The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

FOREWORD XV

us, at least, it is a perversion and a frustration of the idea which the Trade Union and Socialist movement has advocated. It is an anti-climax, as far removed from an Economic Parliament or House of Industry as the legislation of the Labour Governmentis from classic Socialist theory. Along the path which led Mr. MacDonald to his Economic Advisory Council it does not seem to us that much progress can be made.

Feeble and trivial, almost beyond belief indeed, the Government’s Economic Advisory Council appears to be at this stage of crisis in economic and industriallife. Parliamentitself stands baffled by the complexities of the problem. Terrorised by the ever-growing menace of an industrial collapse, imposed upon by the gaudy disguises of the class struggle, helpless to deal with the tragical paradox of an economic system threatened with death, not by an appalling scarcity of famine, but by a yet more appalling curse of plenty, how on earth is a purely political body like the Commons to deal with this stupendous problem ? And even supposing it were, by a great effort, capable of exercising the economic powers which the House of Commons is theoretically invested with, where is the instrument capable of giving effect to its decree? How many are the nostrums offered by Parliamentarians for the malady of Parliamentarism ! Mrs. Sidney Webb offers devolution upon provincial parliaments; Mr. Winston Churchill offers his sub-Economic Parliament; the I.L.P. offers salvation in a multiplicity of