Functional socialism

CHAPTER XII SIMPLE DIVISION

As the industrial nations grope their purblind way through the trade depression—a depression that is plainly commercial and not economic—they encounter the frustrations of a political Parliament and the disastrous domination of finance. Nor has it escaped the notice of an ever-growing number of our people that a sinister alliance subsists between the political powers and high finance. Whitehall and Threadneedle Street understand each other, whilst neither seems to have even a vague understanding of the economic realities. The reason for this is not far to seek; it is in fact so obvious that, as yet, only few can see it. It is, simply put, that our industry, with its ten thousand functional processes, is hampered and thwarted by non-functional groups and interests. The political panacea is a constant and exhausting resort to tariffs or to factory restrictions of one kind or another. Compared with this, pills for earthquakes are a positive cure. And we are now awaking to the fact, obscured for a century, that finance is functionally of minor importance; that its position in the body politic has been artificially contrived in the interests of those who neither toil nor spin.