Functional socialism

SIMPLE DIVISION 161

liament for the protection of their interests, whether Capital or Labour, will obviously be superseded by men of ideas. Idealists, one would hope, but also and mainly thinkers and workers with considered convictions upon education, or public health, or foreign relations. And, should it please the gods, upon art and science and the spread of culture. We should then know of a certainty that man does not live by bread alone. An enriched citizenship, with a sound economic foundation, is within our grasp. Within our grasp, if we have faith and courage and a changed heart. At least, here is a new society worth striving for. Not forgetting the immensity of the task, the urgent need to eliminate the class struggle not by ignoring it, but by ending for ever the wage-contract that engenders it, we can move towards a new destiny, profoundly conscious of escape from a calamity unequalled in human history.

OUR OBLIGATION

Nor must we forget that still the world looks to us to lead it. Especially in the practical affairs of mankind. When we have achieved the simple division between politics and economics, with the inevitable result of purifying the one and strengthening the other, we may depend upon it that Western Europe will follow in our wake. A coherent scheme of constitutional revision, giving free play to industry and a new range of ideas to politics, would displace in a twinkling the incoherent ideas that now disturb and threaten our common civilization.

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