Functional socialism

CHAPTER II

ON SWEEPING OUR OWN DOORSTEP

I HoLD to the simple and natural truth that, whatever the terms upon which we live with our neighbours, our first task is to sweep clean our own doorstep. To organize our economic life, with the civic life dependent upon it, is not only essential to our national health, it happens that other peoples look to us to maintain a high standard of life towards which they strive. We may affirm with confidence that any slackening of this standard spells abdication. Ours is still the historic réle to lead. In the industrial chaos in which the world finds itself, to resign that leadership would be pusillanimous. Please observe that this chaos is commercial and not economic. It is now common ground that Great Britain, if not the whole of Western Europe, is passing from scarcity to potential plenty. The trouble is that owing to maldistribution, our plenty remains an unconsumed glut. Our business, urgent, imperative, is to create purchasing power and bring it to a parity with productive capacity. This problem can be solved at home and does not depend upon international arrangements. It is, of course, eternally true that nations or peoples are necessary to each