CH. 24

CONCLUDING NOTES

3 8 3

markets and restricting purchases, which, if successful,will merely shift the problem of unemployment to theneighbour which is worsted in the struggle, but awilling and unimpeded exchange of goods and servicesin conditions of mutual advantage.

v

Is the fulfilment of these ideas a visionary hope?Have they insufficient roots in the motives whichgovern the evolution of political society? Are theinterests which they will thwart stronger and moreobvious than those which they will serve?

I do not attempt an answer in this place. It wouldneed a volume of a different character from this oneto indicate even in outline the practical measures inwhich they might be gradually clothed. But if the ideasare correct—an hypothesis on which the author himselfmust necessarily base what he writes—it would be amistake, I predict, to dispute their potency over aperiod of time. At the present moment people areunusually expectant of a more fundamental diagnosis;more particularly ready to receive it; eager to try itout, if it should be even plausible. But apart from thiscontemporary mood, the ideas of economists and poli-tical philosophers, both when they are right and whenthey are wrong, are more powerful than is commonlyunderstood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else.Practical men, who believe themselves to be quiteexempt from any intellectual influences, are usuallythe slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen inauthority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling theirfrenzy from some academic scribbler of a few yearsback. I am sure that the power of vested interests isvastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroach-ment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after acertain interval; for in the field of economic andpolitical philosophy there are not many who are