“The people of England were then, as they are now, called upon to make Government strong. They thought it a great deal better to make it wise and honest.”—Burke.

“We may need and we may be moving towards a new conception of the state, and more especially a new conception of sovereignty.... We may have to regard every state, not only the federal state proper, but also the state which professes to be unitary, as in its nature federal. We may have to recognise that sovereignty is not single and indivisible, but multiple and multicellular.”—Ernest Barker.

“We find the true man only through group organisation. The potentialities of the individual remain potentialities until they are released by group life. Man discovers his true nature, gains his true freedom only through the group. Group organisation must be the new method of politics, because the modes by which the individual can be brought forth and made effective are the modes of practical politics.”—Mary P. Follett.

THE war has given the coup de grace to the Sovereign State. It was on its last legs before the war. It is certain that Mr. Combes’ affirmation of state absolutism during the debates on the disestablishment of the Catholic Church in France, was the last serious stand of this doctrine in democratic communities. In England the doctrine was never securely rooted; certainly it has not gained an unquestioned ascendency over political thought for any considerable period of time; and the exploit of Austinian legalism which (in the Scottish Churches’ case) denied to a church the right to govern itself had virtually to be annulled by a special Act of Parliament. During the war the claim of the State upon the individual has naturally attained a point which in normal times would have been unthinkable; but this was confessedly the result of an emergency and not a rule for ordinary conditions of life. The German performance during the war has revealed the logic of state-absolutism in far too vivid a fashion for any of the somewhat turgid exaltation of the state by academic people in the days previous to the war to survive on any terms. To rebut the doctrine of state-absolutism at this time would be merely to flog a dead horse.

But long before the war the absolutist theory was being undermined. In the region of law and political theory the criticism of F. W. Maitland, Nevill Figgis, Duguit, and others had raised a very definite challenge to the doctrine of state-omnicompetency. But of much greater influence in the actual business of modifying the current conception of the state was the growing tendency to form independent foci of authority within the commonwealth. One obvious case of the kind is the institution of the Bank Clearing House which represents the last stage in the process by which the business of exchange has passed from the state into the hands of an independent body which exercises in its own sphere an authority which is hardly to be resisted; and the present movement for the amalgamation of large banking concerns makes it not impossible that should the banking interest come into collision with the State, there would be a very exciting tug-of-war. The medical profession took up an attitude of organised opposition to the State in the matter of the British Health Insurance Act; and other professional associations are to-day so highly organised that in the event of a collision with the State, it is at least doubtful how the issue would be decided. In the case of the Taff Vale decision which rendered a Trade Union liable to prosecution for illegal action by its members, so threatening a protest ensued that the legal decision had virtually to be reversed by special legislation; and the growing solidarity of organised labour again creates a problem of state authority which is not easily soluble, and which (it is not inconceivable) may at last have to be solved by a trial of strength.^[37] It is no longer possible to assume that the philosophy of government can be stated in terms of the state and the individual; it will have to take increasing account of the relation of the state to the powerful voluntary organisations of citizens within the state—organisations which, because they are voluntary, may exercise a more powerful influence upon their members than the state can possibly do. On the economic side this tendency toward the breaking up and the distribution of centralised authority among functional and professional groups, takes the form of Guild Socialism; and, while Syndicalism has not yet succeeded in gaining a wide footing in Europe, its challenge to the state has added a good deal to the minimising influences already afoot. It is worth while observing that these independent organisations are already so powerful that the British Government found it advisable to administer its National Insurance Act through Labour Unions and Friendly Societies.

But it is not the growth of powerful organisations within the Commonwealth alone that is making for the disintegration of state-sovereignty. We are living in a period when great international bodies are coming into being, and while most of these are at present of a cultural and professional type, it is evident that one at least is of a character which involves a very profound challenge to the sovereignty of the national state. The Socialist International has not been destroyed by the war; it has only been interrupted; and if the signs are not wholly misleading, we may look for a steady and wide extension of the international proletarian movement. In 1914 it proved too immature to resist the pressure of nationalism, but it is likely that in the future it will increasingly arm itself against a like collapse. As yet it is only in the case of the Socialist International that there is a direct challenge to the national state; but it would require considerable hardihood to deny the possibility that other international professional and functional associations may find themselves at variance with the constituted authorities of national states. For instance, the problem of hygiene is becoming more and more an international affair; and it is no unthinkable thing that a medical international may find itself at odds with the state authorities just as the British Medical Association found itself in conflict with its own national Government. One has only to add in this connection that the project of a League of Nations will require an abdication of the claim to absolute sovereignty on the part of the states constituting it.^[38]

So that both from within and without, the march of events is disintegrating the dogma of state-sovereignty. The traditional political acceptances are rapidly becoming obsolete. In the main this would appear to be due to the new situation created by the swift development of the means of communication during the last century. The territorial factor in the delimitation of states and in their own internal economy, has ceased to have the importance it possessed in days when distance set sharp limits to the intercourse of men. Those days are now past; and national frontiers and county boundaries are being gradually effaced by steam, and the sea has been bridged by the electric current and the aeroplane.

II

The problem created in this way is not in its essence a new one. Since the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the conflict between the national state and the church—whether conceived as an independent association within the commonwealth or as an international society—has provided some of the most significant passages of political history. The struggle for religious freedom in England (which in the event proved the spring of other liberties) was essentially a struggle to secure the right of voluntary religious associations to determine their own religious life and practices; and while the legal decision in the Scottish Churches’ case was a revival of the Austinian doctrine of state-sovereignty, and an assertion on the part of the state of its own right to sit in judgment upon the religious proceedings of a church, the ensuing situation proved so impossible (as has already been pointed out) that the legal decision had to be annulled by a special piece of legislation. Since that decision most of the “free” churches in England have taken steps to safeguard themselves against similar intrusions on the part of the state. In the present situation, however, such security cannot be absolute since the state still has something to say to the legal instruments under which the churches hold their temporalities. But the entire episode shows how clear is the British sense that the omnicompetency of the state does not extend into the sphere of religious life and practice; and the “Life and Liberty” movement in the Established Church of England is an indication that the control of the state even over a state church is not beyond challenge.

The success with which the independent religious association has established its right to live in the face of the state is probably due to the circumstance that the region in which it claimed freedom was strictly defined; and it may be argued that the state has been on the whole more successful in resisting the claims of the church as an international society because those claims were allowed to enter regions in which the church’s competency could be reasonably denied. The case of Lamennais’ illustrates the point. Lamennais began life as a fervent monarchist and Catholic. He held strongly to the doctrine of the “two societies,” the temporal and the spiritual of which the King and the Pope respectively were the heads.^[39] These two societies were distinct and within their own sphere, independent of each other. But when the monarchy encroached upon the freedom of the spiritual society, Lamennais broke with it, and when later the papacy insisted upon a withdrawal of his opinion that it had no rights outside the spiritual sphere, he broke with the papacy also. He acknowledged the existence of a borderland in which the interests of both were commingled—“that undiscovered country,” as Lord Acton has put it, “where church and state are parted”; but the broad configurations of the frontier were plain enough. For the most part the relations of church and state as institutional authorities have consisted of assaults and intrigues and forays in this “no man’s land”; and it has not been historically to the advantage of either. And the whole history of this conflict in France and out of it points to the moral that without some clear definition of function, the relation of the state to other associations within and without itself must be one of continual conflict—that is to say, of course, so long as the state and the other associations speak in terms of right and authority. Granted a measure of good-will, the task of delimiting frontiers should not be insuperable; but if a church or a labour union insists on its rights while the state insists upon its authority, the natural result will be confusion.

III

At the same time that these independent nucleations of authority are increasingly afoot within the body politic, we observe in recent times a seemingly opposite tendency to impute competency to the state in regions where hitherto its writ was not supposed to run. To a purist political philosophy, the function of the state is broadly twofold—the preservation of domestic order and the safeguarding of national interests with reference to other nations. But it has latterly more and more stretched out its tabernacle to cover other matters; even going so far as to assume that a positive and comprehensive culture of national life came legitimately within its domain. That this should be so in a dynastic state like the German is easily understood; for the security and pretensions of the dynasty are dependent upon an intense development of human and material resources for military defence and offence. But even where such particularist designs have not been so obtrusively present, the state has tended more and more to absorb into itself the control and organisation of national life in all its important phases. It has, for instance, taken upon its shoulders almost the entire burden of public education; it has conspicuously concentrated its thought and wisdom upon measures designed to increase the material prosperity of the nation—though in point of fact this has worked out chiefly as the prosperity of a few favourably situated persons. The care of the destitute, old age pensions, health and unemployment insurance have been included within its competency; and its apparently insatiable absorbent proclivity is drawing into its capacious hands the control and operation of the means of communication, the postal service, the railways, telegraph and telephones. Plainly this extension of its office has been accompanied by a large and indefinite increment of authority.

For this movement, two circumstances appear to be accountable. Of these the first is the growth of an ill-defined and only partially understood sense of collective responsibility for the well-being of the social whole. Old Age Pensions, for instance, appear to constitute the proper alternative to the precarious charity or the degrading “poor relief” to which a less self-respecting social past committed the industrial veteran. The means of communication similarly appear to a reasonably educated community to be a public service rather than a gold-mine for private individuals or concerns. The second circumstance is the prestige which accrued to the state from the reaction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from the bankrupt individualism of the preceding generations. In their recoil from the anarchy of laissez faire and industrial competition men sought sanctuary in the state; and in the event the state gained a repute for competency which led to a facile transference to it of all those interests that appear to bear materially upon the life of the community as a whole. But without prejudice to the question of public ownership, it may be observed that while the impulse which led to this regard for the state was natural and admirable, it had the effect of concentrating in the state a volume of power which was entirely ominous to the liberties of the individual. Indeed, it may be said without much hesitation that the logic of state-absolutism was revealed by the Germans only in time to save their neighbours from the like tragedy of incontinent subjection to the state. And the sense of personal responsibility was in danger of atrophy under the pleasing and soporific influence of the popular idea that the state was a sort of fairy god-mother who could be trusted to step in and make good individual derelictions and delinquencies—which frame of mind accorded well with the related drift towards unquestioning submission to the state.

IV

In democratic communities the sovereignty of the state is a residuum left over from the period of dynastic government; and though the divine right of kings is obsolete, we have not yet out-grown the derivative dogma of the divine right of governments. There still gathers around the state an odour of sanctity; and in minds that have a turn for abstraction it is apt to take shape as a sacrosanct objective reality. But soon or late the democratic peoples will have to look upon the state with a cold and business-like realism if they are to be delivered from the dangers that lurk in all quasi-religious and sentimental abasement to conventional idols. It is just this vague political devoutness that makes it easy for the common people to be stampeded into invidious commercial and military enterprises by statesmen schooled in a tradition either frankly dynastic or still deriving its main presuppositions from the dynastic period. There is no security for democracy except in a persistent posture of criticism towards its institutions; and there is no immediate hope of a sane restoration of our somewhat shattered fortunes except as we strip the halo away from the state and discuss it dispassionately in terms of its functions.

Its police responsibilities remain with it as a matter of course, so long as human nature needs policing; and it must provisionally remain the organ of the community in its intercourse across its frontiers. With this latter we are not for the moment concerned; what falls to be considered is the problem of the state’s function in respect of, first, the present tendency to form extraneous and independent (and on occasion conceivably hostile and intractable) centres of authority, and second, the recent process of investing the state with a sort of proprietorship and pastorate at large. Summarily it may be said that the office of the state in respect of these two developments is that it should be on the one hand the clearing house of the increasing functional and professional associations among which its ancient sovereignty is being distributed, and on the other, the trustee of the public in the matter of producing and distributing the goods that are essential to life. The state of the case and the course of events indicate a doctrine of public ownership with democratic functional control, with the necessary machinery for the due co-ordination of the centres of control.

It seems a fairly safe risk to say that the movement toward the public ownership of a certain range of utilities will suffer no abatement with the passing of time. That the means of communication should be public property should be as axiomatic as that a man’s nervous system should belong to himself; and no serious question can be raised as to the certainty of ultimate common proprietorship in this region. With respect to the means of production the case is less clear; but it is a fair assumption, that if a reasonable security of the maintenance of life and health is to be achieved, there must be an increasing public ownership of the sources of raw material and of the means of production so far as the essential commodities are concerned. That there is a range of industrial production beyond this limit which is quite legitimate but which is nevertheless not a matter of universal concern is obvious; and it seems very questionable whether it is the business of the state to do more than to secure that the conditions under which these industries are conducted are of a piece with those obtaining in the primary industries. Objects of differential and selective interest do not appear to enter into the province of the state; it has to do only with those for which the demand is universal because they correspond to a general need. It is a question (as has been previously suggested) whether in this region of production it should not be the general rule that every member of the community should share; in which case there would be ample time and occasion for the production of the secondary and more selective goods for life. There is nothing in this argument which should be construed into a suggestion that the things called in this connection secondary are unimportant. On the contrary they are very important; and with the cultural development of society their importance is likely to grow. The production of books and objects of Æsthetic interest is likely to be stimulated very materially by any advance in the right sort of education. But (with the exception of a very narrow margin) these are probably things which are not suitably and fruitfully produced except as they are free from central regulation.

Within the limits so indicated, therefore, the trend of affairs is rightly in the direction of public ownership—in which case we shall require an organ in which this ownership shall be vested. For this purpose the state is already to hand, and is indeed, already assuming the office. Its first domestic office will consequently be that of a public trustee. But this raises the question whether the trustee is to be manager as well.

It is of course plain that the trust would be a pure fiction if some measure of control in the disposition of the property were not implied in it. Certainly the last word in such matters should belong to the state. This, however, appears to bring us back to that very doctrine of sovereignty from which, on our premises, it is our business to escape; and, indeed, if we have no different sort of state organisation in mind from that now current we should be starting out on a new cycle of authoritarianism, were we to vest in the state so much authority. But already the specifications of a new type of state-structure are being indicated by the course of events.

V

It is of some significance at this point to observe that of the functional associations within the commonwealth to which reference has been made, the most powerful are those which are concerned with the production of the primary commodities, and the means of their distribution. This is no doubt chiefly due to the fact that these associations represent the most numerous sections of the community. Coal miners, engineers, transport workers, clothing makers—it is among these classes that the movement toward combination has been most effectual. One notable exception—namely, agricultural workers—is to be observed here, the significance of which exception will come up for discussion presently. It does not, however, affect the general run of the present argument. The constitution and activity of the labour unions are sufficiently well known to require no exposition here—the main point to be emphasised being that here within the commonwealth are large, growing and powerful groups formed around a particular interest; and that this interest is deemed to be vital is evident from the steady growth of the groups. But we may further infer that the existence of these groups is due chiefly to the fact that the particular interest which concerns them was not effectually regarded in the councils of the commonwealth at large. The interests of the workers were presumably neglected to such a degree that the class concerned deemed it necessary to organise itself in order to safeguard and to enforce these interests. Indeed on the workers’ showing the case was even worse. They argued that not only were their peculiar interests neglected by the existing powers, but that these powers were weighted in favour of those against whom more specifically the worker had to defend his interests. The formation and growth of the Non-partisan League in America is a recent instance of a class nucleation under the pressure of circumstances largely parallel to those here outlined.

The interests here discussed are of an economic kind, but they are vital and essential. It is to be observed, however, that these particular associations are not confined either to the worker or to interests purely economic. Reference has already been made to the Bank Clearing House. This is an instance of the formation of a powerful group to promote the common interests of its members, though in this case its formation was less due to the neglect of those interests by the state than to the fact that the interests concerned have become so extensive in range and so complex in character that the state was palpably incompetent to handle them profitably. In certain cases where the state has assumed liabilities of this kind (as in railway control) experience has not in the long run endorsed the competency of the state for the job. That, however, is less to the point than that we should observe the tendency to form voluntary associations for the protection and promotion of presumably necessary interests, and in some cases assuming (as in the case of the Bank Clearing House) a kind of police authority within its own field. Besides these economic and financial associations, there are also large and powerful professional associations which exist likewise to promote certain special interests. The British Medical Association affords an instance of such association; and here again we have an association which in the exercise of its office also assumes a function of discipline. Just as the Bank Clearing House can put a recalcitrant bank out of business, so the British Medical Association can “unfrock” a doctor who has offended against the professional code. It is true that the excommunicated culprit may in either case appeal to the civil courts for redress; but the rarity of such appeals shows how nearly complete is the authority exercised by these professional associations within their own province. With certain modifications the same general rule obtains in Teachers’ Unions, the Bar, the Co-operative Societies, Churches and other voluntary associations of persons, that gather around the nucleus of a special interest. The case is not so plain in regard to societies of a specially cultural character which do not so directly abut upon the general conduct of life, though the place of the Universities, Academies of Art, Author’s Associations and the like, in the total scheme of social life, makes it impossible to exclude them from consideration in any discussion which looks to the integration of all the legitimate interests of life in an organic full-growing social whole.

Such integration must, from the nature of the case, be a long and tedious process; and the difficulties involved in its extension to such distant and shadowy regions as Art and Authorship may be left for solution until they become more imminent. It is in any case doubtful whether the interests involved in these and similar cases are such as would be served by any formal connection with the machinery of government, except as regards certain narrow legal points (e.g. copyright). This is also true of the Churches whose sole point of contact with the State is in the matter of their temporalities. Fortunately for the moment the task need not take account of these remoter complexities; and it will be a matter for legitimate argument how far associations of a cultural kind are to enter into the organisation of government, when those associations which are already abutting on the province of the state and shearing it of some of its powers have been successfully co-ordinated in a scheme of political management.

VI

At this point it is important to bear in mind two things. First of all, the real interests which go to make up the sum of our life are precisely those which lead us to form ourselves into associations independent of the state. Indeed, the particular interest which binds a given individual to the state is generally fortuitous in its origin and largely imaginary in character. A man chances to be born into a certain geographical area, and in the great majority of cases that circumstance fixes his state affiliation for his entire life. An emigrant may transfer his affiliation to another state; but his case is exceptional. Moreover, the nature of the interests which bind him to the state is of a dubiously sentimental and imaginary order. This is not the place to discuss the significance of that temper of attachment to a particular political unity which is called patriotism; but it would appear to have comparatively little to do with any essential purpose of life. This must not be taken to mean that patriotism is to be decried as an evil or a futile thing. On the contrary, in so far as it represents a feeling of loyalty to a social group, it is admirable and of great value. Its value is, however, compromised by the invidious and divisive colour which it habitually appears to wear; and its historical uses—which chiefly consist in its exploitation by astute statesmen—constitute a record which is hardly flattering to human intelligence. In the main it plays comparatively little part in the sum total of the ordinary man’s life; and indeed it is hardly ever heard of in normal times until it is played up by politicians who want a national backing for a selfish enterprise at the expense of some other community. Its chief significance seems to be that it provides a reserve of sentimental devotion which may be drawn upon without limit in the cause of national prestige or national defence. Outside war-time, the state appears to touch the ordinary man’s life directly only when it requires him to pay the expenses of its upkeep or when he provokes the attention of the police. But on the other hand, when a man joins a Trade Union or a religious society it is because the new association bears some sort of vital and immediate relation to his life. The most authentic interests of life are those which move men to join together voluntarily for their defence and promotion; and for the purpose of social development, the associations that grow in this fashion are at least of no less importance to the common run of men than the state. It is no longer tolerable, therefore, that in the general management of the affairs of a community these associations should be virtually ignored in deference to a doctrine which presupposes that the state and the individual are the sole terms of political theory and practice, and that such associations exist within the commonwealth only on sufferance of the state.

Second, it has some bearing upon our present argument that these associations may conceivably come at any time into conflict with the interests of the social whole. A trade union may, for instance, make claims which are incongruous with the well-being of the general public; churches have been known to claim advantages which are inconsistent with the freedom and welfare of other religious societies. With the multiplication of societies within the commonwealth, and especially in view of the prospective great increase of strength in the case of trade unions, it is entirely essential that such bodies should be required directly to participate in the responsibility of promoting the general social good. They should—in their character of associations charging themselves with certain vital though particular interests—be introduced into the official management of public affairs. So long as they live more or less isolated and unco-ordinated lives they remain in danger of becoming antisocial in effect; and the only remedy is to provide for them a clearing-house in the conduct of which they are directly implicated; and once more, the state is already to hand and its machinery should be so ordered as to enable it to discharge this office.

Theoretically our movement is away from the “amoeba” conception of the national state, which regards it as an independent unicellular affair with the central state organisation as its nucleus, to a conception of it as multicellular, and finding a practical unity in the contribution of all its cells to the activity of a common brain. This may be bad biology but that is no argument against its political soundness.

A difficult question arises when we come to consider what associations are entitled to this treatment; and it is plain that no association which cannot prove a genuine social worth has a claim for recognition. Some associations are powerful enough to claim and to receive recognition without formal scrutiny of their credentials; but their power is itself a presumptive proof that they correspond to a real social need; and in the early stages of state-reconstruction, it will be naturally such associations as can validate their claims by the volume of authority with which they make them that will enter into the arrangement. For the rest, we shall have to take the risk of being able to cross the bridges when we come to them.

VII

Discontent with the existing method of assembling the machinery of government has been growing rapidly in recent years. The progress of the proportional representation movement is the measure of this discontent; and it is difficult to conceive any valid objection to the scheme on the part of those who desire to give to the personnel of the governing body a more genuinely representative character than it possesses at present. At the same time, the transferable vote does not and from the nature of the case cannot secure a completely representative government—at any rate while we continue to elect parliamentary representatives on a territorial basis.

We shall no doubt continue to elect representatives on a territorial basis, for it would appear to be the only effectual method of representing the chief interests which all individuals in the commonwealth have in common, namely their interests as consumers (or enjoyers). But the territorial unit is more or less arbitrary in definition, and it does not coincide with the other interests that make up the business of life. And these other interests have assumed a commanding importance in the conduct of the business of life in recent times. Reference was made in a previous paragraph to the fact that the one great industry which was not adequately organised was agriculture. The reason for this circumstance is to be found in the greater difficulty which the farmers and the farm workers have had in getting together. The other great industries are located in urban areas where facilities of communication and meeting are comparatively easy. The result of facilitating communication among the farmers is already evident. The Non-partisan League was brought to birth by the Ford car and the rural telephone. It is true that the farm-workers still lack the opportunity of easy assembly; but what has happened in the case of the farmers has the peculiar interest of being a graphic and simple object lesson in the processes which have transformed modern life. Our present political methods and acceptances date back to the period before the railroad; and not only in politics, but in ethics and religion, we have yet to take on the task of revising our traditional concepts in the light of the vast transformation wrought by the swift advance in methods of communication. The main result is that there are very few men who do not belong to professional and trade organisations which stretch out beyond their county boundaries, and there is a growing number to whom these ultra-territorial associations are more vital and significant than the local association of citizens in which the accident of their habitat places them. The new fact for the problem of government consists in the actual existence and multiplication of these professional and vocational constituencies; and it is evident that that representative government is unworthy the name which does not represent these large embodiments of living opinion and interest.

If for the moment then, we consider the economic aspects of the life of the community alone, it is evident that two main sources of representation have to be provided for—the consumer and the producer; and every man should have a vote in each capacity. The defect of the Soviet organisation in Russia is that, as it is at present constituted, it appears to provide the consumer with no direct representation. The Russian Soviet is a council of workers. But it is evident that the provision supply, carriage and distribution of commodities to a village is the concern of the whole village independently of the share which the villagers may have in the actual production of these commodities. So that the consumer qua consumer must be represented. The physician and the teacher^[40] may not be producers in a strict and direct sense; but they are directly interested in the problem of consumption and are interested in it in the same way as the village blacksmith and the shoemaker. Moreover, there are problems of sanitation and road-keeping in which they are all also equally concerned. The village and the city ward are therefore proper units of representation. But they still remain only one type of unit. The agricultural labourers who live in the village may be members of a labour union which charges itself with the oversight of the conditions of the agricultural labourer’s work. The physician will also be a member of an association which is concerned with the special interests of his profession. Here then we have another type of unit. For our present purpose we are concerned with these units only as they are industrial and productive.

In Russia the problem of representing these “professional” or “industrial” constituencies has been solved with greater ease than is likely to be the case elsewhere. In many cases the owners of industrial plants have been expropriated and a “shop-council” is in control. This shop-council sees to it that none but members of the labour union concerned are employed in the shop; it is free to hire what expert help it requires to carry on production; and in general it rules the roost. But it is an elected body, and it forms the cell-unit out of which, through a hierarchy of local and provincial bodies, the All-Russian Congress of Soviets is at last constituted. Naturally this scheme is not yet in universal operation. Some employers are still tolerated to remain in possession, and a single rule has not yet been established in the tenure of land. But that is the general principle; and while it must necessarily admit in practice of all sorts of exceptions, there is no clear reason why it should not become effective throughout Russia.

But this simplicity is not likely to obtain elsewhere. The forcible immediate expropriation of the employer is not a probable contingency in England or America so far as one may judge from present signs. But this need constitute no insuperable obstacle to the institution of shop-councils such as for instance have been set up in the woollen trades at Bradford. And just as in this instance, the shop-council would be generally the unit out of which an ascending scale of superior bodies would be formed, reaching at last to what the Russians call the “supreme council of public economy.” The outline of such an organisation is to be found already in Mr. Malcolm Sparkes’ scheme (referred to in another chapter) of a “national industrial parliament”; and all that need be added to the plan is that this industrial parliament should be recognised as the actual legislative body within its own sphere, subject to the review and veto of a final body which would be charged with the oversight of all the interests of the commonwealth.^[41]

Still confining ourselves to the economic interests, we should find it necessary to secure that the labour unions shall find effective representation in the legislative organisation; and so long as private ownership of industrial plant is permitted, the same thing is true of employers’ associations as well. But it is plain that while industry is subject to this antagonism of interests within itself, it is not likely to minister to the public interest as effectually as we have a right to require of it. Ultimately we shall be compelled to establish the doctrine that industrial production is a community-interest and to institute the principle of national Guilds as the ground plan of industrial organisation. Some approach to this plan has been made during the war in the interests of increased productivity; and the situation consequent upon the war in the belligerent countries is likely to aggravate rather than abate the acuteness of the problem of productivity. On this account it would be a grave misfortune if industry were permitted to relapse into its pre-war inefficiency. Thorstein Veblen, in a shrewd analysis of the working of the capitalistic system in America, estimates that it “lowers the actual output of the country’s industry by something near fifty per cent. of its ordinary capacity when fully employed.” “But” he adds, “it is at the same time plain enough that this, in the larger sense, untoward discrepancy between productive capacity and current productive output can readily be corrected, in some appreciable degree at least, by any sufficient authority that shall undertake to control the country’s industrial forces without regard to pecuniary profit and loss. Any authority competent to take over the control and regulate the conduct of the community’s industry with a view to maximum output as counted by weight and tale, rather than by net aggregate price income over price cost can readily effect an appreciable increase in the effectual productive capacity.... The several belligerent nations of Europe are showing that it can be done, and they are also showing that they are all aware, and have always been aware, that the conduct of industry on business principles is incompetent to bring the largest practical output of goods and service; incompetent to such a degree indeed as not to be tolerable in a season of desperate need when the nation requires the full use of its productive forces, equipment and man power, regardless of the pecuniary claims of individuals.”^[42] The course of events seem to point to the institution of the “sufficient authority” which Professor Veblen indicates. It is clear that this authority must be of a character to ignore the exigencies of the profit-system, and to operate with an eye single to the welfare of the community; in which case, soon or late, there must be eliminated from it those who would desire to turn it to a personal or sectional advantage. Or at least their possible advantage from industry shall be so rigorously abridged as to make it cease to be worth their while to rig the business in such a way as to retard or otherwise to interfere with output. But, inasmuch as this rigging has been done in the past chiefly at the expense of the workers, they in their turn armed themselves for defence, by joining into unions. With the elimination of the private profit motive from industry, the character of the trade union as a fighting body would largely if not wholly lapse; and the need for its direct representation in industrial control would cease to be urgent or even important. Especially would this be true when a minimum standard of life had been fixed and universally applied. The union would merge into the guild which would include not the operatives alone but the entire effective personnel of the industry. Out of these guilds, themselves functioning through a hierarchy of bodies from the single shop upward, would be formed the national industrial parliament which would be the effectual economic authority of the community.

VIII

That this in its turn should be subject to a still higher court goes without saying. For in this capacity our industrial parliament represents the community only as producing. The general interests of the common man who has to eat, drink, clothe himself, find a roof over his head, marry, bring up children, are not subordinate to his interest as a producer; nor are they covered by a parliament which supervises the productive interests alone.^[43] The standard of life must be fixed by the common will of the community; and it will be the business of the industrial parliament to see that the volume, quality and conditions of production shall correspond to this standard; and somewhere there must be a body which also sees to it that the industrial parliament is discharging its task efficiently. It must even be in a position to veto the acts of the industrial parliament should that course become necessary; and this position could be secured by vesting the purchase and control of raw material in the hands of this superior body. At the same time it is evident that there are functions which this superior body is not efficient to discharge simply on the ground of its being representative of the general consumer. The problems of education and public health, for instance, are highly specialised affairs which a purely representative assembly on the traditional lines has proved itself incompetent to handle—and it is notorious how both education and national hygiene have had their development governed and deflected from its proper course by the too great ascendency of trade and business interests in the legislature. Just as the industrial affairs of the community are committed to the charge of those who are directly engaged in them, so the education of the country should be in the hands of a self-governing body of teachers, and the public health to a self-governing medical association—in both cases the personnel being regarded as members of a public service serving under standardised conditions, and their representative and executive body being like the guild parliament answerable to the supreme national assembly.

43.It has been suggested that associations of Consumers, e.g. the Co-operative Societies, should be represented in the National Industrial Parliament.