Functional socialism

84 FUNCTIONAL SOCIALISM

his discovery to his profession; he is explicitly forbidden to patent a new medical process or to keep private its chemical formule. Whence the difference? The doctor belongs to a liberal profession; he is a gentleman by Act of Parliament. His duty is to his profession or function. It is only by the co-operative efforts of all its members that the science of medicine can advance. Moreover, the profession will not permit vested interests to grow up within itself. That is why any doctor who advertises is promptly dealt with for “infamous conduct”. The only difference, therefore, between the mechanical or commercial inventor and the doctor is that one is a gentleman and the other isn’t. Here I quote:

The reasons that govern medical practice in this respect ought to be equally applicable to the engineer, the chemist or the manufacturer. But their legal status [you see we were discussing status twenty years ago] is not that of gentlemen; they belong to the army of profiteers, and are accordingly exempt from the obligations imposed upon the liberal professions. In this way does modern capitalism write itself down as self-seeking and ungentlemanly.

Here we discover a curious fact. The medical profession, at least in this regard, definitely adopts functional principles, whilst capitalist industry definitely rejects them.

Before proceeding to another aspect of this problem, we may complete our references to the inventor. Under functional control, the motive to extract rent,