Functional socialism

30 FUNCTIONAL SOCIALISM

saddle, is equal to either contingency and will itself decide how and when its labour force shall be employed or unemployed.

We cannot go back in history, even if we would; but surely our experience of insuring unemployment under political direction teaches us the futility of confusing economic functions with our political life. In any event, can we not say with perfect truth that unemployment as we know it to-day marks the moral and economic bankruptcy of capitalism? It has by its mechanic skill created leisure, a gift from the gods, and treated it as though it were a plague. A functional society would make leisure the handmaiden of culture.

It is my conviction, then, that, to clean our own doorstep, we must resolutely co-ordinate our functional forces. It is easy enough to make a fetish of function; but it is surely foolish, in an industrial country like ours, which obviously depends for its very existence upon the efficient functioning of all its parts, not to enable function to govern itself within its own recognized limits.

THE FINAL PURPOSE

Finally, let me revert to de Maeztu’s first category: the final or supreme values are moral satisfaction, scientific discovery and artistic creation. That substantially is what I personally accept; but I would prefer to adopt my own vocabulary. As I see it, the withdrawal of the economic functions from political life means the complete trans-valuation of