Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/220

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Later, on page 189: "Industrial action alone cannot destroy profits, or even lower them, unless it can overthrow the whole capitalist system. This, we have seen, cannot be done purely by industrial power." The ordinary reader is left wondering what all this means. If the workers can themselves supply the managing ability that controls production and exchange, they will have made the present manager and organizer "socially functionless." But they will only inflict the same fate on the capitalist if they either seize the plant and tools that he provides or make their own and become capitalists themselves. The suggestion of "catastrophic action" looks as if the former method were contemplated, and on this point we get rather more light from other Guild Socialists, whose works will be considered in the next chapter.