Functional socialism

FUNCTION 45

behalf of function. He is authorized to sweep from his path all the obstacles that prevent the efficient discharge of function. Finance, profiteering, dividend-mongering, sinecures, family rights and influences—all must obey. They will not be unfairly treated—there’s enough for all—but function, once on its way, knows neither Jew nor Gentile, rich nor poor, bond nor free.

Having received its mandate, function must proceed to organize itself for the great adventure. But how and to what end?

The organization of all the functional elements would not, need not, prove intolerably difficult. There must bea close combination of the trade unions and the professional associations. At a pinch, the trade unions could do without their professional brothers; but that would be a monstrous waste of good human material. Here, no doubt, endless questions of status would arise, with amour-propre occasionally raising its sickly countenance in pained protest to the ribald gods.

The functional personnel being now in operative formation, the stern question, ‘‘to what end?” must be answered. Assuredly not to continue capitalist production. That is already discredited; a new departure is imperative. It is patent that a new scale of human and economic values must be charted; nothing less than a new orientation of economic policy would satisfy us.

Let me then, at the risk of damnable iteration, repeat the scale of values quoted in a previous chapter.