Functional socialism

GENESIS 17

look into the credentials of the technical and professional associations. No light task this, but unquestionably fruitful. Nor must we omit the deeper issue: what is the true purpose of industry? Is it to supply our needs or merely to earn dividends?

Our answer, then, to the practical man is that, if he has been engaged in useful work, function removes from his shoulders the burden of nonfunctional charges and so enables him, in co-operation with his fellows, to become master of his own economic destiny. That, in itself, would be worth a life-time’s struggle; but when we think of the spiritual and cultural possibilities that lie beyond the economic solution, does he not realize that we shall be on the verge of a new era?

There is yet another answer to the practical man: an answer that begins with a question to him. Do you really desire, we may ask, to live your life in a mad struggle with insecurity or perhaps with poverty, with all their entailed misery? Poverty may be absolute or relative. Legally considered, absolute poverty has been abolished; we have certainly travelled far from the celebrated Poor Law Report of 1834. We are cursed to-day with relative poverty—the sickening lack of material necessities with its consequent spiritual dearth. Function, sustained by science, knowledge and experience, calmly contemptuous of financial shifts and stratagems, declares that economic scarcity has been overcome; that with subjective rights consigned to their father, the Devil, the way is clear for reasonable abundance.

B