Functional socialism

DD) FUNCTIONAL SOCIALISM

other. As we shall see, on the cultural or spiritual plane this is the acme of wisdom; but to plead international necessity on the material plane is a counsel of despair or sheer intellectual sloth. It may in fact be doubted if there is such a thing as an international economy. The feasible economic unit must be the group, community or nation with its own characteristic economic life. In the ultimate analysis, the economic unit is the Smith family sitting round its own fireside.

The silent transition from economic scarcity to plenty, vastly significant though it be, is concurrent with another fundamental change in our social order. It is astonishing how persistently we all ignore the ever-growing magnitude of function as the most vital factor in our economic life. Ramiro de Maeztu has shown us how profoundly important has been the change from the authoritarianism of the eighteenth century to the libertarianism of the nineteenth, both with their fly-blown theory of subjective rights. We now see these subjective rights being slowly but inevitably broken to pieces upon the granite of function.

SOCIAL VALUES

No deep philosophic insight is needed to grasp the distinction between the principles of subjective right and function, even though their implications may be more difficult to follow. In the one case, an inherent right is claimed to dictate the conditions under which men work; in the other, function is im-