Functional socialism, S. 161

CHAPTER XII SIMPLE DIVISION

As the industrial nations grope their purblind way through the trade depression—a depression that is plainly commercial and not economic—they encounter the frustrations of a political Parliament and the disastrous domination of finance. Nor has it escaped the notice of an ever-growing number of our people that a sinister alliance subsists between the political powers and high finance. Whitehall and Threadneedle Street understand each other, whilst neither seems to have even a vague understanding of the economic realities. The reason for this is not far to seek; it is in fact so obvious that, as yet, only few can see it. It is, simply put, that our industry, with its ten thousand functional processes, is hampered and thwarted by non-functional groups and interests. The political panacea is a constant and exhausting resort to tariffs or to factory restrictions of one kind or another. Compared with this, pills for earthquakes are a positive cure. And we are now awaking to the fact, obscured for a century, that finance is functionally of minor importance; that its position in the body politic has been artificially contrived in the interests of those who neither toil nor spin.