Note 61 — APPENDIX

Mr. Shaw, for instance, is at much pains to point out that Ability is not one definite thing, as the power of jumping is, and makes himself merry by asking if Wellington’s Ability could be compared with Cobden’s, or Napoleon’s with Beethoven’s. This is all beside the mark. I have been careful to define the sense in which I used the word Ability—to define it with the utmost exactness. I have said that I use it as meaning productive Ability—industrial Ability. That is to say, those faculties by which men, not labouring themselves, are capable of directing to the best advantage the labour of others, with a view to the production of economic commodities. In the Middle Ages I said that another kind of Ability was more important—i.e. Military Ability, instead of Economic; and the historical importance of this fact, which Mr. Shaw says I discovered only after I had written my first article on Fabian Economics, I insisted on, at much greater length, years ago, when criticising Karl Marx’s “Theory of Value,” in this [the Fortnightly] Review. Again, let Mr. Shaw turn to Labour and the Popular Welfare, p. 328, and he will find what he says put more clearly by myself than by him.