Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/51

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Capitalism. It will no longer be possible for providers of rubbish to make fortunes by selling it to fools, or for company promoters and swindlers and "sharepushers" to found county families out of the gains of fraud at the expense of silliness, or for unnecessary middlemen to take toll on what we consume because shopkeepers do not know their business, or for advertisers to wax fat because buyers do not know their wants. But Capitalism as it might be, is a subject for a later chapter. At this stage of our inquiry it is enough to have shown that by giving the word of command to the average consumer it is based on democratic principle, and will stand or fall with the success or failure of that principle in justifying itself.

If democracy fails and we go back to Divine Right, not of kings but of bureaucrats or guildsmen, then to those of us who believe in freedom it will not be a matter of great moment under what economic system we have to live.