Mr. Hill- 
 quit’s refutation is attempted by quoting these words (page 
 120) of Marx himself: 
 
 By labor power or capacity for labor is to be understood the aggre¬ 
 gate of those mental and physical capacities existing in a human 
 being which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any 
 description. 
 
 The answer falls wide of the mark. The mental faculties, 
 referred to by Mallock as being totally ignored by Marx, are 
 not the individual brain-powers of the operatives. The pas¬ 
 sage quoted by Mr. Hillquit refers to such brain-power only. 
 Clear does Mallock make his point, first, that such brain¬ 
 power or skill, wherever needed, is rather a drawback to the 
 plentifulness of production; and, secondly, that the brain¬ 
 power which he has in mind consists in the “directing ability” 
 
8 
 
 Marx on Mallock 
 
 lodged in the capitalist few, whereby the manual labor, to¬ 
 gether with the necessarily accompanying skill “of any num¬ 
 ber of other men,’’ can be influenced, and whereby the ability 
 of the capitalist few is multiplied by the thousand hands 
 whom that ability directs, and thereby turns from sterility 
 into fertility. Mr. Hillquit’s “triumphant answer” is irrele¬ 
 vant. Deservedly is it sneered at by Mallock. The only crit¬ 
 icism to which Mallock is open on this head, when he charges 
 Mr. Hillquit with not understanding Marx, is that Mallock’s 
 sneers are a case of the pot calling the kettle black. 
 
 We now have a clear target before us, and may proceed to 
 take up Marx. 
 
 I have chosen deliberately the edition of Marx’s “Capital,” 
 which I here hold in my hands. It is the Swan Sonnen- 
 schein edition, printed in England, Mallock’s home. With 
 this edition of “Capital” I propose to prove to you— 
 
 1st.—That it is' a figment of Mallock’s brain that Marx 
 saw only in the labor of those manually engaged in produc¬ 
 tion, the source of modern wealth; 
 
 2nd.—That Marx perceived, and brilliantly described, the 
 difference between the meager productivity of primitive and 
 the plentiful yield of modern labor; and 
 
 3rd.—That, with a flash of his genius, Marx pointed out 
 the existence of the central directing authority in the mod¬ 
 ern ^\x)rld of production. 
 
 After proving, as far as these specific points are concerned, 
 that the Marxian theory is misstated by Mallock, and that 
 Mallock states nothing that Marx had not stated before, 
 and elaborated with scientific and superior lucidity, I shall 
 proceed, “Capital” in hand, to parallel and contrast Mal¬ 
 lock’s conclusions with the conclusions arrived at by Marx— 
 1st.—The Mallockian theory, defining the source of the 
 “increment” as a quality of “The Few,” with the Marxian 
 theory, which defines the source of the “increment” as a 
 quality of social, or collective power; 
 
Marx on Mallock 
 
 9 
 
 2nd.—The Mallockian theory, which attributes to the cap¬ 
 italist ^^The Few” the leading function in production, with 
 the Marxian theory, which attributes solely to the Working 
 Class (manual laborers and the supervisors from their own 
 class) the productive functions of modern society; and 
 
 3rd.—The Mallockian theory which, as a consequence of 
 the theory concerning the leading function in production 
 filled by ‘^The Few,’’ raises the modern Capitalist Class to 
 the dignity of social benefactors, with the Marxian theory 
 which lowers the Capitalist Class to the level of plundering 
 despots. 
 
 The chapter from which I shall now mainly quote is the 
 Xlllth of Part IV. It is entitled “Co-operation”—the chap¬ 
 ter to which I referred at the opening as being a treatise, the 
 study of which is, in itself, a liberal education. 
 
 DIRECT YIELD OF MANUAL LABOR. 
 
 With this chapter on “Co-operation” before me, I find 
 myself in a positive emharras de richesse —an embarrassment 
 of wealth from which to draw. One can hardly turn to a 
 page without encountering several passages directly indica¬ 
 tive of the fact that, in the modern world of production—a 
 w'orld of production in which co-operative labor is a distinc¬ 
 tive characteristic—the output of wealth is vastly greater 
 than it was in primitive society, where co-operation was un¬ 
 known, and, consequently, that output is vastly greater than 
 would be the aggregate total of the present individual manual 
 w^orkers. There is another difficulty in the making of a 
 selection of passages that distinctly point out this fact. The 
 magnificent procession of magnificent and pregnant general¬ 
 izations, deducted from the central fact of the phenomenal 
 fertility of co-operative labor, contained in this chapter, so 
 dove-tail into one- another, that it is next to impossible to 
 make any citation that will fall exclusively within any of the 
 
10 
 
 Marx on Mallock 
 
 six heads which I have just enumerated. Moreover, seeing 
 that all the observations are grounded upon that central phe¬ 
 nomenon of the plentiful yield of co-operative labor, they all 
 contribute their share to the demonstration of the fact that, 
 contrary to Mallock’s claim, nothing is remoter from the 
 Marxian theory than i-he error that the output of modern 
 wealth is the exclusive yield of the manual labor engaged in 
 its production. Everyone who desires to obtain a full grasp 
 of the point should read and study the whole chapter. I 
 shall confine myself under this particular head to quoting 
 just three passages which will be found ample for the purpose. 
 
 The first passage wfill be found on page 311; 
 
 Capitalist production only then really begins, as we have already seen, 
 when each individual capital employs simultaneously a compara¬ 
 tively large number of laborers; when, consequently, the labor-pro¬ 
 cess is carried on on an extensive scale, and yields, relatively, large 
 quantities of products. A greater number of laborers working to¬ 
 gether, at the same time, in one place (or, if you will, in the same 
 field of labor), in order to produce the same sort of commodity un¬ 
 der the mastership of one capitalist, constitutes, both historically and 
 logically, the starting point of capitalist production. 
 
 The second passage occurs on page 319: 
 
 The combined working day produces, relatively to an equal sum of 
 isolated working-days, a greater quantity of use-values, and conse- 
 •quently, diminishes the labor time necessary for the production of a 
 given useful effect. 
 
 Finall}^ the third is on page 315, running over to page 
 316, and clinches the point unmistakably; 
 
 Just as the offensive power of a squadron of cavalry, or the de¬ 
 fensive power of a regiment of infantry, is essentially different from 
 the sum of the offensive or defensive powers of the individual cavalry 
 or infantry soldiers taken separately, so the sum total of the me¬ 
 chanical forces, exerted by isolated workmen, differs from the social 
 force that is developed when many hands take part simultaneously 
 in one and the same undivided operation, such as raising a heavy 
 weight, turning a winch, or removing an obstacle. In such cases the 
 effect of the combined labor could either not be produced at all by 
 .isolated individual labor, or it could only be produced by a great ex- 
 ;penditure of time, or on a very dwarfed scale. Not only have we 
 ^here an increase in the productive power of the individual, by means 
 
Marx on Mallock 11 
 
 of co-operation, but the creation of a new power, namely, the collec¬ 
 tive power of masses. 
 
 The point is here expressly made. Co-operative labor, 
 ‘^historically and logically, the starting point of capitalist 
 production,’’ yields, “relatively larger quantities of product” 
 than the aggregate total of the individual manual workers 
 would amount to. The second citation reiterates the fact 
 concerning the “greater quantity of use-values” produced by 
 the “combined working day,” when compared “to an equal 
 sum of isolated working days,” and it explains the fact with 
 the probe that the combined working day “diminishes the 
 labor-time necessary for the production of a given useful 
 article.” However important the first two citations are to 
 the issue, Mallock may still claim, however forced the claim, 
 that it does not necessarily follow, from Marx’s recognition 
 of a larger output of wealth as the accompanying phenom¬ 
 enon of the simultaneous operation of many workers in one 
 industry, that Marx recognizes the function of an intelli¬ 
 gence, outside of the men busy at manual work, and neces¬ 
 sary to the conjuring forth of the said increased output. 
 Mallock may still claim, however forced the claim, that the 
 point he raises is still left un-met, to wit, the existence of a 
 human force, which, without itself operating its hands, is, 
 thanks to its mental activity—Mallock’s “ability”—essential 
 to the yield of the said increased output. The third quota¬ 
 tion, led up to by the tw'o previous ones, clinches the point 
 The operation of many men together, implies organization; 
 organization implies subdivision of functions; subdivision of 
 functions, together with organization, implies differentiation 
 of activities. Marx’s illustration is brilliant. No more than 
 the superior “offensive power of a squadron of cavalry,” or 
 the superior “defensive power of a regiment of infantry,” 
 can be said to flow exclusively from the troopers who wield 
 sabres, or the infantrymen who carry rifles—no more than 
 in these instances, can it be supposed that the larger output, 
 
13 
 
 Marx on Mallock 
 
 which accompanies the simultaneous operations of many 
 w'orkers, flows exclusively from the manual laborers. Marx’s 
 brilliant simile^ contained in the last citation, to which I 
 shall have occasion again to refer upon a subsequent head, 
 at once removes the bottom from under Mallock’s claim that 
 ]\rarx attributes to direct manual labor the only source of 
 all wealth, and also eclipses Mallock’s necessarily clumsy 
 presentation of the subject of the larger output of wealth in 
 modern society. Why Mallock’s presentation was necessarily 
 clumsy will appear presently. 
 
 DIRECTING ^^ABILITY”—'WTHORITY.” 
 
 It should not be necessary, after the analysis I have just 
 presented, to prove that Mallock erred when he claims that 
 Marx fails to perceive, not the function merely, but even the 
 existence of a directing power in modern production. The 
 squadron of cavalry, or the regiment of infantry can not 
 ckoose but be under direction. Neither, of course, could the 
 squadron, or regiment, of co-operating manual workers. But, 
 as I said in opening, the refutation of Mallock is only an in¬ 
 cident in this address, the real object of which is to unroll 
 Marx to your view. Accordingly, under this second head, I 
 shall cite the second scientific generalization of Marx’s on 
 the subject of co-operation. The passage occurs on page 331: 
 
 All combined labor on a large scale requires, more or less, a di¬ 
 recting authority, in order to secure the harmonious working of the 
 individual activities, and to perform the general functions that have 
 their origin in the action of the combined organism, as distinguished 
 from the action of its separate organs. A single violin player is his 
 own conductor; an orchestra requires a separate one. 
 
 How trifling, mean and puny, when contrasted with this 
 passage, does not Mallock’s argument appear concerning the 
 existence of the directing power in the world of production! 
 Mallock states a fact, the philosopher and scientist Marx not 
 only pithily stated the identical fact before, but, in stating 
 
Mccrx on Mallock 
 
 13 
 
 it, traced the fact to its cause, and thereby laid the founda¬ 
 tion that guards against error in following the fact to its 
 effects—as will presently appear more clearly. 
 
 The harmoniously blended melody of many individual in¬ 
 struments is in the nature of the increased output in modern 
 production. To the production of that harmoniously blended 
 melody the orchestra director is indispensable: indispensable 
 likewise, for identical reason, is the director in the orchestra 
 of production, declares Marxian science. 
 
 Having proved Mallock’s misstatements of Marx, I shall 
 now, agreeable to promise, proceed to contrast by parallelling 
 the divergent conclusions arrived at by each. The first of 
 these conclusions is upon 
 
 THE SOUECE OF THE ^TNCREMENT.” 
 
 According to Mallock, the source of the ‘increment”—the 
 excess of output, when the laborers are working in '^‘orches¬ 
 tra,’^ over the output, when each laborer is his own “direc¬ 
 tor”—is an attribute of “The Few.” According to Mallock 
 it is a quality that resides in “The Few” only. Male and 
 female creation are both necessary for procreation. Between 
 the male and the female, a sort of co-operation may be said 
 to take place. According to Mallock, the quality, which pro¬ 
 duces the increased output, partakes of the nature of male or 
 female creation only in as much as that quality resides ex¬ 
 clusively in the one or the other of the parties to production; 
 but, according to Mallock, the human vessel that is the depos¬ 
 itory of the output-increasing quality has nothing in common 
 with the w'orkers’ hands which it directs, it has not even that 
 in common with them that the male, or the female, has, the 
 one with the other. In short, according to Mallock “The 
 Few” are, by virtue of their quality, what a male would be 
 that needed not the female for procreation—independent. 
 
 Marxian theory on the source of the “increment” is radi¬ 
 cally different. It may be given in the following two pas- 
 
14 
 
 Mdrx on Mallock 
 
 sages, the first from page 316: 
 
 Not only have we here an increase in the productive power of the 
 individual, by means of co-operation, but the creation of a new power, 
 THE COLLECTIVE POWER OF MASSES. 
 
 This passage is the closing clause of one that I have cited 
 before; the second passage will be found at the bottom of 
 page 319: 
 
 When the laborer co-operates systematically with others, he strips 
 off the fetters of his individualism, and develops the capabilities of 
 his species. 
 
 In other words, differently from Mallock, Marx locates the 
 “incremenf’-producing quality not in ‘‘The Few,” but in 
 the many. He defines that quality as a “social power,” a 
 “collective power,” that resides in the manual workers and 
 their director, collectively—in the Working Class. Particu¬ 
 larly pregnant is the second passage. It enunciates a prin¬ 
 ciple not of economics only but of sociology also;—a principle 
 that incidentally knocks the bottom from under the high- 
 sounding pretensions of the “Individualists” of all shades, 
 from the “rose-water” to the “bomb-throwing” variety;—the 
 principle that “individualism” fetters the individual, while 
 freedom awaits him only when, stripped of those fetters, he 
 develops the capabilities of his species. Man is the slave of 
 Nature, a toy of her caprices, so long as the output of wealth 
 is so meager that it keeps him with his nose to the grindstone 
 of toil. Freedom comes only in the measure that the yield 
 of his labor frees man from want, from the fear of want, and 
 from the necessity of arduous toil to satisfy his physical ne¬ 
 cessities. So long as he labors individually, he is fettered— 
 the yield of his labor cannot afford him freedom. The con¬ 
 dition for freedom—an ample supply of wealth—depends 
 upon co-operative labor. Profound, accordingly, is the phil¬ 
 osophy that recognizes that only in co-operation—the status 
 where man merges his individualism with man—does he de¬ 
 velop the capabilities of his species—the capabilities for free¬ 
 dom. 
 
Marx on Malloch 
 
 15 
 
 I shall leave for later the demonstration of the correctness 
 of the Marxian and the error of the Mallockian theory. Con¬ 
 fining myself here to contrasting the two, this may be said 
 upon this head: 
 
 The theory of the fertility of co-operation is but an amplifi¬ 
 cation, on the domain of sociology, of a principle that is well 
 known in mechanios. A cable is twisted out of a large num¬ 
 ber of separate threads that are individually of slight strength; 
 but the strength of the cable is not equal merely to the sum 
 of the strength of all the threads out of which it is made. It 
 is equal to the sum of the strength of all those separate 
 threads, plus an added strength that is born of their being 
 twisted into one rope. According to Mallock, the director, 
 whose quality twists the cable of production out of the mul¬ 
 tiple manual w'orkers, stands to the twisted cable of modem 
 production in the identical relation that the ropemaker, whose 
 quality twists the rope, stands to the rope itself—the relation 
 of human master to inanimate thing. According to ]\Iarx, 
 on the contrary, the directing force that twists the cable of 
 production out of the multiple individual workers, is flesh of 
 their flesh; bone of their bone; differentiated organs of a 
 social power whose joint efforts produce the results that en¬ 
 able man to enjoy the fruits of having stripped himself of the 
 fetters of his individualism, and developed the capabilities ot 
 his species—freedom from animal want. 
 
 The contrast being established between Marx and Mallock 
 on the source of the ‘increment,” obvious, in advance, is the 
 conclusion that each arrives at on the subject of 
 
 THE PKODUCER OF THE INCREMENT. 
 
 Mallock, as w'e have seen, makes the capitalist the sole 
 depository of the quality that yields the 'increment.’' As a 
 consequence, the depository is also the ‘increment’’ pro¬ 
 ducer. 
 
16 
 
 Marx on Mallock 
 
 As against this theory I shall quote two passages from 
 Marx, The first is an allegation of the economic facts in 
 the case. It is found on page 322: 
 
 Just as at first the capitalist is relieved from actual labor so soon as 
 his capital has reached that minimum amount with which capitalist 
 production, as such, begins, so now, he hands over the work of direct 
 and constant supervision of the individual workmen, and groups of 
 workmen, to A SPECIAL KIND OF WAGE LABORER. An in¬ 
 dustrial army of workmen, under the command of a capitalist, re¬ 
 quires, like a real army, officers (managers), and sergeants (fore¬ 
 men overlookers), who, while the work is being done, command in 
 the name of the capitalist. THE WORK OF SUPERVISION BE¬ 
 COMES THEIR ESTABLISHED AND EXCLUSIVE FUNCTION. 
 
 Is the allegation false? is it true? We shall see when we 
 come to the proof. Suffice it here to record Marx’s state¬ 
 ment that, in the course of capitalist development a ‘^special 
 kind of wage laborer” is generated—the workingman, the 
 ability of whom is the “'filirecting ability” which co-operative 
 labor demands, and is alone exercised. If this allegation is 
 true, then it is the Working Class—some as manual workers, 
 others as directors, but all of the Working Class—whose co¬ 
 operative labor brings forth the increment. What function 
 would then be left to the capitalist few ? Is their title “^^Captains 
 of Industry” an arrogation? We shall see under the next 
 head. In the meantime and under the present head the fol¬ 
 lowing third generalization—a gem of philosophy of history— 
 will illumine the field. It is taken from page 323: 
 
 It is not because he is a leader of industry that a man is a capitalist, 
 he is a leader of industry because he is a capitalist. The leadership of 
 industry is an attribute of capital, just as in feudal times the func¬ 
 tions of general and judge were attributes of landed property. 
 
 On the benches of the schools we are warned and taught 
 not to confound cause with effect. According to Mallock 
 “The Few” start with a certain God-given quality—“ability” 
 ■—^by virtue of which they acquire the substance—“capital.” 
 According to Marx, the process is in the inverse order, and 
 he backs up his view with a historic generalization that is 
 luminous: according to him “The Few” start with capital. 
 
Marx on Malloch 
 
 17 
 
 and by virtue of that^ and as an attribute of that, they figure 
 as “leaders of industry,'^ or “ability’’ displayers, as Mallock 
 expresses it. How important it is to determine whether 
 “leadership in industry” is the cause of the “ownership of 
 capital,” or whether, inversely, the “ownership of capital” is 
 the cause of “leadership in industry,” meaning thereby the 
 “ability” of “The Few”—in short, how important it is to be 
 clear upon what is cause and what is effect, a scene that is 
 taking place at this very time in the Tombs Criminal Court 
 of this city illustrates aptly. 
 
 Harry Kendall Thaw is on trial for the murder of the 
 architect White. The letters of Thaw’s mother, his nurses, 
 his doctors from far and wide, his “cousins, his sisters and 
 his aunts” are all thronging to the witness-stand to prove the 
 man insane. Now it happens that Thaw is a capitalist. Tested 
 by all the tests furnished by Mallock—seeing that Thaw is in 
 possession of his ample share of the “increment,” which, ac¬ 
 cording to Mallock, flows only from, is found in the posses¬ 
 sion of, and justly belongs to “ability” only—-Thaw is of the 
 fraternity of “The Few.” Now the question comes, Is Thaw 
 a capitalist because he is insane, or is he insane because he is 
 a capitalist? If Mallock is right, the conclusion could not 
 be escaped that Thaw’s insanity is the fertile source of the 
 “increment” which he enjoys; if Marx is right the conclu¬ 
 sion would be that Thaw’s ownership of capital is the cause 
 of his insanit}"—an affliction that it would scorn hard to 
 escape by anyone who leads a capitalist’s life, the life of 
 preaching “Christian Brotherhood” and practicing the moral¬ 
 ity of the jungle; of preaching “family purity” and prac¬ 
 ticing debauchery of preaching “industry” and setting the 
 example of idleness; of preaching “common sense,” and pur¬ 
 suing that wildest of Utopianisms, which consists in imagin¬ 
 ing that a social system, which corrodes its own foundations, 
 can be stable and lasting; which preaches “enlightenment” 
 and is intent upon fastening mediaeval ignorance upon the 
 
Marx on Malloch 
 
 18 
 k 
 
 masses. But I am anticipating. To return to the subject. 
 
 There remains one more contrast to establish between Marx 
 and Mallock. It is the contrast between their opposing views 
 concerning 
 
 THE FUNCTION OF ‘^THE FEW.” 
 
 Mallock;, we have seen, imputes to ^^The Few” the function 
 of ^Mirecting” labor in the modern world of production. 
 Mallock’s position is the legitimate consequence of his prem¬ 
 ises. ‘^The Few” being the sole depositories of the ‘‘ability” 
 requisite to bring forth the “increment,” their function in 
 society is to exercise their “ability,” to which exercise the 
 “increment” is due, and to which “increment” are due the 
 blessings of affluence. In other words, according to Mallock, 
 the function of “The Few” is the important function of cap¬ 
 taining industry. Marx, we have seen, proceeds from the prin¬ 
 ciple that the “increment,” as Mallock calls it, so far from 
 being the result of a quality residing in a Few, is a quality 
 residing in the collectivity, a social power. And we saw him, 
 after illumining his contention with the illustrations of the 
 squadron of cavalry, and the regiment of infantry, and after 
 further demonstrating, with the illustration of the orchestra 
 director, the inevitableness of a central directing authority— 
 after that, we saw Marx allege the fact that the important 
 function of supervision, direction, etc., is exercised by a “spe¬ 
 cial kind of wage laborer.” In short, the function of direc¬ 
 tion, of captaining industry, according to Marx, is not a 
 function filled by Mallock’s “The Few,” but a function filled 
 by a differentiated portion of the Working Class itself. 
 
 The question, now suggesting itself and demanding an an¬ 
 swer, is a question I have dropped before in the course of this 
 address have, then, “The Few,” the capitalists, no function 
 whatever in present society, according to Marx? We have 
 seen him deny with allegations of fact that “The Few” cap- 
 
Marx on Malloch 
 
 19 
 
 tain industry, the one function imputed to them by Mallock. 
 Are, then, “The Few^’ denied by Marx all social function in 
 present society? Far from it; and important it is to under¬ 
 stand clearly what that function really is. 
 
 Upon this head I shall quote four passages from this chap¬ 
 ter. The first three occur successively on page 321; they are 
 as follows: 
 
 The work of directing, superintending and adjusting, becomes one 
 of the functions of capital, from the moment that labor, under the 
 control of capital, becomes co-operative. 
 
 This sentence answers the first part of the question—the 
 work of superintending, directing, adjusting becomes one of 
 the functions of capital from the moment labor becomes co¬ 
 operative in the course of social evolution. The answer may 
 seem a contradiction to the passage, quoted before, and which 
 imputes to workingmen, to “a special kind of wage laborer,” 
 and not to ^“^The Few,” the function of directing, superin¬ 
 tending and adjusting. It is no contradiction, as we shall 
 presently see. In fact, as w^e shall presently see, the seeming 
 contradiction leads to a question, the answer to which is of 
 no little moment to the understanding of the situation. But, 
 not to anticipate— 
 
 Marx then proceeds: 
 
 Once a function of capital, it [the work of directing, superintending, 
 and adjusting] acquires special characteristics. 
 
 What are these special characteristics? Marx immediately 
 proceeds to define them: 
 
 The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist production, 
 is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus-value, and con¬ 
 sequently to exploit labor-power to the greatest possible extent. As 
 the number of the co-operating laborers increases, so too does their 
 resistance to the domination of capital, and with it, the necessity for 
 capital to overcome this resistance by counter-pressure. The con¬ 
 trol exercised by the capitalist is not only a special function, due to 
 the nature of the social labor-process, and peculiar to that process, 
 but it is, at the same time, a function of the exploitation of a social 
 labor-process, and is consequently rooted in the unavoidable antagon¬ 
 ism between the exploiter and the living and laboring raw material 
 he exploits. 
 
20 
 
 Marx on Mallock 
 
 We begin to perceive the nature of the special character¬ 
 istics of the functions of ‘‘The Few/’ Finally, the following 
 passage from page 322, closely following, intimately con¬ 
 nected with, and climaxing the three I just read, completes 
 the reasoning and rounds up the answer. Marx says: 
 
 If, tHen, the control of the capitalist is in substance twofold by 
 reason of the twofold nature of the process of production itself— 
 which, on the one hand, is a social process for producing use-values, 
 on the other, a process for creating surplus-value—in form that con¬ 
 trol is despotic. As co-operation extends its scale, this despotism 
 takes forms peculiar to itself. 
 
 To sum up these four citations—According to Marx, the 
 capitalist steps upon the stage of history equipped with cap¬ 
 ital. Of course, the thought arises. How did he get it? It 
 is an important thought, so important that I shall not close 
 without meeting it. For the present, and summing up Marx, 
 it is enough to say that, according to Marx, the capitalist 
 turns up historically in possession of capital. He did not 
 acquire its possession “for his health.” He acquired it be¬ 
 cause he realized he needed the same to satisfy the cravings 
 of his previous petit bourgeois heart—more wealth. His 
 capital, such as it then was, invested him with the attribute 
 of “Captain of Industry,” .aim he started exercising that 
 function—a new function to him. Once he assumed the 
 function, the function began to acquire special characteris¬ 
 tics. The special characteristics which the new function ac¬ 
 quired were the result of troubles which the incipient capi¬ 
 talist did not bargain for, but which he could not avoid or 
 evade, and were inherent in the process in which he was a 
 leading actor. More wealth is what he was after, not for the 
 sake of wealth, but for the sake of increasing his capital, 
 whereby to increase his riches. The capitalist was propelled 
 by the motive of extracting “the greatest possible amount of 
 surplus-value ’ from the employees whom he directed. Sur¬ 
 plus-value is what Mallock calls “increment.” Marx calls it 
 unpaid wages”—wealth (use-values) produced by the work- 
 
Marx on Mallock 
 
 21 
 
 ers, but appropriated by the capitalist, and turned into sur¬ 
 plus-values for himself. Accordingly, acting obedient to the 
 social law that drives him, the capitalist was driven to in' 
 creasing, and ever increasing, exploitation—the exploitation 
 of whom? Of his workingmen. As the area of the exploita. 
 tion widened, that is to say, in the measure that more and 
 more workingmen came under his control, the social troubles 
 of the capitalist increased—resistance to his exploitation on 
 the part of his wage-earners. From that instant the one¬ 
 time single function of the capitalist began to be differen¬ 
 tiated into two distinct functions—first, the pristine func¬ 
 tion of increasing the output of use-values, that is wealth; 
 second, the new function of overcoming the resistance of his 
 employees. From that moment a further process began to 
 take place—more and more did the capitalist withdraw from 
 active ‘‘direction, adjusting and supervising”; “a special 
 kind of wage-laborer” simultaneously sprang into existence— 
 w'orkingmen^ to whom the work of supervision was trans¬ 
 ferred, and with whom, thenceforth that work became the 
 established and exclusive function. The revolutionary proc¬ 
 ess having freed, or stripped “The Few” of the function of 
 direction, the only function that remained to them was the 
 function of overcoming the resistance of their employees by 
 counter-pressure. That function necessarily was despotic; in 
 the language of Marx, “as co-operation extended its scale, 
 that despotism took forms peculiar to itself.” The details 
 and corroboration of these “peculiarities” need not here to be 
 enumerated. 
 
 The Marxian theory, accordingly, contrasts sharply with 
 the Mallockian. The latter, by imputing to the capitalist 
 only a beneficent social function, presents him as a bene¬ 
 factor of his kind, and entitled to the wealth that he pockets; 
 the former, by denying to the capitalist all beneficent social 
 function and imputing to him only the functions of despot¬ 
 ism, presents him as a harmful social barnacle, who plunders 
 
22 
 
 Marx on Mallock 
 
 the Working Class of the wealth they alone produce, and are 
 alone entitled to, and who, in order to effect the plunder must 
 exercise the functions of a despot. 
 
 I need spend no time to prove that Mallock erred in his 
 allegations of fact against Marx. Marxian theory does not 
 attribute the great output of modern wealth exclusively to 
 the manual laborer. Marxian theory does not ignore the 
 important function of direction and supervision. These are 
 matters of fact that the passages which I cited settle. What 
 does remain to be proved is the incorrectness of Mallock’s 
 and the correctness of Marx’s deduction—the incorrectness 
 of the deduction of Mallock that the “^‘increment” is due to 
 the ^‘directive ability” of ^‘The Few,” as Mallock calls the 
 Capitalist Class, and that, therefore, to them only that ‘in¬ 
 crement” rightly belongs; and the correctness of the deduc¬ 
 tion of Marx that the “increment” is due to the co-operative 
 labor of the Working Class; that the Capitalist Class, as 
 Marx calls Mallock’s “The Few,” is an idle class in produc¬ 
 tion, and, consequently, that the “increment” rightly belongs 
 only to the Working Class. Even this it should be super¬ 
 fluous to prove. The proofs come daily crushing down over 
 the heads of the Mallocks. They have become the daily ex¬ 
 periences of the age. Nevertheless, I shall cite one event in 
 proof—a typical one because it is connected with a human 
 tragedy, and the complete Socialist position received high 
 judicial vindication. The further reason I have for choosing 
 this particular event is that the prominent magistrate, who 
 figured in the affair, was a pronounced Socialist-hater; a 
 typical upholder of the Capitalist Class; a denouncer of 
 Socialism as a “threat to the sanctity of womanhood and the 
 family,” while, himself, he cast off a worthy wife, went to 
 New Jersey and married another woman; a front-pew-holding 
 assailer of “Socialist un-Godliness”;—in short, a most “un¬ 
 willing witness” by all the canons of the laws of evidence. He 
 was Judge Van Brunt, a Justice of the Supreme Court of 
 
Marx on Malloch 
 
 23 
 
 this State. The event was the following: 
 
 It was sixteen or seventeen years ago. One of those acci¬ 
 dents for which the New York Central Tunnel has become 
 notorious happened there. In that ‘''Black Hole of Calcutta’’ 
 a collision took place causing the death of nearly a score of 
 human beings. When the Coroner came to the spot the dis¬ 
 covery was made that the deaths did not occur through the 
 smash-up, as was supposed. It was discovered that the pas¬ 
 sengers died by being burned to death, or smothered to death 
 in the smoke. In the collision, the stoves, used for heating 
 the cars, were upturned; that set the cars on fire; and the 
 people who could not escape were consumed by the flames, or 
 asphyxiated in the smoke. By the laws of this State it is a 
 penal offence to heat cars, on lines of more than twenty miles, 
 I think, with stoves. The statute is intended to avoid just 
 such an accident as happened in the Tunnel. Seeing that the 
 New York, New Haven and Hartford road, which was the 
 road on the cars of which the catastrophe occurred, is vastly 
 longer than twenty miles, or so, the road was guilty of a 
 violation of the statute; in vieAv, moreover, of the homicidal 
 consequences of the violation, the Directors of the road were 
 indicted for manslaughter. Many, if not most, of the Di¬ 
 rectors of the New York Central road being also directors of 
 the New York, New Haven and Hartford concern, the whole 
 batch, Chauncey M. Depew among the lot, were arraigned at 
 the bar of justice. There they stood, beautiful to contem¬ 
 plate—these gentlemen of "directing ability.” They pleaded 
 not guilty—on what ground? On the ground that they did 
 not hnoiv that their cars were heated with stoves. This should 
 be proof enough. But the proof in this instance does not 
 merely "fill the dry measure.” It runs over. At this point 
 Judge Van Brunt steps upon the scene. The pleadings, 
 backward and forward, in the case were long-drawn. The- 
 capitalistic lawyers of the precious "The Few” do not object 
 to milking a sister capitalist cow, with the law’s delays, when 
 
24 
 
 Marx on MallocJc 
 
 they get hold of her teats. I shall not, I do not need to give 
 the full details of the extensive proceedings. The curious 
 may hunt them up for themselves. I shall here give the gist 
 of the affair. The Directors having pleaded not guilty on 
 the ground that they did not know that their cars were heated 
 with stoves, Judge Van Brunt in due time quashed the in¬ 
 dictment, upon their own motion, laying down the correct 
 principle that manslaughter, like any other crime, can attach 
 only where knowledge is proven of a violation of the law. 
 Seeing the Directors had no knowledge thereof, they were 
 guiltless, spotless as pascal lambs, whereas the guilty parties 
 were those who knew of the violation of the law—in other 
 words, the guilty parties were—who? The conductors, the 
 breakmen, the engineers, the firemen, the stationmaster, etc., 
 etc. They were the guilty ones, because it was they who ran 
 the trains. This is a crushing proof at once of the falsity of 
 Mallock’s nursery tale about the directing functions exer¬ 
 cised by ^The Few” in the modern world of labor, and of the 
 correctness of the Marxian principle. We have all been re¬ 
 cently made familiar with the term '‘Dummy Directors” that 
 sprang up during the investigations of the insurance frauds. 
 But why multiply examples, the very capitalist papers that 
 are being printed to-night, while I am speaking, will furnish 
 you to-morrow morning with fresh proofs.* Everybody knows; 
 he sees the evidence of it on all sides—from top to bottom all 
 the industries of the land are operated by the Working Class. 
 The superfluousness of Malloek’s "The Few” is brought home 
 to all who care to think every time a member of "The Few” 
 is gathered unto the bosom of Abraham. Numerous though the 
 
 • Since the delivery of this address a curious corroborative proof of 
 the principle above stated tell into the lecturer’s hands. It is a neatly 
 printed 22-page pamphlet entitled: “Recommendations of the Superin¬ 
 tendent of Banks, Nevr York State. In his Official Report, Transmitted 
 to the Legislature, January 1, 1908.” On the 4th page of this report 
 after referring to the recent panic-producing failures the lists of 
 "corporate abuse principally contributing” thereto is recited On the 
 list stands this entry : "Inattention to, and disregard of duties of di¬ 
 rectors.” The pamphlet bristles with evidences of the “directing ability” 
 of “The Few.” 
 
Marx on MallocTc 
 
 25 
 
 industries be and are which their ^^ability” “^^directs/’ their 
 death in nowise seems to aifeet the run of things. Indeed, 
 the whole Capitalist Class might die to-night, and not a 
 wheel would stop revolving to-morrow; not an industry 
 would be paralyzed. The only difference—a great difference, 
 indeed—a difference that clinches the point—would be that 
 the Working Class of the land, finding themselves, not merely 
 in control (they are that now) but in possession also (the 
 Capitalist Class owners having vanished), production would 
 be forthwith freed from the capitalist dead-man’s hand that 
 now weighs upon it; wealth, being no longer produced for the 
 capitalist purpose of sale, where prices are ruled by the sup¬ 
 ply, but being thenceforth produced for use—the use of the 
 producers—its output would leap upwards with such bounds 
 and leaps that the social blot of involuntary poverty would 
 be wiped out—with all that that implies. 
 
 It happens, with this matter of capitalist ‘^directing,” what 
 happens with taxation. The apostles of capitalism blow hot 
 and cold, according as their interests dictate. One day, when 
 workingmen bestir themselves to set up their own political 
 party and run the Government, the spokesmen of ‘‘The 
 Tew” step forward with the denunciatory objection: “How 
 dare 5"ou presume to run the Government! You do not pay 
 the taxes I It is we, the taxpayers, who alone have the right 
 to govern.” The next day, when these same capitalists ob¬ 
 ject to a tax, and seek its repeal, they appear before the self 
 same workingmen in the garb of saving angels and address 
 to them this language: “Dear workingmen, you are bent 
 down with taxes! We come to your help! Fall in line kp. 
 hind us! We will relieve your burden!” Exactly so in the 
 matter of “directing.” One day the Matlocks soberly de¬ 
 clare, amid the plaudits of the “The Few,” that they are the 
 directors of production and well-spring of wealth; the next 
 da}^, when arraigned under an indictment in Court for hav¬ 
 ing misdirected, the hour of danger wrings from their breasts 
 
S6 
 
 Marx on Mallock 
 
 the truth, that they do not direct, and their own magistrates 
 place the official seal of approbation upon the plea, echoing: 
 “Not they are guilty, because not they direct; the guilty are 
 the actual directors—the workingmen who run the concern!” 
 
 There now remain only two knots to tie. I am now ready 
 to tie them. I hope you are also ready. I hope so because 
 I hope you have followed me closely enough to now have two 
 questions uppermost on your minds the consideration of which 
 will be necessary to round up the subject. 
 
 The first of the two questions that I expect you to have 
 in mind is this: 
 
 “No doubt Mallock misstates Marx: no doubt Marx rec¬ 
 ognizes the need and the existence of a directing intelligence, 
 outside of the intelligence directly exercised by the manual 
 worker in modern production. No doubt also Marx’s posi¬ 
 tion is sound, Mallock’s whimsical, as to the source of the 
 ‘increment,’ the function of Working Class elements in di¬ 
 rection, and the idleness of ‘The Few,’ as far as production 
 is concerned. We recognize, we grant all that. Neverthe¬ 
 less, does not the obvious fact remain that without the con¬ 
 sent of ‘The Few’ the workers can do nothing? Does not 
 Mallock sufficiently hint at the fact in one of the passages 
 quoted from his VIth Lecture where he speaks of the ‘prac¬ 
 tical helplessness’ of the Working Class without the Capi¬ 
 talist Class? Is not this helplessness a fact? And would it 
 not follow from this fact that the Marxian principle—‘Labor 
 is the producer of all wealth, to the laborer all wealth be¬ 
 longs’—must be necessarily modified to read: ‘Although 
 Labor is the producer of all wealth, nevertheless, seeing the 
 laborer is helpless without the consent of the capitalist, the 
 capitalist is entitled to a share of the product ?’ ” 
 
 No; it does not follow. 
 
 It is not Labor alone that is “helpless,” Government also 
 is “helpless.” Without the consent of the capitalist no war 
 oan to-day be declared—he would refuse the cash therefor; 
 
Marx on Mallock 
 
 27 
 
 and at his bidding peace is signed. The capitalist’s power, 
 without which the worker is “helpless,” though a power 
 grounded in fact, is not, as Mallock and the capitalists gener¬ 
 ally would imply, a power grounded in nature. It is a man¬ 
 made power, that man can and will un-make. If a gang of 
 bandits appropriates the well in an oasis of the desert, the 
 travelers, of course, would be “helpless,” and would be com¬ 
 pelled to accept the bandits’ terms for every cup of water. It 
 would, however, never occur to the bandits to claim that their 
 power in the premises is a natural affair. They never would 
 ground their claim upon the submission of the travelers to 
 their terms on the principle that the water in the well, and 
 necessary to keep it full, oozed and oozes out of their pores. 
 Mallock:, however, implies for his “The Few” this very thing. 
 He virtually claims that the “increment” oozes out of the 
 capitalist’s pores, and he imparts a semblance of truth to 
 the droll claim by the obvious fact that capitalist consent is 
 to-day necessary for the nation to breathe. Whereupon he 
 raises this fact to the dignity of a principle. The error in 
 the Mallockian principle lies in the imperfection of its sen¬ 
 tence. The principle is not: “The capitalist is necessary”; 
 the fact, not the principle, is: “The capitalist is necessary 
 to-dayf" that is, under the conditions which the brigands, who 
 appropriated a well in the desert may be supposed to have 
 created. The trick in the Mallockian position is an old trick 
 —it is the trick behind which the “divine power of royalty” 
 once entrenched itself, and is still entrenched in the minds 
 of the fatuous—the trick of pretending that “what is, is nat¬ 
 ural and must continue to be.” The answer to the second 
 question which I trust you have in mind will settle this point 
 more completely. 
 
 You will, I hope, wish to know how did the capitalist come 
 by the capital which, according to Marx, he starts in pos¬ 
 session of. Upon this subject all histories are eloquent— 
 whether they be sober ones, like Bacon’s history of Henry 
 
28 
 
 Marx on MallocTc 
 
 VII, or Mark Twain’s story of ^‘The Prince and tlie Pauper.” 
 The capital that the capitalist starts with, at the logical and 
 historical starting point of capitalist production, is the prod¬ 
 uct of unqualified and undisguised rapine. Nor is it, nor 
 could it be different in America. First, profiting by the ra¬ 
 pine committed by the European usurpers in expropriating 
 the peasantry, the American bourgeois was furnished, through 
 immigration, with an ideal proletariat for human raw mate¬ 
 rial for exploitation; and, next, he “helped himself.” Fraud¬ 
 ulent failures, fraudulent fires, misappropriation of trust 
 funds, and such other “ability”-denoting manoeuvres without 
 exception supplemented tlie “original accumulation” with 
 which the American capitalist historically stepped upon the 
 stage, and an important part of which was the human raw 
 material which he imported from abroad. Summing up the 
 review of the process, Marx pithily says on page 785: 
 
 “If money, according to Augier, 'comes into the world with 
 a congenital blood-stain on one cheek,’ capital comes drip¬ 
 ping from head to foot from every pore, with blood and dirt”; 
 and no capitalist has since appeared with the requisite start¬ 
 er, or “original accumulation,” free from the smut. 
 
 Accordingly, neither as a principle in philosophy, nor as 
 a principle in morals is the capitalist entitled to aught. His 
 power is the result of usurpation. He is “necessary” and 
 the workers “helpless” only as long as the travelers in the 
 desert would tolerate the power and “necessity” of the ban¬ 
 dits who appropriated the well. 
 
 I am done. But before closing I ask to be indulged in 
 paraphrasing Marx. 
 
 There was in Marx’s time another Oxford professor— 
 Mallock also is an Oxford professor—Nassau W. Senior, who 
 invented as beautiful a nursery tale as Mallock in defense of 
 the capitalists. Of this Senior, Marx says on page 207: 
 
 “One fine morning, in the year 1836, Nassau W. Senior, 
 who may be called the bel-esprit of English economists, well 
 
Marx on Mdlock 
 
 29 
 
 kno^yn, alike for his economic ‘^science/ and for his beantifnl 
 style, was summoned from Oxford to Manchester, to learn, in 
 the latter place, the political economy that he taught in the 
 former.’’ The invention of Senior was a masterpieen of 
 economic acrobatics; it was akin to Mallock’s acrobatic? con¬ 
 cerning the fruitfulness of “The Few” and their consecuent 
 right to the “increment.” Senior’s performance Senior cOled 
 the “Last Hour”—a prodigy by which Senior strove to show 
 that if the hours of labor were shortened hunger and want 
 would stalk through the land. Marx took hold of the gentle¬ 
 man’s theory, and tore it to tatters, and then flung the pieces 
 back in his face with a beautiful imaginary apostrophe that 
 summed up the situation. I shall make bold to imitate Marx 
 by closing this address with an apostrophe to Mallock, this 
 latter-day Oxford professor who was summoned by the Civic 
 Federation of capitalists to learn in New York the political 
 economy that he is to teach in Oxford— 
 
 Kind Sir, by clothing your theory in the garb of science 
 you have deprived it of the only chance it had to float. You 
 should have clad it in the garb of the miraculous. Paul 
 Lafargue neatly ridiculed it in advance with two pretty epi¬ 
 grams. Your labored effort to prove “The Few” the source 
 of all “increment,” he neatly epitomized with the sentence: 
 “The idleness of the capitalist is the source of all wealth.” 
 Your labored effort to prove that to “The Few” thm “increm¬ 
 ent” belomrs, he triturated with tlie terse sentence: “Wealth 
 is the product of Labor and the reward of Idleness.” 
 
 Kind Sir, you dislocate society and you supplement the. 
 surgical operation with a miracle. Society is no dislocated 
 entity. The elements requisite for modern production—- 
 manual and directing ability—are closely joined and jointed. 
 They arc not independent of, they are dependent upon each 
 other, like the various organs of one body; and that body 
 social is the V^'orhing Class. 
 
 Kind Sir, when you say that the increment of wealth which 
 
30 
 
 Marx on MallocTc 
 
 results from the modern method of production comes f^om 
 “The Few/’ you utter a sentiment that is at war with a lofty 
 human sentiment that has animated all noble breasts since 
 remotest antiquity and which it has been reserved to the 
 Socialist Movement to bring down from the mists of unprac- 
 ticability^ and to furnish it with a solid basis upon which to 
 plant itself. The great moral sentiment of the Brother¬ 
 hood of Man becomes a fertile sentiment for practical con¬ 
 duct only when the material conditions have developed to the 
 point of exposing the swagger of Individualism; to the point 
 of revealing the fact that Individualism is a fetter to human 
 brotherhood and to individuality alike; finally to the point of 
 disclosing the means for the realization of the aspiration of 
 human brotherhood. Individuality can not be developed in 
 penury. The power to dispel penury is a latent power in 
 manhind. Your intellect is still at the barbarian’s stage that 
 dislocates the capabilities of the species by imputing them 
 to a caste. That the caste of “The Pew” is purely imaginary 
 may be all the more creditable to your imagination, but all 
 the more discreditable to your grasp of social science. 
 
 Kind Sir, vast as our astonishment is at your discovery 
 of the useful activity of your “The Few/’ their own aston¬ 
 ishment at the discovery, through you, must have been vaster 
 still. 
 
 Kind Sir, we do not deny that “The Few” are active. No¬ 
 body denies that. Their activity is intense. It is, however, 
 not an activity that produces, it is the pickpocket’s activity 
 which transfers wealth from those to whom it belongs to those 
 to whom it does not belong. It is a conspicuous activity as 
 conspicuous as the Czar’s activity—and as deadly. 
 
 Kind Sir, your attitude illustrates two Marxian principles 
 
 the imperviousness of a usurping class to sense, and the 
 fatality that pursues a class whose historic mission is ended, 
 and yet would hold the stage. If the usurping class of “The 
 ±ew’ were not impervious to sense you, who surely do not 
 
Marx on Malloch 
 
 31 
 
 mean lo falsify facts, would never have incurred the blunder 
 of palpably misstating Marx; if the mission of “The Pew^^ 
 were not over and they could realize the fact, such a distin¬ 
 guished spokesman of their caste as yourself would not be 
 seen indulging in the contortions necessary to avoid the term 
 co-operation, and thereby seek to escape its consequences. 
 
 Finally, kind Sir, your argument is welcome to the So¬ 
 cialist—uigbiy welcome. If such a travesty of Fact and 
 Ihason as you present against Socialism is the strongest at¬ 
 tack po'^'bile—then we Socialists feel re-strengthened in our 
 position that Labor is the sole producer of all wealth, and, 
 therefore, all wealth belongs to Labor. 
 
 in the language that Marx closes his apostrophe with in 
 the instance of Senior, I say: 
 
 “And now, good sir, farewell, and may we meet again in 
 yonder better world—but not before.” 
 
From a Mechanical Standpoint 
 it Is the first one of Marx’s works published in 
 America that can he looked upon as a careful 
 piece of publishing. It is to be hoped that this 
 excellent volume is the forerunner of other 
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 the honor of publishing an edition that is ac¬ 
 curate as to text, thorough in annotations, con¬ 
 venient in size and presentable In every way. 
 The present book will delight the lover of 
 Marx, and every Socialist will desire a copy 
 of it.—N. Y. Daily People. 
 
 By KARL MARX. Edited by his daugh¬ 
 ter, ELEANOR MARX AVELING. 
 
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 This book is especially timely, like everything else that Marx 
 wrote. Written a couple of years before his “Capital” appeared, 
 it is an address to workingmen, and covers in popular form many 
 of the subjects later scientifically expanded in “Capital.” 
 
 It is unversally considered as the best epitome we have of the 
 first volume of “Capital,” and as such is invaluable to the be¬ 
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 threshold of his inquiry; that is, in a position where his per¬ 
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 vitiated by the very use of his eyesight; whereas, by the very 
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 Special interest attaches to what Marx says relative to 
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 The thousand and one schemes that are daily being flaunted 
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 person willing to pay close attention to his words. 
 
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GUSTAV BANG 
 
 CRISES IN EUROPEAN 
 
 HISTORY 
 
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