receive the same wages; and the sums needed should be raised from the abolition of collateral inheritance. The important practical part of his scheme was that the great state workshops, aided by the Government, would make private competition in those industries impossible, and thus bring about the change from the private to the socialistic system.
The founder of modern German socialism was Karl Marx,150 and almost the only Socialist who pretended to economic knowledge. He aimed his attack on the present social system against the question of value, by asserting that the amount of labor necessary for the production of an article is the sole measure of its exchange value. It follows from this that the [pg 162] right of property in the article vests wholly in the laborer, while the capitalist, if he claims a share of the product, is nothing less than a robber. No just system, he avers, can properly exist so long as the rate of wages is fixed by free contract between the employer and laborer; therefore the only remedy is the nationalization of all the elements of production, land, tools, materials, and all existing appliances, which involves, of course, the destruction of the institution of private property. An obvious weakness in this scheme is the provision that the Government should determine what goods are to be produced, and that every one is bound to perform that work which is assigned by the state. In this there is no choice of work, and the tyranny of one master would be supplanted by the tyranny of a greater multiplex master in the officers of Government. Moreover, it can not be admitted that exchange value is determined by the quantity of labor alone. Every one knows that the result of ten days' labor of a skilled watch-maker does not exchange for the result of ten days' labor of an unskilled hodman. Of two men making shoes, one may produce a good the other a