or prices; it would only enable the toll owner to command more labour, withdraw more services from Society and increase the number of parasitic workers. The cheapening of production to our parasitic classes only means that the tolls they take in terms of money or coinage require an ever increasing amount of production to bring them back into the stream of fructifying wealth. This argument, I know, brings into play much wider and different issues from those strictly involved in the quantitative production of £762,000,000, but it has a direct bearing upon it and this is, therefore, the place to state it. For, the existence of this rent receiving class, not at all inconsiderable in numbers and very considerable in possessions-this is discussed more fully in the section dealing with Distribution-means the existence of an army of workers contributing exclusively to its needs-servants of all kinds, gamekeepers, attendants-whose work adds nothing to visible production-brushing clothes or shooting rabbits—and whose invisible production to Society is nil. Their number has to be deducted from that of the producing population. We may include poets and singers in the list of those who add to national products, but not the kitchenmaid of the non-service giving person who lives on tolls. Under our present system to make a living is not the same as making wealth. The figures also disclose the enormous amount of waste labour that Capitalism, with its divided interests, requires-the working with inefficient tools because employers for some reason or other cannot or do not install better ones; the overlapping and disorganization of labour in works that may manage to pay to their owners precarious profits, but whose con tribution to the sum of products could be made far more economically under better organization; the labour sunk in useless work necessitated by rivalries in production, a striking example of which is the waste involved in the private ownership of wagons on railways with their empty mileage, their shunting and so on; the lack of co-ordination in the supply of facilities necessary for production, like the frequent shortage of tubs in coal pits; the unproductive labour (so far as total national product is concerned not only unproductive but wasteful, though productive so far as the employing competing firms are concerned) consumed in maintaining the purely competitive machinery of industry, like the armies of commercial travellers going over the same ground with the same kinds of goods, buying agents, clerks, printers employed upon advertisements, and all labour engaged uneconomically in competing establishments not big enough to make full economic use of their staffs. Of the 1,000,000 persons in the Census of 1911, classified as being employed in commerce, I doubt if as many as one-half were productively employed. That is one reason why the low figure of £762,000,000 was published in 1907 as the value of the annual production, much to the surprise of people who had been assuming that the business of our people, the advantages of our industry and the favourable circumstances of our country, were being used to the utmost by a Capitalism that seemed to be always hustling. Capitalism has signally failed in its task of producing for the needs of the community both in absolute quantities and in economic ways. The simple and undeniable fact is that it does not contain within it an enduring motive to produce which makes labour an active participant in production. Its inevitable * 66 tendency to create great dominating combines is also rightly causing it to forfeit public confidence, as is well stated in the Minority Addendum to the Report on Trusts: "Where, as is evidently the case in various highly organized capitalist enterprises, competition is being rapidly displaced by combination, largely monopolistic in its structure and powers, and tending to restrict output with a view to raising prices and preventing their fall, we hold that it is contrary to the public interest to allow such enterprises to remain in private hands"; or, in words of strong significance though less committal in proposal, subscribed to by the whole Committee: We are satisfied that considerable mistrust with regard to their activities exist in the public mind, and that the effect of such mistrust may be equally hurtful to the political and social stability of the State, whether or not the public mistrust or resentment be in fact well-founded." Capitalism can never be worthy of, nor secure, the confidence of the public if the public would but think. When combined it can crush out all serious rivals or swallow them up, and, with or without tariffs, can defy foreign competition or come to an agreement with foreign competitors. Whether it uses its powers unreasonably or not-it certainly did so during the wardepends upon itself, and no law and no Government supervision can control it. And yet, in the interests of the community it is not desirable that concentration should be hindered or stopped.† We seem to be on the horns of a dilemma. But are we? * " Report," p. 14. †The importance of this induces me to give a further warning on how combinations exercise power. In an Appendix to the "Report on Trusts" (p. 27) I find:" Allegations are made of particular combinations maintaining large secret service funds for the purpose of obtaining subsidies, strengthening their monopoly and acquiring I now turn to the constructive proposals of Socialism. THE SOCIALIST INTELLECTUAL METHOD It may be well to state categorically first of all that Socialism does not quarrel with history. It does not waste its time and cast doubts upon its intelligence by standing in 1921 and shouting over the broad gulf of past years to 1800 telling of their mistakes and advising them how they ought to have behaved. The Socialist takes historical facts as he finds them, but regards them not as final states but as conditions that are unstable because they contain impulses that are constantly modifying them by giving them a more complete fulfilment. They are the momentary conditions of processes, and their chief interest to the Socialist lies in the nature of their controlling tendencies, the direction in which they are driving, and the changes which they are making. Capitalism on its descriptive side presents a fascinating picture, but it is the economic laws which Capitalism reveals that concern the Socialist most of all. He has seen production for private gain emerge through a state of competition; he is acquainted with the economic and social theories devised to explain a hold over the press by means of bribery and corruption, and of combinations in general exercising great influence where their interests are at stake resulting in the maintenance of prices to the consumer and the direct and indirect influencing of concessions by political and semi-political means, while inability to get information regarding combinations is explained on the ground that there is a great reluctance on the part of individual traders to appear formally in opposition to powerful interests." This is certainly true of America, and I know of one British combination which gave a member of Parliament a salary and equipped him with an office to look after its interests in Parliament. Tariffs would greatly strengthen this tendency, indeed would make such practices inevitable. and justify that state; he has traced that state growing out of itself by reason of its own inherent tendencies; he takes the old theories, lays them athwart the actual conditions of to-day, and knows that they belong to an old order of things; he studies the tendencies now in operation and, with the interest of the whole community as his guide, he makes his constructive proposals founded not on any abstract Utopias which belong to the free imagination, but on the evolution of functions and institutions in his own time. In that spirit I write, for in that spirit he builds up. THE WAR The greatest problem of to-day is production, its organization and its distribution. The war has changed much-maybe for all time, but it will be years before we can estimate the amount and the permanency of the change. The special advantages which this country's trade enjoyed in the world have gone or are in jeopardy. London as the mart of the trading universe seems to belong to the past. Our carrying predominance has gone. Staggering debts will have to be paid. Germany, whatever its own position may be, is to have much satisfaction in economic revenge. The extravagances, mainly in the form of keeping large classes of non-producers in luxury in our midst, in which we could indulge when the whole world paid us tribute, we shall now indulge at our peril. Above all the war has left behind it a new mentality, the product of the sense of equality in sacrifice and effort called for by the struggle. The decorated wealthy were brought low and the useful humble were exalted. No nation that has gone through a critical struggle for existence can return to |