ABSTRACT
This chapter considers socialism or social democracy firstly as a sentiment having an absolute equality of material conditions as its object, and secondly as a reasoned scheme by which this ideal object may be realized. The socialist supposition that a scheme of equalised incomes, unless incomes stand for beggary, can be brought about by a sentiment in favour of equality for its own sake is a mere psychological mare's nest. It is an absurdity of a double kind. In the first place, equality for its own sake, as an object of practical endeavour, is a thing of no interest to anybody. Whereas the earlier socialists had regarded the equalisation of wealth as a feat to be accomplished by the magic of a peculiar sentiment to which the facts of production would adjust themselves, the relative importance of these two factors was by Marx inverted. The equalisation of wealth required, according to him, no sentiment of a peculiar kind at all.
