attempts at equalisation and deliverance from oppression are made, though without success; while the unification, the subjugation of ever greater and greater numbers of men by one is always increasing. The greater the centralisation of labour the more profitable it is, but also the more striking and revolting is the inequality.
What, then, is to be done? Individual labour is unprofitable; centralised labour is more profitable, but the inequality and oppression are terrible.
Socialists wish to remove inequality and oppression by assigning all capital to the nation, to humanity, so that the centralised unit will become humanity itself. But, in the first place, not only humanity, but even nations do not as yet admit the necessity for this, and until they do, this system cannot be adopted by all humanity; secondly, among men striving each for his own welfare, it would be impossible to find men sufficiently disinterested to manage the capital of humanity without taking advantage of their power—men who would not again introduce into the world inequality and oppression.
And so humanity stands unavoidably face to face with this dilemma: either the forward movement attained by the centralisation of labour must be renounced,—there must even be retrogression rather than an infringement of equality or allowance of oppression,—or else it should be boldly admitted that inequality and oppression must exist, that "when wood
