[200] control the
actions of the many.

This feature of modern capitalism--the control of the many by the
few--which constitutes its chief merit in the eyes of writers like Mr.
Mallock is what all democratic thinkers consider its chief vice. Under
such a system success or failure is no longer proof of natural fitness
or unfitness. Where every advantage that wealth and influence afford is
enjoyed by the few and denied to the many an essential condition of
progress is lacking. Many of the ablest, best, and socially fittest are
hopelessly handicapped by lack of opportunity, while their inferiors
equipped with every artificial advantage easily defeat them in the
competitive struggle.

This lack of a just distribution of opportunity under existing
industrial arrangements, the defenders of the established social order
persistently ignore. Taking no account of the unequal conditions under
which the competitive struggle is carried on in human society, they
would make success proof of fitness to survive and failure evidence of
unfitness. This is treating the complex problem of social adjustment as
if it were simply a question of mere animal struggle for existence.
Writers of this class naturally accept the Malthusian doctrine of
population, and ascribe misery and want to purely natural causes, viz.,
the pressure of population on the means of subsistence. Not only is this
pressure with its attendant evils unavoidable, they tell us, but,
regarded from the standpoint of the highest interests of the race it is
desirable and beneficent in that it is the method of evolution--the
means which nature makes use of to produce, through the continual
elimination of the weak, a higher human type. To relieve this pressure
through social arrangements would arrest by artificial contrivances the
progress which the free play of natural forces tends to bring about. If
progress is made only through the selection of the fit and the rejection
of the unfit, it would follow that the keener the struggle for existence
and the more rapid and relentless the elimination of the weak, the
greater would be the progress made. This is exactly the contention of
Kidd in his Social Evolution. He claims that if the pressure of
population on the means of subsistence were arrested, and all
individuals were allowed equally to propagate their kind, the human race
would not only not progress, but actually retrograde.[201] If we accept
this as true, it would follow that