Functional socialism

146 FUNCTIONAL SOCIALISM

This would imply that I had at least done justice to the Syndicalist conception; but the truth is that neither I nor any other socialist writer could consistently “envisage the nation” until the wagesystem has been transformed. For the wage-system creates economic and social classes and it was accordingly evident that the class struggle thus engendered must be ended before we could build on national and not on class lines.

Then, as now, there was a constant shirking of the wage problem, stated in terms of the wage contract and not in terms of money. Again I may quote Beer:

The foundation of social life was labour. Hence it followed that if the conditions that governed labour were evil the whole way of life must needs be evil, and that the real emancipation consisted in replacing these conditions by a new scheme of life. The conditions that had been governing labour formed the wage system, or wagery, which was one of the species of the genus slavery. A struggle for emancipation must therefore aim at the abolition of the wage system. Instead of which the working men frittered away their energies on a struggle for higher wages and for the improvement of the wage system. Even the socialists, whether as members of the Social Democratic Federation or of the Independent Labour Party, had never fought consistently against the wage system.

And again:

If the working-class desired political power it must acquire economic strength in factory, mine and field.