ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

316

There is, for instance, no so-called importantpolitical question so really unimportant, soirrelevant to the reorganisation of the economiclife of Great Britain , as the Nationalisation ofthe Railways.

It is true that many big undertakings, par-ticularly Public Utility enterprises and otherbusiness requiring a large fixed capital, stillneed to be semi-socialised. But we must keepour minds flexible regarding the forms of thissemi-socialism. We must take full advantageof the natural tendencies of the day, and wemust probably prefer semi-autonomous corpora-tions to organs of the Central Government forwhich Ministers of State are directly responsible.

I criticise doctrinaire State Socialism, notbecause it seeks to engage men’s altruistic im-pulses in the service of Society, or because itdeparts from laissez-faire , or because it takesaway from man’s natural liberty to make amillion, or because it has courage for boldexperiments. All these things I applaud. Icriticise it because it misses the significance ofwhat is actually happening; because it is, infact, little better than a dusty survival of a planto meet the problems of fifty years ago, basedon a misunderstanding of what some one said ahundred years ago. Nineteenth-century StateSocialism sprang from Bentham, free competi-tion, etc., and is in some respects a clearer, insome respects a more muddled, version of justthe same philosophy as underlies nineteenth-century individualism. Both equally laid all