Functional socialism

ON SWEEPING OUR OWN DOORSTEP 27

life? The question we must truly answer at our peril is plainly this: is finance of the same functional value as the creation and distribution of wealth? The answer is plain: finance has no functional value apart from industry. The credit which organized finance exploits is in reality the work of men’s hands and is the sequel and not the origin of wealth production. If it be the sequel, a by-product, so to speak, of industry, then it follows that finance must be controlled by industry and not the reverse, as is the case to-day. Observe how finance belongs to de Maeztu’s third category and observe further how closely he comes to the kernel when he writes of societies ““who devote themselves exclusively to augmenting their power or their wealth or their pleasures”. Some of our money reformers, one notes, are perpetually wriggling on the horns of this dilemma. They aver that finance has wrongly usurped power; but they think the way out is to continue to let finance govern, only with a different objective. From the functional point of view this attitude is inadmissible. In no conceivable circumstances should finance govern industry and through industry our working lives. On the contrary, function affirms, all finance is a minor department in our national economy, a mere system of accountancy. When the cashier takes to dictating policy, we may as well prepare for the Bankruptcy Court.

Our functional authority would therefore make short work of the existing claims of Threadneedle Street. It would find that any system which makes