The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

CHAPTER III

THE INDUSTRIAL IMPOTENCE OF POLITICAL ACTION

WuHo can doubt that the English instinct for keeping politics and economics in separate spheres and governed by widely different motives and considerations has reason and experience behind it? And who can doubt that the attempt to combine politics and economics forced upon the Government, partly by necessity, partly by a wrong conception of the social structure, has already resulted in tragedy and bitter disappointment ? I add this: There can be no Socialism in our time, nor in any future time, until Socialists show the courage of their logic by resolutely separating the political and economic, making it possible for each to function in its own appropriate sphere. In tempo, temper and method, the politician is poles apart from the industrialist. Yet the two poles are needed to complete the circle. Heaven knows there is ample scope for both, without either crowding the other. What we must haveand have quickly—is free co-operation between the two and not the three-legged race to which both are now condemned. If there were no logical and natural separation between politics and

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