Functional socialism

106 FUNCTIONAL SOCIALISM

occurs to its advocates. They should remember Friar Laurence’s advice to Romeo:

“These violent delights have violent ends, And in their triumph die; like fire and powder, Which as they kiss consume; the sweetest honey Is loathsome in its own deliciousness, And in the taste confounds the appetite.”

The more that plenty comes within our grasp, the greater our responsibility that it be well spent. And no small part of that responsibility is that we shall, personally and as a community, always distinguish the essentials of life from its allurements and conventional amenities.

There is one obvious difficulty in discussing luxury: whatever criticisms we make must be directed to the middle and upper classes. To suggest that the wage-earners indulge in any kind of luxury would be gross hypocrisy. Wages are not based on luxury but necessity. Cinemas and other amusements are, in capitalist policy, as necessary as bread and circuses in ancient Rome—they ensure some measure of contentment. Even so, the problem of luxury has its bearing upon working-class life. Ruskin long since remarked upon the disposition of the wage-earners to imitate the habits of the possessing classes. What matters is that a new idealism shall prevail before plenty arrives. If capitalist ideology is in the hearts of the workers, we may be sure that, when opportunity serves, the workers will act upon that ideology and, likely enough, better the