Functional socialism

§2 FUNCTIONAL SOCIALISM

work of such magnitude may—and does—fill our minds, blunting and blurring those apperceptions which are the real source of the spiritual life. If, during the last half-century, we had had a reasonably sane economy upon which to base our life and in the political sphere had developed a spiritually minded community, what blunders we would have avoided, from what monstrous calamities we had been saved! It is only in the spiritual co-ordination of our national and international life that economic growths, now desperately struggling for a futile dominance, can be brought to a true sense of service.

We can now perhaps see a future functional society vis-a-vis the spiritual State. Our immediate problem, therefore, is to set about getting it, first by planning it, and then, by political pressure, to bring it into being.

Strange though it may seem to men of formal mind, it is an historic fact that, throughout our constitutional history, we have always had a functional authority. The House of Lords. If we look beneath the surface, disregarding political clichés, it is certain that the Lords, down to recent days, have been predominantly the defenders of property, first of land, then of banking, next of industry. Whatever our political predilections, we must recognize that activities in relation to property, particularly banking and industry, are essentially functional. In the days when we were mainly an agricultural country, the House of Lords was mainly composed of landowners and agriculturists. A few lawyers and bishops were