Functional socialism

164 FUNCTIONAL SOCIALISM

The crux of the problem is neither in production nor potential distribution; they present no practical difficulties. It is primarily a problem of human participation equally in work and leisure. Be it observed that unemployment is not leisure: is the negation of leisure. Leisure is like liberty; all depends upon what we do with it. Both are negative conditions of our social order; both are priceless if we turn them to good account. But of what use is either if we have not the wherewithal to enjoy them? This is surely the essence of leisure. A leisured man, in common parlance, is a man of means. The unemployed, having no interest in their trade, are bereft of means, and accordingly know not leisure. Leisure? Unemployment is torment, anxiety, poverty, demoralization. Let those who so glibly talk of the machine creating leisure take a prolonged dose of their own medicine.

Madame Roland, at the guillotine, exclaimed: “‘O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!”; it were well to ponder the crimes committed for a burlesque we call leisure. Particularly our casual, almost thoughtless, disregard for the sacrificial sufferings of our industrial victims. Should the Means Test catch the eye of some future Carlyle, what scorn will he pour upon a grisly unemployment which some fools impudently call leisure? The workers’ Magna Caria is release from the wage system that denies partnership in work or leisure.

With becoming humility, we may pray for a miraculous end to this sorry state of things; it were