A B C of modern socialism

61 damning criticism upon our alleged political and intellectual freedom. No doubt the Publishing and Printing Guilds will know how to enlarge our lives in the realms of thought and of opinion.

The Essentials

This brings me to the end of a slender and inadequate survey of the greatest issue now confronting western civilisation. I assert with all emphasis that, unless our statesmen—if we have anyin the immediate future put an end to the pretence that we can continue on the old commercial lines when we have conquered economic scarcity, nothing remains but a revolution or a slow descent into spiritual and social degeneration. Particularly does this apply to our Labour leaders, most of whom betray an astonishing complacency, whilst others appear to be heading for mild dictatorship. It is these embryo dictators who most resent any charge of Fascism, but who are sitting on the throttle of the machinery of Labour opinion.

Let me then sum up.

(i) Scarcity is no longer an economic problem. We have at our disposal enough, and more than enough, of everything we need—food, raw materials, men and machinery.

(ii) This condition of affairs is incompatible with the continuance of a wage class. Whatever the other evil implications, there is now no longer any economic necessity to compel men and women to sell their labour as a commodity and at a price based on purely commercial considerations.

(ii) Wage abolition can only mean a new and