The nation as a business firm Author:William Hurrell Mallock Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: But whatever modifications may be made of the original crude indictment, these do require to be considered individually here, for they will all be sufficiently t... more »ested by an independent examination of the facts ; and, since in the pursuit of truth it is necessary to keep in mind what general misconceptions are to be dissipated, we will take the original crude indictment as it stands, namely, that, under the existing system of capitalism, " the poor have been growing, and must continue to grow, poorer—the rich have been growing and must continue to grow at once fewer and richer; whilst persons of medium income have been constantly decreasing in number, and must ultimately become extinct," and the course and the method of our own inquiries shall be determined by the specific issues which this indictment raises. § 9. The doctrine of Marx, essentially a doctrine of averages, and susceptible of correction only by means of corrected averages The Marxian formula, then—the parent formula of the agitator—will fulfil for us at the outset one very important purpose. Apart from the truth or falsehood of the several assertions embodied in it, it shows clearly the character of the conclusions which it seeks to impose on the public, and which it challenges dissentients to disprove. It shows that such conclusions can be general conclusions only, and at the same time bears witness to the actuality and vital importance ofAVERAGES AS USED BY MARX 15 the facts which such conclusions, if true, represent. Even Marx himself, for example, would not have denied that some wage-earners might, under the existing system, accidentally earn more than they would do under a regime of Socialism, or that some class of small employers might be actually created as parasites by the demands of the inordinately ...« less