Functional socialism

56 FUNCTIONAL SOCIALISM

Christianity; it will flourish, to our enrichment, in function. But we must keep steadily in view the larger meaning of democracy, not confusing the basic principle with existing methods. Democracy means government by assent, with the requisite organization to secure and protect that assent. Democratic ends can be secured by other means than counting noses at occasional elections. Democracy may indeed defeat itself by sheer clumsiness in insisting upon primitive methods of election, in circumstances obviously requiring a more developed, more sophisticated, form. Thus, a functional group may be swamped by a mass vote of other and larger groups when it is of vital consequence that this particular group should, through its elected representative, speak in any functional assembly. Democracy is, in fact, best served in its functional organization by recognizing groups as units, providing the groups, in their turn, choose their representatives by democratic methods.

We can now resume at the point where we discovered that the House of Lords, having been throughout our constitutional history, in essence, though not in form, a functional Chamber, had been superseded by trusts, combines, and professional associations, and that, in consequence, the time had come to transform it into a House of Industry. It is not essential to functional theory that this particular constitutional change should be enacted; but it is probable that the practical genius of the British people, instinctively obedient to historic continuity,