Economics and Party
THERE have been several encouraging signs lately of a willingness to learn the lesson of conducting the country's affairs by new methods under a minority Government. The tone is being set by the existence of critical problems, upon the solution of which depends not only the welfare of the people of these islands but also the stability of democracy as a principle, at a time when we have a Government who are, of course, not strong enough to enforce any policy which unites the whole Opposition. The trouble—or it may be our good fortune, if the lesson is learned—is that the problems cannot wait till there is a Government strong enough to have its own way whether it be right or wrong. In these circumstances every sign is welcome of a tendency towards economic co-operation.
It is irrelevant to say that Socialism and Individualism can never meet, for those titles are very loose, and have, at most, a relative value. If there were a count of those who could put their hands on their hearts and say that they were Socialists in the Marxian sense, and those who could put their hands on their hearts and say that they were Individualists in the sense intended by Herbert Spencer, the two groups together would probably amount to an insignificant number. There is an immense tract of common land upon which there is ample occupation for the Labour Party, the Unionists and the Liberals. No doubt Labour would say that no final cultivation of that land is possible in such company. We do not dispute it ; but it is true that you cannot grow crops till you have ploughed, and it is obvious that in regard to unemploy- ment, for instance, the very first things still require to be done.
Mr. Ramsay MacDonald has taken a promising step by continuing his discussion with a group of econo- mists and business men in regard to the possible foundation of an Economic Committee to advise the Government. The Committee would correspond, in its different province, to the Imperial Defence Com- mittee. It would be an exaggeration to say that the continuance of the discussion which Mr. Mac- Donald started in 1924, and took up again just before his recent visit to America, is strictly related to the growing demand for a non-Party treatment of unemploy- ment. But though not consciously related it is germane to that subject. It is all to the good if it does no more than incline more minds towards a policy above party, a policy of co-operation, a national policy. Such a policy might, in conception, be only temporary ; it might cease when the common ground had been worked over ; but we should be greatly surprised if it were not discovered that there are a large number of critical questions which would be best withdrawn permanently from contro- versy. Unemployment is not the only one. There is the whole range of Social Services which are likely to cause a demoralization of democracy if they are carried on indefinitely as an auction at which the rival leaders bid for votes.
The Government have already found that as a result of their bidding at the General Election they are committed to a new expenditure of £11;000,000 a year, apart from the expenditure on MY.- Thomas's unemploy ment schenies, slum-clearance, education and drainage, and even so have not come within sight of really redeem ing their promises. All that they have done is to add one little amount to another little amount, none involving much dispute or raising any large principle. Ih our opinion the inclusion of young people at the ,school- _ leaving age ought to have been one of the last instead of one of the first extensions of Unemployment Insurance. And now we are faCed' with a probable deficit in the Budget, and there is already talk of an addition of 6d. or is. to the Income Tax. Mt. Snowden seems to have held out in principle against fresh large expenditure but to have surrendered in details. Cumulatively the result is serious, and all the time he probably believes as strongly as ever that when you are estimating what is available for further taxation you must never -leave out of account the necessity of capital investment, which is the principal vitamin of industry.
Dazzling policies are thrown at the heads of the electors, who have not the remotest idea of the way in which these policies can be applied, or what they will cost. The customary rejoinder to such a lamentation is that no other result was to be expected when the suffrage was extended to uneducated persons. That rejoinder has lost its sense, because a close knowledge of the working of most modern Acts of Parliament is confined to a few persons. Even the average Member of Parliament could not pass an elementary examination in all the points on which he has voted in a Committee of the whole House. A remarkable degree of elucidation might be achieved by an Economic Committee. The voter could be told compactly what are the pros and cons for some policy which the Government; or a Party, is begging him to accept. He would then have a fair chance of judging whether the benefits would be worth the expense, and of appreciating the dangers which would accompany the policy. More than that, if it were arranged, as we think it ought to be, that every addition to the expense of Unemployment Insurance, Pensions, and Social Services generally should come under the scrutiny of such economic assessors, there would be a most desirable easing of the present direct and corrupting contact between those who make promises and those who cast their votes for the highest bidder.
In his Sidgwick Memorial Lecture, at Cambridge last Saturday, General Smuts said some exceedingly wise things on the subject that we are discussing. He pointed out that democracy had already reached such a phase of complication that it could not hope to survive rationally unless it enlisted the calm and proficient help of the economists and the men of science in the regular work of administration. Just as kings could not get on without judges, so the statesmen of to-day, he said, could not get on without the experts. He indicated recent instances of the experts pulling the politicians out of the swamp in which they were stuck. The Dawes Plan and the Young Plan were purely the work of professionals— professionals, be it noted, who were kept rigidly to their proper function. The statesmen knew what they wanted, but could' not themselves do it. Of course there is always the risk that the experts may become so indis- pensable to the statesman that they may cut him out altogether. We have seen often enough the political bungles which resulted from allowing naval and military experts to act as plenipotentiaries,- but within their own sphere the services of professional knowledge and science in a modern democracy may be invaluable. The balance must always be held. Justice is proverbially blind, and science is deaf and blind to illusion and passion. We should like to see every proposal which excites the passions of cupidity and class-antagonism put through the sieve of a permanent economic committee.
At present there is a most hazardous and entirely false differentiation between politics and economics. A har- inony can be achieved only with the help of some such new machinery as the Prime Minister is contemplating. We cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of quoting in this connexion a few sentences from Mr. Alfred Zimmem's penetrating study, The Prospects of Democracy :— " Whilst our political institutions have remained rooted in
ancient habit, in the economic sphere we have developed a great and widespread new system corresponding with some approximation to our modern economic needs. But this new system is private, not public : it is outside the constitution. The result is that not only are our private needs—if we can call them so—better provided for than our public needs, but also that private power, with its new and up-to-date type of organization, has an immense advantage over public power. In the sphere of government we are, in fact, attempting to do twentieth-century work with eighteenth-century instruments."
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