Functional socialism

NO CHANGE YET 177

at a price.” Thus the issue is joined. Shall function or finance control?

Our philosophic conception holds good. The authoritarianism of the eighteenth century gave way to the libertarianism of the nineteenth. Function is now knocking at the door. Libertarianism reached its prime with Gladstone, languished for a term and died with Asquith. Gladstone was profoundly conscious of the distinction between authority and liberty. He would say of this or that Tory opponent: “T cannot work with him; he is gutoritaire.”’ That is why Gladstone had the confidence of the manfacturing classes. All over the world “Liberalism” connotes political liberty combined with liberty to exploit. The biblical definition: “The liberal man deviseth liberal things and by liberal things shall he stand” is pour rire. The war killed libertarianism. The reason why Germany, Italy, Austria, the Balkans reverted to authority was because their libertarianism had died a violent death. They were not ready for function, so skurried back, like frightened rabbits, to authority. The instinct of the Anglo-Saxon is never to go back. So we stayed where we were. That is at once our strength and our weakness.

It is, however, a weakness that always, at our peril, we must overcome; it is the task of every succeeding generation. The leadership of Great Britain is now to lead the world into the era of function. To teach mankind that its destiny is to use its functional capacities not to exploit, but freely to enrich. If we admit, as we reasonably may, that the building of the