Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/213

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the organization of production—in other words, he is freed from the risk and responsibility of an extremely difficult and delicate business in which mistakes are often made causing loss to the capitalist, which the wage-worker is not asked to share. And the same thing applies with even greater force to the fourth mark of degraded status, the fact that the wage-worker surrenders all claim upon the product of his labour. He produces something which is only economically justified if somebody else wants it and will pay for it enough to cover the wages of the labourer and manager, establishment charges, depreciation of plant, and interest on capital. The business of selling the product is now recognized to be one of the most difficult and costly items in the business of production. If, as many besides the Guildsmen hope, the labourer proposes to undertake this very difficult job he can do it under the capitalist system and has already done it with marked success through his Co-operative Societies. Mr. Cole can hardly mean that the labourer, having been paid to make a suit of clothes, can then expect to keep it, but this is what the phrase rather seems to imply.

However, Mr. Cole has decided that these marks of degraded status must be removed, and