ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

306

mistakes. We hate Communism so much, re-garded as a religion, that we exaggerate itseconomic inefficiency; and we are so much im-pressed by its economic inefficiency that weunderestimate it as a religion.

On the economic side I cannot perceive thatRussian Communism has made any contribu-tion to our economic problems of intellectualinterest or scientific value. I do not think thatit contains, or is likely to contain, any piece ofuseful economic technique which we could notapply, if we chose, with equal or greater successin a society which retained all the marks, I willnot say of nineteenth-century individualisticcapitalism, but of British bourgeois ideals.Theoretically at least, I do not believe that thereis any economic improvement for which Revolu-tion is a necessary instrument. On the otherhand, we have everything to lose by the methodsof violent change. In Western industrial con-ditions the tactics of Red Revolution wouldthrow the whole population into a pit of povertyand death.

But as a religion what are its forces? Per-haps they are considerable. The exaltation ofthe common man is a dogma which has caughtthe multitude before now. Any religion andthe bond which unites co-religionists havepower against the egotistic atomism of theirreligious.

For modern capitalism is absolutely irre-ligious, without internal union, without muchpublic spirit, often, though not always, a mere