The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

CHAPTER VI CO-ORDINATED INDUSTRY

THE MORAL OF UNEMPLOYMENT

For some years past, the political world has been doping itself with a phrase—‘‘ The Unemployed Problem.’’ There is no unemployed problem ; it is merely an effort in simple addition. There are, to be sure, different phases of unemployment at different times, notably to-day in the form of an ominous growth of permanently unemployed. Even that is not new, as any student of the 1834 Poor Law Report will tell you. It is tragic; but Capitalism has, since its rise to power, produced many more tragedies than comedies. Unemployment is merely the veductio ad absurdum of the classical economists’ favourite theory—the mobility of labour. The exasperating part of this political business (in which Labour is equally at fault) is that, by constantly presenting unemployment as a problem, it has successfully diverted both thought and attention from the real problem. Unemployment is, of course, the symptom and not the disease, the nightmare and not the indigestion. We are back at once to maladjustment of the economic factors, including finance and credit. This demands nothing less than control and coordination. Notall the hundred millions proposed

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