Functional socialism

ON SWEEPING OUR OWN DOORSTEP 29

into finance but into industry has surely been seldom equalled. Imagine how a properly constituted functional authority would have dealt with such an international situation.

FUNCTION AND UNEMPLOYMENT

If function points the true solution of finance and credit, it solves the problem of wages and unemployment with equal authority. Economically considered what do we demand of function? That with the least possible expenditure of labour, it shall produce enough and to spare for the whole community. This, of course, includes what we require to exchange for food and raw materials and for all our foreign commitments. Having reached the age of economic plenty, the problem becomes one of transforming it into communal plenty. Function must therefore actually increase production, but distribute the product theoretically amongst its own functionaries, which would mean in practice amongst the community. Observe, please, that the maintenance of the unemployed, rightly understood, is an economic and not a political responsibility. Therefore, every worker must be attached to his own particular function—in plain English, to his trade, craft or occupation—and so long as he is available for duty, must draw his pay—no longer a wage—whether at work or in reserve.

Again remembering that we are approaching plenty, the question becomes one of employment rather than unemployment. Function, once in the