ABSTRACT
IT IS quite likely that many opponents of socialism will accept the result we have just arrived at. But their assent will mostly take the following form: “Oh well, of course, if you had demigods to direct the socialist engine and archangels to man it, all that might well be so. But the point is that you have not and that, human nature being what it is, the capitalist alternative with its pattern of motivations and its distribution of responsibilities and rewards after all offers, though not the best conceivable, yet the best practicable arrangement.”
