Europe: Faith and Plan : The Wage Price Mechanism

If a government is required to find economic solutions, it must have the means to do so. The means in modern conditions are sufficient room within which to operate.

Neither a man nor a government can be held responsible for things outside their control. Yet all the governments of present Europe are in the position of governing countries whose means of life are completely outside their control, and they make little effort to remedy their helpless situation. All these small, individual nations are dependent on external supplies of raw materials for their industries, and most of them are dependent as well on foreign foodstuffs.

They are obliged to pay for these necessities by exports sold in open competition in world markets, under conditions where they have no influence whatever. Indeed, a factor as decisive as the world price level of basic commodities, or of the main manufactured goods, is in no way determined by the demand or action of the small European countries, but is almost entirely decided by the demand of America, and in the near future may also be vitally affected by the sales policy of Russia.

Whole industries in a country like Britain can at any time be put out of business by a fluctuation in world demand, or a change in the world price level, occasioned by these industrial giants whose own economies are large enough and sufficiently self-contained to be independent of world events, at least in so far as their continued economic existence is concerned. To talk of a free economy under the conditions prevailing in the present European countries is a manifest absurdity. The economies of all these nations are bound hand and foot to the economies of the larger world powers; they are thus not free but enchained to external conditions and the actions of others which they cannot control and often cannot even influence. The first necessity in developing a truly free economy is thus to become masters of our own economic destiny. For the European peoples this means the development of an economic area large enough to be viable because it contains all necessary foodstuffs and raw materials. Europe and white Africa can be such an area, and can be rapidly developed by the policy described in the last chapter.

The question now arises: what economic system should we build within that area, once we thus become free to control our own fortunes and to build an economic system suited to the European? When we have won freedom from world chaos from the tyranny of external and uncontrollable events, let us not fall into the opposite error of creating an internal economic tyranny. It is necessary, like Russia, to have an area large enough to be independent of adverse forces in the rest of the world, but it is not necessary like the Soviets to create within that region an economic tyranny even harsher than the disruptive forces which are excluded. On the contrary, the object of our operation is to create a free economy within which men may freely enjoy the full fruits of their labour. The only question is how to make possible that full production and consumption.

Our complaint against the present system is that the beneficent force of modern scientific production is only fully used for purposes of war or preparation for war, and that full production for purposes of peace has so far only led to collapse and slump. The present system in normal conditions has never yet met and overcome the old Marxian dilemma. In plain language, the countries of the West have never yet found the means to enable their own people to consume what their own people produce.

Can this problem, then, only be overcome by the closed economy and the internal tyranny of communism? We deny this is true. We require a closed system to the extent of being independent of the world cost system, but within the necessary area it can be a free economy. What is necessary is space enough to contain our own essential supplies and to enable the economic leadership of government within that area to organise the necessary market. By free economy we mean that men should be persuaded to do what has to be done by the inducement of reward, and not compelled to do it by the means of tyranny.

I believe that economic leadership by government should be exercised through the method I have called the wage-price mechanism, which it is the purpose of this chapter to describe. This system of thinking was evolved in the empiric English fashion, when I first began seriously to consider what would happen if we had to make Europe in a hurry because the old system had collapsed.⁽¹⁾

It was at once clear that if you just rolled the economics of the individual European countries together, very great problems would arise; in fact, to do it without preliminary organisation would create chaos. Wage levels in the different countries are very diverse, hours of labour and conditions of labour vary greatly, and social services diverge so completely that they impose altogether different burdens of taxation and other charges on industry. Various monopolies, restrictive practices, export subsidies and techniques of tendering by consortia, are also plentiful.

It was all these conditions, of course, which induced the statesmen of the present European governments to move so very slowly towards European Union, when they were at last reluctantly driven to the conclusion that it would eventually be necessary. We, on the other hand, felt from the outset that the complete Union of Europe was not only something ardently to be desired but a move which was urgently necessary, which must be put through in the shortest possible time before the old system collapsed for the reasons considered in the last chapter. Nothing seemed less likely than a period being allowed us as long as the fifteen years which the men of the present system require even to complete their common market. In a world where all things are possible, nothing seemed less probable than fate allowing us the grace of so much time after so many errors. Regarded from this viewpoint, therefore, the question was how to overcome by rapid and drastic action the problems which existing statesmanship hoped to circumvent by a process of slow adjustment over many years of tactful negotiation between sovereign powers and compromise agreements in cautious economic experiments.

Directly we faced the problem with any sense of urgency, it again became evident that European government was a prime necessity. To make a common market before a common government was to put the cart before the horse. On the assumption that unlimited time was available, it was. of course, possible that some form of common government would eventually grow out of common economic arrangements in the long, slow experience of learning to work together. But on the contrary premise, that present world chaos and the imminent menace of external pressure would permit no such leisurely procession towards a very vaguely-defined economic objective it again became evident that all the large and diverse problems involved could only be overcome with the decision and the speed which were necessary by the action of European government. Thought on this problem led inevitably to larger views of the immense possibilities open to European government in command of an area so great as Europe-Africa, and animated by the guiding principle of a complete economic leadership of industry by government.

Within an insulated economy independent of the world cost system, there are possibilities not merely of solving the immediate problems, but of overcoming all the longer-term problems which have increasingly threatened the stability and life of present society since the beginning of the industrial revolution. We can meet all the Marxian dilemmas, and answer communism with a stronger and higher idea, which rests on freedom and inducement and not on compulsion and tyranny. This thinking emerges, therefore, not just as an answer to the immediate question of making Europe in a hurry, but as a continuous economic leadership by government in a system which overcomes modern economic and other problems without recurrence to the tyranny of the communist system.

Those who object on principle to economic leadership by government must answer the simple question, what other substantial functions governments have in modern conditions? Does a government merely exist to keep order, to keep out of war if the economic breakdown over which it has no control does not oblige war, and to transfer money from one pocket to another by taxes or the manipulation of credit? In fact, as everyone knows, government is obliged at every turn to intervene in economic matters, because economic breakdown is continually threatening the life of the country with paralysis or destruction. So government without definite principle of economic leadership is always breathlessly running behind events in an effort to catch up with the latest disaster. Is it not better, at last, clearly and frankly to face the fact that government in modern conditions must give economic leadership or cease to be a government? Should it not at least try to foresee, forestall, command and direct events, rather than always play the role of their surprised and helpless victim?

The thinking which rejects economic leadership by government is either a legacy of the days when there was no economic system because life was primitive enough to conduct itself, or is a revulsion from the economic system of communism, and its less effective camp follower, democratic and bureaucratic socialism, because that system conditions the mind and soul of man under the guise of regulating his economic fortunes. The modern view, on the other hand, is that government is obliged by present circumstances to lead men in the organisation of their economic life as the only means of preserving for them freedom from poverty and a chance to enjoy their private lives. In principle it must be obvious that in modern conditions government cannot wash its hands of economic matters. And directly we realise this it becomes clear that it is better for government in economic affairs to lead rather than to follow, to be the first master of events rather than the first victim.

So we begin with the premise of a definite, conscious and deliberate economic leadership by government. Let us see how it works out in practice under present conditions, initially in the making of Europe and finally in a system of a continuous and persistent guidance of civilisation to ever higher levels.

To make Europe rapidly the first necessity is for economic leadership by government to create comparable conditions in similar industries throughout the Continent. Otherwise we shall be held up for ever by fear of unfair competition. Nations cling to protective devices and to delays which in practice will be protracted long beyond even the statutory fifteen years. We shall never make Europe until we take the plunge into the water, and that plunge is the making of European government. The first task of that government will be to render delay and protection unnecessary by raising wages in low-paid areas, shortening hours where they are unduly long, and securing some uniformity of social systems and consequent charges on industry. It is necessary to secure comparable conditions in comparable industries throughout, in order to prevent the undercutting and collapse of industries in areas enjoying a relatively higher standard of life. This is the first and minimum requirement, and even it will not finally be secured without the conscious and deliberate action of government.

There is more to it, of course, than simply the publishing of edicts to raise wages and shorten hours in certain regions. There is much more to it than just taking the plunge in the sense of letting the free play of economic forces do the rest. For instance it is sometimes argued that if we could just persuade all the European peoples to roll their economies together, nature and the free play of economic forces would do all that was necessary. It is contended that labour would flow naturally from low to high-paid areas, and that employers in the low-paid areas would be compelled to raise wages and to improve conditions in order to retain any labour at all.

But it is not difficult to conceive the friction which this would inevitably create, and the ensuing chaos. Even the suggestion of a few Italian and Hungarian miners being introduced into British mines was enough to produce a ferment. Time, and experience of a new system, will be needed to remove the old fears of a pool of cheap labour threatening to undercut the whole level of a higher standard of life.
And if in fact these things are just left to chance and the free play of economic forces, something of the kind might well result. The unscrupulous employer might welcome a reserve of migratory labour on which he could draw for the purpose of cheapening costs in his own high-cost labour area. On the other hand, an employer in the low-paid areas, with the best will in the world, would not be able to raise wages to retain his labour force without a capital equipment comparable to that prevailing in the high paid area.

The result of simply making a complete common market coupled with the entire freedom and mobility of labour might well be to denude the poorer areas of labour and to reduce the standard of life in the richer areas. It would become a Trade Unionist’s nightmare, and European Trade Unionism — whose co-operation we seek at every turn in this matter — is quite right to insist on a real and complete planning of the business. In fact, common market, mobility of labour and investment policy must go together, and that means plan, action and leadership by government. Capital equipment must be available to the lower-paid areas in order to make their industries still competitive when they pay higher wages.

The guarantee that the same high wages will be paid to comparable industries throughout the whole region must be available to industries in the high-standard areas when they expose themselves to the free competition of common market.
There will be no problem created by the rush of cheap labour from one area to another if wages are the same in similar industries throughout all Europe, because few men will leave their home country if they can there enjoy as high a standard of life as elsewhere. But to enable such wages to be paid in the poorer areas capital equipment must be supplied to put them on an equal footing with their richer competitors; we want no battle within Europe between sweated labour without equipment and highly-paid labour with proper machinery. Still less do we want an economic fight between high and low-paid labour with the same machinery, because that would attract unscrupulous capital to the lower-paid areas of Europe as the same conditions have already done to the lower-paid areas of the East. Wages must be determined throughout by government, and that action must be linked to a planned investment and development policy. The common market will encounter all these problems directly it becomes seriously organised, and in the end they can only conceivably be overcome by a common government.

The purpose of government must ever be to lead and not to control. It is not necessary in such an economy for government to do more than to determine wages, and also to fix prices in conditions where monopoly prevails, to the extent of eliminating the ordinary corrective of competition. These two principles are essential; they are the basis of the wage-price mechanism. They are the means by which government can lead the whole economy at first in the clearly necessary direction and later in the desirable direction. With these two simple powers — simple in principle — everything can be done, and without them nothing can be done. Yet they are powers denied to government by all parties and by all economic thinking.

The additional measures which are necessary to support this action, such as government- assisted investment, are already a recognised principle; the only difference in these proposals in this respect is that assistance would be given in Europe which today is reserved almost exclusively for the Far East and for the more primitive peoples of Africa. In principle there is nothing new in this suggestion.

But the policy of the wage-price mechanism is a revolutionary departure from previous principle and practice. Nothing of the sort has been done before, or even suggested in political programmes. In Great Britain wage boards have prevented the extremes of sweating in certain depressed industries, while in America and elsewhere a minimum wage law has prevented wages falling below a certain level in the lower-paid categories of industry. There have also been some attempts to peg wages above the economic level within systems not large or developed enough to be viable, and to back the process with the fatal device of inflation.
But government has never intervened to determine wages in every category of industry as a conscious and deliberate means of shaping the whole economy in the fashion desired, within a system large enough to contain its own foodstuffs, raw materials and potential market. What is new in this policy is the idea that government should exercise continuous economic leadership by the determining of wages in every sphere of industry and when necessary by the fixing of prices.

In a fully functioning Europe-Africa economy it should not often be necessary to fix prices except in monopoly conditions; large economy makes possible freedom. But in anything approaching a siege economy, which long persistence in present policies may bring to Britain, it may also be necessary to fix prices over a wide field.

The wage-price mechanism is a flexible instrument which can be adapted rapidly to the diverse conditions of crisis and prosperity. In the great economy of Europe the means would be used only to lead a free and expanding economy; finally it will be found that both freedom and prosperity are out of the question in any lesser area.

So far we have seen in brief how it would work in overcoming the immediate problems arising from a rapid making of Europe. It would be indispensable for the elimination of unfair competition within Europe which would bring chaos, if wages were not made uniform in comparable industries by action of government. Let us now see how the same principles would apply to older and deeper problems.

The equation of production and consumption has been the major problem of the industrial age, particularly in later developments. In fact, the question has only been solved at all by wars, armament booms, foreign loans which in many cases have simply been charity in recent times, but were previously weapons in the battle for foreign markets, and by government expenditure on every conceivable purpose good and bad, which had the ultimately simple object of discarding the production of which modern society is capable. These were all the desperate and dangerous expedients by which a bankrupt system sought to escape from the basically simple problem which had always baffled it, how to enable its own people to consume what its own people produced. This is the thing which government has never been able to do in normal times and in a normal way.

Economic leadership through the wage-price mechanism can enable government to do this for the first time, in a regular, systematic and scientific method. If government has an area of operation large enough to be independent of the world cost system and is equipped with such powers, it is possible to equate production and consumption. The power of the people to consume goods can be increased equally and simultaneously with the power of science to produce goods.

Wages, salaries and all forms of reward for creative work of any kind can be increased as the potential supply of goods increases in order to give a market commensurate with the production. The prime problem of modern industrial society can be solved with relative ease.

Modern science makes nonsense of the old argument at the beginning of the industrial revolution that goods could only be produced economically in the area most naturally suited to their production, and then could only be economically exchanged with other goods similarly produced in corresponding areas. Now it is possible to produce almost any goods anywhere at equal cost, granted some equality in labour cost and market. Size of market is now a far greater factor in cost than natural conditions. It does not much matter any longer whether you have a humid atmosphere or any other natural conditions which happen to be required for a particular kind of production, because that can be artificially created, but it does matter immensely whether you have a market large enough to justify and therefore to evoke mass production. In most modern industries the rate of production for a mass market is much more important even than the rate of wage.

What matters therefore above all else is the great market, and that depends on two factors: the size of the area and the purchasing power of the population. Again we secure both these necessary conditions by the creation of Europe-Africa and by the economic leadership of government through the wage-price mechanism.

Government then becomes completely free to meet and to overcome the chief menace of modern industrial society: the chronic tendency in normal conditions to over-produce in relation to the available market with the consequence of recurrent economic crises and a continual threat of mass unemployment.

Too simple, will reply the sophisticated critic, as always when confronted with one of the root truths; he is invariably the prisoner of the complications which always grip minds that have not yet been able to penetrate to the essentials. Most things begin in a complicated way, before men really begin to understand the problems. Scientific and industrial developments provide many examples of this, which can also be found in the region of pure thought. And still more in economic matters, it is an error to believe that because men are held tight in the grip of involved complexities, the final solution cannot present a relatively simple principle.

A completely new way of economic thinking will in any case soon be compelled by the development of automation. The problem has long been germinating; it was one of the main themes of my speech of resignation from the government in 1930.
In those days, however, it was known as rationalisation, and the increasing displacement of men’s labour by machinery was already threatening the whole existing structure of industrial society. At that time the constant tendency existed for supply to outstrip demand, and it was clear that the new process would accentuate the problem. More goods would be produced with the labour of less men, and a market which was already inadequate might be further diminished by mass unemployment with a consequent further loss of purchasing power. Again the question has been masked for years by wars and armament booms, but the problem returns with normal conditions in an aggravated form.

Now it is not merely a question of machinery displacing some men, but of machinery replacing altogether the labour of men. We are approaching the age in which most labour will be performed by machines serviced by relatively small bands of highly trained specialists. Under the old economics these few specialists would draw enormous wages, and the rest would be unemployed. No market would then exist for the ever-increasing products of the machines which would pile up in the midst of a surrounding waste of poverty. Such is the logical reduction to absurdity of a system which has never devised any effective means of distributing the wealth which modern science can produce.

We begin again to meet the automation problem with our two premises of the viable area and the economic leadership of government through the wage-price mechanism. And again by this means we can raise wages, salaries and all forms of reward for all kinds of work and service to the point that the market is able to absorb by effective demand even the product of an almost complete automation. It is, of course, obvious that it is inadequate simply to raise the wages of those engaged in automatic industry, though under present conditions this is about all that would happen. To provide a market for the greatly increased production it will be necessary greatly to increase wages in all the primary industries and basic services.

For instance, not only is it fair considerably to increase agricultural wages and profits, miners’ wages, and all wages in comparable industries, but it would be absolutely necessary in these conditions if modern industries were not to collapse for lack of a market. The defence forces, civil servants and others employed in basic services, whose conditions would not be so much affected by automation, must all have their reward greatly raised if market demand is to increase in proportion to the increase in production occasioned by that process. Under conditions of full automation the old question of how little you can pay such people will yield to the new question of how much you must pay them to keep things going at all. It is time our thinking became prepared for some of the new paradoxes of the coming age of science.

It is, of course, true today that if you raise the wages of those employed in the primary industries and basic services, you increase the cost of living and consequently increase industrial costs. The result is inability to compete successfully in the dogfight of foreign markets against countries with a lower standard of life. Wages are held down by the necessities of international competition far below the level which is necessary to provide a market for the modern industries of automation. So the end is always lack of market demand, and slump. But in a system governed by our two premises, we shall be entirely free from the world cost system and all under-cutting of low wage competition on world markets, and free consequently for action by government to raise the standard of life within our own system until consumption equates production at any level which scientific development has reached.

A far bigger total pool of wealth will be available for distribution when mass production industries with a full automation technique have been organised for such a market, as they inevitably will be directly such a market exists and greater reward can thereby be won. It will then not only be desirable but necessary that primary producers like agriculture and the basic services shall participate very fully in the distribution of that larger amount of wealth. In these conditions it will not be a question of the town worker doing without, or paying more than he can afford in order to give the farmer and farm worker a fair price, but only a question of the farming community having a fair share in a larger total.

This will, of course, entail a rise in the cost of primary products and these basic services to the rest of the community, but in these conditions this will not be an inflation but an adjustment of reward between different sections of the community; it will not jeopardise our economy. We have noted the first reason for this immunity is that we shall be free from the world cost system, and the rise in our costs in certain respects will, therefore, not endanger our competitive position. We shall no longer need to be competitive abroad, because a balance of payments problem will no longer exist. The second reason is that those engaged in productive industry will be producing far more than before, and will consequently be able to enjoy far higher rewards; they will therefore be able to afford a rise in certain costs.

A rise of costs in some cases will, of course, be offset by a fall of costs in other cases, where a higher rate of production for a larger market operates. But in principle we must always be ready to face a rise in particular costs, and we shall have the means to do it. When automation, and further development of the present mass production technique have greatly expanded production for a completely assured market, the wage-price mechanism will, in effect, enable government to syphon off the surplus from a larger pool of distributable wealth in any direction desired.

In addition to the cases already mentioned some proportion of the new wealth should clearly go to the large and important category of those performing diverse individual services — ranging from big accountants to small shopkeepers, and covering a multiplicity of other occupations — who would certainly be entitled to charge more. In fact, it would be desirable that they should do so, in order to spread evenly the new purchasing power. The new wealth must not coagulate in lumps, but be more evenly distributed.

The same pool of new resources could be made available to prevent hardship to pensioners and others living on small fixed incomes, who might be affected by a rise of cost in some commodities, although, as we have seen, they would be assisted by a fall in the price of other goods. We will examine shortly the question whether any remaining doubt exists that under such a system a larger total volume of wealth would be available for such purposes.

To return first to the vital question of agriculture, both a wage and a price mechanism will be wanted in this sphere. Wages will have to be raised, both to attract and to retain labour on the land in these conditions and to provide a demand for the greatly increased output of automation and mass-producing industry for an assured market. But in this case, prices will also have to be fixed by government, partly on account of monopoly conditions — agriculture if so organised could clearly become a monopoly capable of holding the whole community up to ransom, the only surprising thing is that farmers have not yet acted together more strenuously to defend themselves — and also because it will be necessary for government, by the fixing of prices, to evoke the particular forms of agricultural production which are necessary in rapidly changing conditions.

The experience of the British Marketing Board system can here be very valuable. There is no reason why this system should not be developed to cover all Europe. Agriculture throughout the Continent could thus be given the stability and assured market which is necessary to the industry, and the present reluctance of agriculturists to join the community would quickly be changed to enthusiasm for a development they would recognise as advantageous. Prices would need to be declared well in advance, because in such a long-term business planning must be well ahead.

The farmer is sensitive to variations in the price-level in spite of the long-term nature of his business, and experience shows that production can be effectively directed by this means. It will be necessary for government through this mechanism to give economic leadership in agriculture during the rapidly developing conditions of the new Europe, because that development will bring great changes in existing demand. As industrial workers become better off, their desires for foodstuffs will change; for instance less bread and more meat will probably be eaten. Such developments must be anticipated by government, and directed by variations in the price level of diverse products to secure the necessary variation in the kind of foodstuffs grown. There is no sphere in which the wage-price mechanism is more necessary than agriculture, and no region in which it can bring greater benefits to the producer.

The fear of agriculture to enter Europe today is the fear of a sensible man to enter chaos. But in the system we are here describing agriculture’s basic necessity of stability and long-term planning can be the premise of all action. In terms of the general economy the most important thing of all is to use some part of the extra wealth derived from the new method to bring the primary producers to a higher standard of life. There is not the slightest doubt that all primary producers in such an economy must have their reward raised, not only absolutely but relatively.

Otherwise we shall not attract men to the land and the primary industries, and we shall not secure the broad and stable market for all production which is necessary.

It will also be essential to open out virgin Africa, and to pay men large rewards to do this arduous work. Those who go out as pioneers will be paid not less but more than others. In this respect again the whole premises of our economic thinking must be revised. Otherwise we shall not get the men for the job of opening up the new areas which are vital to a system that must be independent of the economic dislocation incurred by selling and buying on external markets. We must have a balance between pioneer, primary industries and the main body of the coming automation industries, and to secure this we have to pay these primary producers a reward out of all relation to their present remuneration. We must lead, and draw men back to the land and the great primary occupations in the new continent of Africa with the inducement of higher reward.

By means of the wage-price mechanism government can promote any major economic development, through deliberately raising wages in a certain area of industry relative to other industries, and thus can attract labour in the desired direction. This is a very vital factor in the leadership and guidance of the entire economic system, which operates in addition to the other great advantage of releasing the full power of modern scientific production which is today inhibited.
The wage-price mechanism can guide the economy, organise a market and in so doing evoke full production, and from the greater resources thus created can give a true equilibrium to the economy by paying better those employed in the primary industries, basic services and other vital categories of industry and national life which we have considered.

But some may still doubt whether a larger pool of distributable wealth will be available in these conditions, from which government can draw the means so to shape and direct the new economy? Those who deny this is possible must show that it is impossible for modern science greatly to increase the production of wealth for an assured market which increases pari passu with production. Any man who attempts that demonstration begins by confessing his ignorance of the present facts, as well as the potential of modern industry. Let anyone who denies the connection between mass-production for a great and assured market and a greater share of wealth per head, explain the disparity between earnings and the standard of life in America and the poor and divided European countries today.

Our science, technique and skill are at least equal to their capacity; all that we lack is the market which they enjoy. And under these proposals we would not merely possess a large area like America of unorganised and fitful demand, but would be producing for the progressive but stable demand of a market organised to march in step with the advance of science. Anything achieved in America could be easily out-stripped by the energy of the Europeans released to operate in these conditions. Two things are certain: the first that we can enormously increase production for such a market and consequently the total of distributable wealth, the second that we cannot just leave the whole of this great achievement to the forces of chaos. All means are there, but they must be organised. The economic leadership of government is essential.

These great forces of modern science create possibilities of a standard of life far beyond anything hitherto conceived, if they have adequate direction and room for their operation. They are potentially beneficial to an extraordinary degree, but they can be almost as dangerous in the economic as in the military sphere. Life has become too big to be left to chance. Government cannot abdicate in face of the modern economic problems. These are forces which cannot be left to the freaks of chaos.

In the past, the long slow operation of economic forces in the end provided the adjustment necessary in society, albeit with much waste and unnecessary suffering. But things are now moving too fast; science brings constant changes at a speed which requires not subsequent adjustment but anticipation and preliminary organisation. In such a situation government must act, and in broad principle government has two methods of action: leadership or compulsion, persuasion or tyranny.

Communism has solved the problem in a fashion by the latter method. When science brings a revolutionary change, there is no time lost in persuading men to adapt themselves to it, or in waiting until the pressure of economic circumstances brings a natural adaptation as in the past. If a new scientific development, or a strategic requirement, demand the development of a new industrial area in Siberia, whole villages of workers in western Russia are told to collect what things they can carry, mount a train and go to their new task. Under these conditions it is easy to keep pace in a certain way with the march of science. But these are not methods which would be tolerated in the West, or that any sane man would seek to employ.

Are we simply, then, to wait until the blows of economic fact compel us to adjust ourselves to new development of science? Must we always defer action until old industries are abruptly ruined and men thrown into unemployment? Must government always trot laggardly behind scientific development and economic fact merely trying to mitigate the resultant hardship with a little organised charity which is given the resounding name of a new form of society? Is there no choice except tyranny or laisser-faire, nothing between the position of the bully and the victim?

Cannot government become master of economic circumstance and place itself in command of the great force of modern science by means of leadership and not compulsion? Again we reply that the wage-price mechanism is the means to this end. Once we have established a viable area which is free from external economic interference, government can lead, direct and mould the whole economy as it wishes, with this instrument and under these conditions.

In the same way by determining wages and insisting that the community — within an insulated system — pays more for certain specialised services from the larger resources available, the government can effectively lead the whole economy in other desirable directions.

Through the wage-price mechanism, also, the essential differential in reward for skill and responsibility can be restored and even accentuated. Once the power of determining wages is granted, government can insist that throughout the whole body of industry men with special skill and undertaking particular responsibilities shall receive a far higher level of reward. The present tendency to drag all down to a common level, in which skill and the acceptance of responsibility count for practically nothing, is bound finally to result in the end of any human society because it denies every law of the nature to which we are all subject. Civilisation, in mitigating the brutality of nature, must not eliminate its incentives.

If we do not pay more to skill, or to those who carry responsibility, men will not acquire the one nor accept the other. Government must fearlessly explain to the people the necessity to pay highly for special skill and particular character; it is a point which the mass of the people very clearly understands and appreciates. Few and diseased are the types who desire to tear down and to destroy anyone who can do something they cannot do, or who possesses things they do not possess, and they gravitate naturally to the form of politics where they can give expression to this malady. But the great generous mass of the people are still free from the cancer of decadence which is jealousy, and are very ready to admire and reward the man who can do a good job.

Government with the power of economic leadership and the ability to explain what it is doing, would find no difficulty in restoring through the wage-price mechanism a system of differential reward far higher than has ever hitherto existed. For this is a prime necessity if we are to get the best from men of ability. Above all in the decisive, world-shaping sphere of science it is necessary to match ability with reward. This is a subject at which I have hammered ever since I was a young minister in the Government of 1929, and before that in the effort to secure a realistic programme for the socialist movement in Britain. In 19471 wrote that statesmen in this age should live and work with scientists as the Medicis lived and worked with artists. If that view had been accepted, the governments of the West would surely not have found themselves today in the pitiful position of a man possessing every natural advantage and yet outstripped in the race of life by others who possess nothing but the determination which he lacks.

So within a system of differential reward, which the great power of the wage-price mechanism will make possible to a degree never before contemplated, the reward of the scientist must be lifted to a level commensurate with his function, which is the first in the state under government. Honour, too, must go to men who, like soldiers, are moved as much or more by honour as by reward. And science must also be consciously and deliberately brought into the councils of government. We envisage a future in which men called to rule will be part statesman, part scientist. Until then we must find statesmen who know enough of science to work with scientists, and scientists who know enough of politics to work with statesmen. The two subjects are interlocked in fact, and must become interlocked by deliberate organisation in the theory and practice of the State. All these great possibilities will be assisted by a power which enables men to be rewarded according to the creative work they do.

Before we consider further possibilities of the method under discussion, it might now be convenient to summarise what has so far been suggested. The purposes of economic leadership through the wage-price mechanism which we have so far envisaged are in brief the following:

1. The equation of wages in comparable industries which is necessary in the rapid construction of Europe, if we are to avoid under-cutting and unfair competition in the internal market.

2. The general raising of wages in equal proportion and with uniformity in comparable industries as science makes possible an increase in general productive capacity which will consequently require a larger market.

3. The payment of a higher reward both absolutely and relatively to those engaged in the primary industries such as agriculture and pioneer developments in Africa, also to all employed in basic services like the defence forces, the civil services, etc., with the dual object of attracting men of the best calibre to these essential purposes, and also of increasing and enlarging the market which will be required by automation and by industries which are organised for mass production in the assured and stable conditions of the new system.

4. The securing of differential rewards in high degree for skill and responsibility throughout industry, and particularly in spheres like science, where it is vital to encourage the development of the higher talents. For all these purposes the use of the wage-price mechanism is not only legitimate but essential.

The question of profit now arises; if you will determine wages will you also determine profit? The first answer is that the wage-price mechanism automatically determines profit, to the extent that this is necessary for the health of the economy. Profit is, in considerable degree, determined directly you determine wages; and the additional power to determine prices when necessary, can make certain that the profit principle is kept within the bounds of the desirable incentive and is prevented from becoming profiteering.

We will shortly examine how a government which studies the interests of the workers and of the whole community, can easily prevent by the wage-price mechanism the undue accumulation of profit at the expense of general purchasing power which can finally upset an economic system. Such economic leadership can provide a direct and simple answer to one of the main Marxian dilemmas.

It would also, of course, be possible to fix differential profits for differential categories of industry in the same way as we fix differential wages. But at this point we should tend to cramp initiative, and to check the beneficent forces of natural intelligence and energy, if we did not allow a man to make any profit he could provided he paid the fair wages laid down for his industry. Our system rests on encouraging and therefore rewarding the creative capacities of man. Let a man make profit for himself, provided he pays his workers properly and by his creative work serves the community as well as himself. Through the wage-price mechanism we can always ensure that he pays his workers properly. In fact, we can determine by this means that a very fair share in the profits goes to the workers. But the detailed control of profits can entail a reversion to the bureaucracy we wish above all to avoid, and would tend inevitably to destroy the invention, initiative and energy which are precisely the forces we need to make the driving force of the new and expanding system.

Conditions may well arise in the divided and helpless states of the present Europe, in which all purchasing power will have to be frozen — wages, profits, rent, interest and everything else — while the whole economy is put on a siege basis for the purposes of survival. And no government faced with the condition of collapse should hesitate for a moment to take this firm and decisive action when necessary. I have elsewhere described the measures necessary if this painful situation should arise through delay in entering the European economy.

But in the new Europe of vast resources and unlimited potential such action would be not only unnecessary and intolerable, but entirely self-defeating. We are faced now with the problem of poverty economics in small separate countries living under the necessity to sell enough in the dog-fight of world markets to buy the essential foodstuffs and raw materials they cannot produce at home. We shall be faced on the other hand with the contrary problem of plenty economics, when 300 million people have come together to organise the unlimited resources of the two great continents of Europe and Africa for their mutual benefit. We shall then pass from the period of restriction to the period of expansion. In those conditions we shall not want to stop men making money, but to encourage them to make money provided they are working, producing and creating for the benefit of the whole community as well as themselves.

The business of government through the economic leadership of the wage-price mechanism will be then to organise an adequate market and to see that the workers get a fair share, not to interfere with the creative individual or to rob him of his fair profits. In short, wages must be determined because the workers cannot look after themselves, except in the transient and rare condition of an inflationary market for their labour which is in itself a symptom of coming collapse. Despite all the great work of Trade Unionism in the last half century, they have usually been far from getting their fair share, or even share enough to maintain the economic equilibrium of the State. The makers of profit, on the other hand, need no looking after if they get anything like the fair conditions we propose to establish; if they are any good at the job they can look after themselves well enough.

The danger in the past of a chaotic capitalism has been such great accumulations of profit that the whole economy became unbalanced; more profit was often made than individuals were even capable of spending on themselves, despite extremes of luxury spending which were not only a disgrace in comparison with the surrounding poverty, but which twisted and deformed the whole body of the economy. The surplus above what they were capable of spending was often used for speculation of an anti-social kind, or left in cash and not invested at all. Yet undoubtedly in the past the whole progress of the system depended on this principle of a great accumulation of profit, much of which was used for productive investment. In addition to its other vices the system could not function without the continual waste of speculation and luxury spending which accompanied this useful process.

All these things are capable not only of correction but of being kept continually in proper balance by the wage-price mechanism, and will under our system be subject to the general guidance of government. Undue accumulations of wealth can be naturally and automatically checked, by the simple process of raising wages to take a larger share of the profits of industry, if any such tendency should develop to a dangerous or undesirable extent.

Again, through the self-governing bodies of industry which we will shortly consider, it will be possible to implement the general policy of government by establishing definite proportions in the various industries between wages, profit and investment. All three factors would benefit in equal proportion when the introduction of greater efficiency or a general expansion of the market brought greater reward to the industry as a whole. In many cases it would not be necessary, once things got going, that investment should increase proportionately with the other two factors; and the chief benefit of improvement and expansion would therefore accrue to wages and profits whose interest in this prosperity would be mutual.

Another great sphere where the leadership but not the control of government
can be exercised is in the region of credit and the general operation of banking. At present, banking is a bugbear to progressive thinkers. The reason is that this power has on occasion been the master and not the servant of the community.

Within the international system it exercises a decisive power, because the flight of capital in one way or another despite all nominal restrictions is possible so long as international trading on world markets continues, and this ability gives to finance the power to break governments and consequently to control them. But again, within a closed system — closed, albeit the area is so great that in a few years with the aid of science its production may outstrip that of the whole world today — the rule of finance will cease, because it cannot fly away and in the process destroy the economic system which it deserts.

On the other hand a greater freedom will exist for the individual than he possesses today. There will be no valid reason why a man in Europe-Africa should not exchange his fortune in those lands for the fortune of another man in America. The economic effect would be nil; strange as the thought may seem to someone accustomed to the strict controls which the international system now makes necessary. If it is no longer necessary to buy or sell goods on the markets of the world — because all necessary goods and all markets are self-contained — it will not be possible for finance by a flight of capital to break the exchange, for the good reason that the exchange on any appreciable scale will not exist. These are novel thoughts, and we cannot here pause to examine them at length, but they will be found under the closest analysis in these conditions to be valid.

Creative finance and banking, on the other hand, will be able to derive greater reward than ever in the constructive task of developing the backward areas of
Europe and opening up the virgin territories of Africa. Never were the imagination and ability of creative bankers more needed; if they do the job, they will deserve and will earn rewards which will make trivial the present scratchings of small speculations on the exchanges of a failing international system. There is more to be made by able and honest banking in the construction of two continents than in the demolition of an old and decomposing system.

Other new possibilities are open within a self-contained system of large area and unlimited potential resources. It might be advisable to develop a system of differential credit. Basic services like housing might be charged a lower rate of interest on a loan which could be amortised over a short period of years; the result would be to slash the cost of house building and of rents, as everyone is aware who has studied the costing of house building. On the other hand purposes which are less socially desirable could be charged a much higher rate of interest, which would balance the low rate charged to necessities.

But again the whole bias of this writer is in favour of freedom and against the interference and control which would lead us back to bureaucracy. Let us by all means charge a low rate of interest for basic services like housing, but not seek too much to direct and to control those who want credit for making other things. It may be necessary to charge these people more for their credit, but it should not be necessary to tell them what to do with it. Some bad things will be done, but also many good things. And it is better in a strong, rich and expanding system of unlimited opportunity to have mistakes made, and even to have a few anti-social things done, than to have an old hag of a universal governess sitting on everybody’s shoulder and telling him what he may do and what he may not do. Let us set people free to do and to create; let the great force of nature work.

This sphere of banking for a new system should, of course, be a subject for consideration by many expert minds in banking, industry and government. At this early stage it seems possible that within such a closed system, with a definite economic leadership, we might develop both a normal banking and a venture banking. The former would operate at a low level of interest for people whose reward would be naturally more limited, while the latter would operate on a higher level of interest for risk purposes which would naturally command a far greater profit, in fact an unlimited reward if successful. We might in relatively short-term credit operations develop as well the outlook of the prudent long-term investor, who reasonably expects a higher return on his money for a risky than for a safe enterprise.

Banking in a richer and more enterprising system might break away from a frozen dependence on collateral security, and become a participant in industry’s great adventure. Above all we must find the means either through public or private finance to back the inventor, and carry new enterprises through from the crude experiment to the market stage. Again all these things will be far easier within an insulated system under a definite economic leadership in which all resources and all credit based upon them will be available for the development of Europe-Africa and for no other purpose.

General credit policy must, of course, keep the price level stable. Much greater production for an assured market would cause a fall in the price level, without credit expansion. Deflation is almost as undesirable as inflation, and the aim of credit policy would be again to prevent this by keeping the price level stable. The prices of individual commodities might rise for reasons already examined, but this rise would be more than offset by a fall in the price of other commodities produced by industries with a greater turn-over for a larger but, internally, still competitive market. Again, the self-contained character of the economy would make it relatively easy for credit policy to keep the general price level stable and to avoid inflation.

Nothing so rots the whole economy or the individual character as inflation. This condition is the curse alike of the industrialist and the worker seeking to do an honest job; the former in this situation depends for his reward more on his capacity as a speculator than a producer, and the latter suffers the misery of his wages always chasing prices. The speculator is king of the great world, and the spiv is the prince of the underworld. Every value thus fashioned is the opposite of the values we desire.

Within a large and insulated economy such as we recommend, it is, of course, relatively easy for a responsible credit policy to keep the price level stable. The inflation of today derives mainly from the balance of payments problem under which all the small, divided countries of Europe suffer at present, on account of the lack of any adequate supply of foodstuffs and raw materials within their borders. The whole life of such countries depends on their export trade, because without sufficient exports they cannot buy the imports of food and raw materials which are essential to their existence.

So the export trade must be kept going at any cost, even at the cost of a cost inflation which is today much more common than the old-fashioned demand inflation, whereby the general supply of money exceeded the general supply of goods. Today wages are pushed up out of all proportion in particular trades on which the life of the export system depends, because government dares not risk trouble in these industries and will always pay up rather than fight. The process of paying up, in the nationalised industries in particular, is financed by some directly inflationary devices. Modern inflation, in short, is usually a surrender to blackmail, by a government which dares not risk any disturbance of the export trade because it is faced with an acute balance of payments problem. Such problems will not exist under our system, again for the simple reason that an external balance of payments will not exist. Consequently a firm and balanced credit policy can be consistently pursued.

Government will even be in a strong enough position deliberately to stimulate demand by credit policy when this is desirable. All the present fears of a semi-siege economy will be a thing of the past. On occasion it will be right to raise wages and to supply credit for this purpose, in anticipation of greater production and not merely as an accompaniment. There is no reason why credit should not temporarily finance new demand in the same way that it today finances new enterprise. The credit will cease when greater production matches the greater demand, just as now the credit normally ceases when a new enterprise becomes productive and profit-earning. None of these things can be done today within the little European countries living in daily dread of any temporary increase of costs upsetting their competitive positions on world markets. But within a large and insulated economy, entirely independent of world supplies and targets, we can also give credit leadership in a constructive policy.

We could even endure that supreme luxury of freedom or of licence, strikes. No sensible government would ever withhold any liberty which does not threaten the life of a nation. And the right to withdraw labour has long been regarded as one of basic liberties. Under the system we propose a strike could be a nuisance but would not be a fatality. A protracted or even an extensive strike in some area of Europe a Nation would not destroy nor even greatly affect the life of 300 million people, provided government performed the first duty of all governments in keeping the essential services going. At present a strike in key industries can be a death stroke to a small nation struggling with a delicate balance of payments problem. It could in the system we propose be only a nuisance, and liberty is worth many a nuisance.

In practice, strikes on any large scale would soon cease to exist, because responsible trade union leaders would be far more interested in developing a system of much benefit to their members than in using the once necessary but soon obsolete weapons of a previous epoch. Yet another opportunity will then occur to translate a phrase into a reality. Trade Unions are sometimes described in England today as another “estate of the realm”. Under our system they would have the chance in truth and in fact to become it.

This is not the place to describe, except in general terms, an administrative machine; I have done this before in some detail. But it is plain that in the system we desire — a system free from bureaucratic control — the Trade Unions must be invited to play a vital part together with the employers’ organisations in the detailed administration of the wage-price mechanism, under the general economic leadership of government. The representatives of government, employers and trade unions should work together in a constantly functioning administrative machine to implement that economic leadership of government; they would naturally be assisted much by bodies like the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in England and the various trade research organisations of all European countries.

The trade unions and employers’ organisations which already exist could be a basis of the necessary administrative machine. Wherever possible it is wise to use existing machinery and to develop it to new and larger purposes. We must above all avoid bureaucracy, detailed control and, as far as possible, compulsion in general administration. The only element of compulsion will be the determining of wages and some prices by government; that is the new and revolutionary principle from which all else follows. Organisations composed of employers, trade unionists and government representatives will be required to carry out the law in this respect. In all other matters government should rely on the voluntary co-operation of employers and trade unions, and should do its utmost by constant consultation to evoke it.

It is not so difficult to secure voluntary co-operation in a constantly expanding system of vast extent and possibility, when the question is not how to cut down the standard of life in order to live at all in competition on world markets, but how to open up immense new resources without menace of external interference, and how to organise a market for the enjoyment of a greatly increased means of production.

In these conditions either any employer or trade union leader who refused to co-operate by reason of political prejudice would very speedily find himself displaced by the votes of his fellows, who would be more interested in securing a better life in the future than in venting the spites of the past. Let us take all good men and all good ideas — in whole or in part — from both present and past.

Let us not be deterred by prejudice or misrepresentation from examining, for example, some of the methods of the corporate system, which could be employed in its co-operative but not in its compulsory aspects in the larger and more favourable conditions of our system. English liberalism approached much the same position under the name of co-partnership; terminology and prejudice count for far too much in these matters.

The more advanced method of syndicalist organisations which we now propose only for industries at present nationalised, can be more conveniently studied in a later chapter. But if it be adopted, the same principle of administrative machinery could operate so far as the wage-price mechanism was concerned. Any number of different administrative systems could in fact be devised to implement the basic principle of economic leadership by government through the wage-price mechanism. There is no disputing that the administrative side is feasible; the only question is the choice of method. We shall choose always the method which involves the minimum bureaucratic interference with industry. We interfere at only one point, but it is the decisive point of determining wages, and sometimes prices. Is not this the very minimum action the coming period requires? We are entering the age of unlimited power from the new development of science and of a new revolutionary technique through automation. We shall soon have the possibility of producing wealth on a scale greater than mankind has yet conceived.

I refrain from giving estimates of these possibilities because they may sound fantastic, but in practice the application of a new form of power to a new industrial technique will soon make them appear as cautious understatements. Yet in normal circumstances the economies of the western countries during the last half century have been unable to organise a market adequate to absorb the production of which existing industries are already capable. Now science, in one of those great forward leaps by which all nature’s vital forces operate, is able to increase beyond all previous bounds the means to produce. Without conscious, deliberate, definite market organisation we are lost. The wage-price mechanism is market organisation; it is the means to this end in a free as opposed to a slave economy.

At present the cut-throat competition on world markets with all the small nations trying simultaneously to sell more than they buy in order to achieve the magic of a favourable balance of payments to which their individual economies impel them, is breaking down the present system into a situation as absurd as it is tragic. To take again our prime case of Great Britain, that country is unable to employ the full productive capacity of industries organised on their present limited basis, for fear of upsetting its balance of payments. Directly even the industries operating for the present relatively small market run at full capacity, the import bill becomes too high and buoyant wages begin to cost Britain out of world markets in competition with lower wage systems. So Britain already begins to move towards semi-siege economy, by holding production down well below its full capacity in order to avoid an exchange crisis.

At the same time that she is thus inhibited from running her industrial machine
to full capacity, she attempts simultaneously to support a defence force both nuclear and conventional far beyond her individual strength, a welfare state which is relatively a heavier burden than the social services of America, and to act as banker of the whole sterling area with reserves which are quite inadequate even to her own requirements, and which are, therefore, threatened with disaster directly she expands her position beyond the limits of a semi-siege economy. The only future of a Britain in that position directly any form of world depression arrives, will be a movement from a semi-siege to a complete siege economy in order to live at all. And that situation in Britain will only be the most extreme example of the position to which all the divided, isolated countries of Europe will be reduced. It will be a position of complete collapse long before the fifteen years have run which they allow themselves to make the European market, which in reality they will find they cannot make without common government.

The social democratic parties of Europe, headed by the Labour Party of Britain, as usual add nothing but comedy to tragedy. They solemnly propose to build socialism in a small island like Great Britain, while retaining and even exaggerating the present international system of trade which makes the country completely dependent on exports. When great capitalist institutions cannot compete on world markets and yet maintain even the present British standard of life, we are asked in theory to believe that the nationalised institutions of bureaucratic socialism will succeed under competition with all the low-wage systems of the world in raising our standard of life. The state-paid clerks of nationalised industries will indeed have to prove much more efficient than the long-experienced managers of competitive capitalism.

In hard practice it is already recognised in the programmes of the Labour Party, and in the speeches of it leader, that Britain under such conditions will have to live more than ever on a siege economy, and it was a Labour Chancellor who originally invented the beginning of the method. A very large export surplus is demanded from British industries which is to be secured by a system of rigid controls for the purpose of reducing imports and compelling a further expansion of exports; the result will be an inevitable reduction in the British standard of life, because more goods will be sent abroad and less goods will be used at home. All hopes of enabling the British people to consume what they produce is abandoned, if such a thing ever entered the heads of the socialist leaders. Enormous schemes are contemplated for equipping Eastern countries — such conceptions as the Colombo Plan —with the wealth produced by British workers of which Britain must now divest herself.

Thus the socialist parties of the second international, in hard practice, now perform the last role which Karl Marx reserved in his main thesis for a declining capitalism. The surplus wealth must be exported abroad which the low standard of life occasioned by capitalist competition on world markets does not permit the workers to consume at home. Britain must again become the moneylender of the world in the classic fashion of the last phase of capitalism, or at least America must be taught by a socialist government in Britain how to play the role for which Britain now lacks the funds. In the twentieth century America is to perform the world role of nineteenth century capitalism in Britain under the tuition of the British socialist party. Thus Marx will be proved right after all, but not quite in the way that was intended. Can confusion of mind and infirmity of character take a great movement any further away from the purpose it was originally meant to serve? Meantime a grim figure enters the scene of the final comedy, which it will soon turn to tragedy. Soviet Russia takes a hand at the game in order to accelerate the collapse which Marx foresaw, and it will certainly play the game under Marxian rules. As we notice in Chapter 2, it is the deliberate policy of Russia to quote ten per cent below any Western tender on the key export markets, with the dual object of breaking the economic system of the West, and of obtaining economic and political influence at the decisive points of the world. To this end the tyranny of communism will oblige the Russian people to do without a substantial proportion of their total production, just as they were previously compelled to abstain from consumption in order to provide that pool of resources which made possible Russia’s remarkable scientific advance under the leadership of the captured German scientists. In the battle for world markets tyranny can always win because it can make its people do without more, and put up with more, than any free system. So we are competing under laws already proved to be fatal, within a system already shown to be failing, against an adversary who possesses the means of inevitable victory on the particular battlefield selected.

All these problems which the Soviets will artificially create for us are in addition to the natural problems caused by the arrival of the age of revolutionary power through nuclear fission and revolutionary industrial technique through automation. Is not this the point at which we must move into the twentieth century, leaving behind us the conflicting creeds of the nineteenth century, Capitalism and Communism? The old capitalism has practically abandoned the fight, and communism seeks only to exploit with tyranny the forces of the new age for purposes of world dominion. None of the old parties have even begun to think about their control in terms of a free system, which aims at human advancement to an ever higher level of existence. And yet the key is now within our grasp, because science with all its hard, dark dangers has brought the glittering gift of a supreme opportunity. Why should we not match science with human organisation, why should we not take into our own grasp the great area of Europe-Africa which contains within it all we can possibly require or desire? Why should we not then organise a market to equal the present and still more the coming power of production?

This requires certainly and inevitably the economic leadership of government and the use of means such as the wage-price mechanism. It is inconceivable that such great forces should simply direct themselves, if left to chance; it is a childish illusion to believe they will. It is equally foolish to believe that we can simultaneously persuade all men everywhere to have the same ideas and to act together in an immediate world organisation. But it is at least possible to persuade the Europeans within the family of Europe to act together in face of a mortal danger, and in so doing to organise for themselves a prosperity and happiness which was inconceivable before the age of science.

This is the moment for great action, because we have both the external stimulus of deadly danger and the internal incentive of immense reward. Russia can be left in peace to develop her own experiment as we shall see in the next chapter, provided we Europeans can be left in freedom and peace to develop our own life. This is not something which it is impossible for us to do. It can clearly be done directly the Europeans decide to do it. If some 300 million Europeans decide to come together and to build a new civilisation, this thing can be done; that is beyond doubt. It is a question of the will, and of the will alone. Shall the civilisation of three thousand years die for lack of will, at the very moment when it faces by far its greatest opportunity? If we die, we deserve to die; this is certain. Let us first make the effort to give Europe the will to live; and to live greatly.


Oswald Mosley - "Europe: Faith and Plan" June 1958

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