Note 785 — Chapter II · : THE APOGEE AND DECLINE OF THE CLASSICAL SCHOOL. JOHN STUART MILL

“The laws and conditions of the production of wealth partake of the character of physical truths. There is nothing optional or arbitrary in them.… It is not so with the distribution of wealth. This is a matter of human institution solely. The things once there, mankind, individually or collectively, can do with them as they like.” (Principles, Book II, chap. 1, § 1.) Karl Marx, a little later than this, claimed that distribution is wholly determined by production.