directive ability, down on a bare piece of ground, they could produce nothing until they had reclaimed the ground and furnished themselves with the necessary tools and equipment for production. In other words, they would have to do a great deal of work between them, the only product of which would be the ability to do more work later on more efficiently and satisfactorily. Because labour and management at the present moment cannot produce anything without the help of labour and management that has been done in the past, this labour and management that has been done in the past is provided by the capitalist who also, under modern conditions of production, earns a profit by running a risk.
Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, on page 62 of his book that I have already quoted on the Socialist Movement, said very truly that there is much wealth which labour cannot create without the aid of capital. "A man can go into a forest and tear boughs off trees with his hands for his fires, but he cannot fell trees without an axe of some kind, which is capital." The product of labour by itself is a miserable subsistence if without capital; that is, without the use of work done in the past—stored-up work, as we may call it. The only things that
