ty, and disappears or dwindles with their inaction.

The practical validity of this method of computation has been formally
recognised, though not completely understood, by some of the later
socialists themselves. Mr. Webb, for example, and his associates, have
admitted that, of the wealth of the modern world a considerable part
consists of "the rent of business ability."[19] This way of expressing
the matter is true so far as it goes. It expresses, however, one-half of
the truth only. Mr. Webb and his friends mean that, if we take the world
as it is, the products due to ability in any given industry consist of
the quantity by which the products of one firm, because it is managed by
a man of superior talent, exceed the products of another firm which
differs from the first only in the fact that it is managed by another
man whose talent is not so great. They assume as their starting-point,
in every case, the presence of directive ability sufficient to organise
the labourers in such a way that the products of the entire group shall
provide the labourers with wages which are up to a certain standard, and
a minimum of profit or of surplus values besides. This lowest grade of
ability is one of the postulates of their argument, just as in
calculating agricultural rent the first postulate of our argument is a
lowest grade of land.

Now, in connection with many questions of a more or less limited kind,
this assimilation of the products of superior ability to rent, and of
ability of a lower grade to land which is practically rentless, will
serve our purpose well enough. Between the two cases, however, there is
a vast and underlying difference; and when we consider our present
problem under its widest and most vital aspect, it is the difference,
not the likeness, between them, which constitutes our main concern. The
nature of this difference has been pointed out already. When we are
discussing rent and agriculture, land is a necessary assumption, for
unless there were land, there could be no agriculture at all; but there
can be, has been, and still is in the world, abundance of labour without
directive ability; and while it would be meaningless to ask what would
happen to rent if all land disappeared, the question of what would
happen to labour if all ability were in abeyance is precisely the
question raised by all schemes of economic revolution, and one which has
been constantly illustrated by the facts of economic history.

Of