An Inquiry Into Socialism

ically nothing but wage- labour to depend on for subsistence. The produce of the country is in a corresponding manner divided into three heads?rent, profit, and wages?the first going to the landlord, the second to the capitalist, and the third to the labourer; and free competition is the general principle by which the respective shares of the three classes are determined. As we have seen, this condition of things has been gradually established since the downfall of the feudal system and of the Catholic Church, and has especially been developed and consolidated through the mechanical inventions and the triumph of the new system of industry. It is a condition of things which has long dominated and still dominates our entire social system. The economic history of this country is a record of the conflicting interests of the three classes, powerfully modifying and controlling the general history. The struggle of the three for political power is the most important feature of -recent history. We may further say that the classicalpolitical economy of England is generally an attempt to analyse the economic phenomena that prevail in a country with the above arrangements of land, capital and labour as regulated by free competition. It accepts the facts and arrangements as established?indeed, it frequently assumes that they belong to the necessary and permanent order of nature?and inquires into the prevailing laws, tendencies, and results of such a system as we have descri... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.