A B C of modern socialism

3 thinkers, our artists, poets and writers? The debt is beyond computation. The sorry fact is that the debt can never be understood, much less recognised, until we escape from the wage mentality.

We shall, in part, repay the debt, and incidentally enrich ourselves, if we resolve to free function from its financial shackles and, by wise political action, devolve upon the appropriate functional authorities the supreme task of working unhindered so that the change from economic scarcity to social plenty shall be achieved.

I do not doubt that our practical politicians will sniff contemptuously and denounce the functional organisation as rank impossibilism. They always do. In prophecy, the realist is always right —and always wrong. The corpse survives yet a little while after the spirit has departed. The realist points to it, thinking it still lives, and says: “I told youso!” But with the conquest of scarcity—surely an admitted fact—capitalism, which depends upon scarcity for its profits, is dead. I leave its husk to the tender care of the practical politician.

The analysis of function as an operative principle of life is by no means an easy adventure. In a previous book—Functional Socialism—I dealt with it in its broad sweep. In this little volume, I have tried rather to define and explain function, confining myself to its logical reactions. Truth is sometimes found in compression; but only when aided by the imagination of the kindly and understanding reader.

October 1937