A B C of modern socialism

IV THE FUNCTIONAL STRUCTURE

HAVING now briefly considered the meaning and logic of function, with a passing glance at its ethical implications, we can with some assurance proceed to the industrial and social structure that function demands. Observe: industrial and social. For there would be little purpose in organising a vast system of wealth production without its correlative, social structure. We produce wealth to consume it, and not to hoard it. And the acid test of civilised progress is the spirit and purpose of distribution and consumption. It would be insensate folly to produce merely to accumulate without regard to our cultural or physical or intellectual health. In addition to wagery and other economic brutalities, we can indict modern capitalism for its esthetic gauchertes, its wicked indifference to the beauties and graces of life. We are probably the richest country in the world (as the world counts riches) ; but, while we have a Board of Trade, we have no Ministry of Fine Arts. A functional society presupposes an educated community, all its children (there would be no privileged class) having iree access to the universities up to the age of twenty-