Functional socialism

FUNCTION G7

will, sooner or later, restrict the House of Commons to political work and its second Chamber to exclusively functional work. Further, that when the two clash, the final word must rest with the Commons. Whether as a substitute for the House of Lords or with a new identity, it is certain that, to save our skins, we must without delay create a representative economic authority.

If now we can distinguish in our own minds between the political and economic, can theoretically disentangle the work of politics, with its primary spiritual purpose, from the work of the functional Chamber, with its strictly economic mandate; if, further, we are clear that the democratic principle must, in spirit if not in present form, be the basis of organization, then little more remains but to sketch the elevation and leave the interior arrangements to the experts.

In recent years, there have been several attempts to organize an industrial Parliament or National Economic Council or Economic General Staff—all three have had their currency; but they have always, consciously or unconsciously, been preoccupied with some practical concordat between employers and employed. The wage-system has always been present in the minds of those concerned: has always poisoned their discussions, rendering their decisions futile.

Do we not now realize that there can be no economic planning, no consistency in industrial progress, until Labour has been called into council on terms of equality and not with wage stigmata on its