vance that virtuous life for the sake of which the Citystate had been founded.

But the modern societies are more interested in the play of mind upon matter than in the play of mind upon men and the minds of men. Their ideal is rather progress than perfection. They aim rather at the practical elaboration of life than in its theoretic improvement. For the citizen to-day the vital hours are not those of his leisure, those in which he occupies himself in such activities as the ancient would have deemed liberal, but those of his business, those in which he practises the habits of what the ancient would have deemed a servile mind.

Generally speaking, the citizen to-day is engaged in "production". Like the Aristotelian, he is "making" -and making new things. But the object and the fruit of his labour are alike of a different kind. The Christian Church has blessed manual labour. "Laborare est orare." The business of the world has changed in char

acter.

Well then, for good or ill, labour-power in modern states is spent on the creation of utilities: place utilities; time utilities; form utilities. Many have regretted that this manipulation of and traffic in material things occupies so considerable a proportion of the average man's time; "Let us have a little less elaboration: a little more soul," they cry-"Let not so much time and energy be wasted in furnishing life with so many unnecessary conveniences".

We may agree.

But at present we must accept the fact that the hinge of life to-day is production: that the

ultimate asset for every man is labour-power.

By his ability to use that labour-power he stands or falls. By the manner of his use of that labour-power his citizenship is judged.

In this sense, then, property-the private ownership of those means of production on which labour power is exercised-is the necessary apparatus of real citizenship. This point need not be elaborated here, as its vital importance has been discussed in the preceding chapter. The words of a recent writer are relevant and illuminating.

"To control the production of wealth is to control human life itself. To refuse man the opportunity for the production of wealth is to refuse him the opportunity for life: and, in general, the way in which the production of wealth is by law permitted is the only way in which the citizens can legally exist."1

There follow from this proposition two consequences :

1. Seeing that the business of life and its controlling factor is in the Nation-state production, it is as producers that the individuals composing it must exercise their civic activity, and the business of production must be inspired with a civic significance.

2. Seeing that neither-as has been demonstrated by previous analyses in this book-that neither the capitalist nor the collectivist system of organising productive work is consistent with the maintenance in it of a civic character, and that, in general, such a civic character can only be given to the activities of life if communal intensity be established by means of the local organisation of such ac1 Belloc, "Servile State," p. 1.

tivities on an associative basis, it follows that citizens must be organised into associations of producers.

macaroon.

The fact that industry, under modern conditions, is rather a number of uninspiring processes than a series of fascinating crafts cannot alter the fact that a man's footing depends upon his labour-power-whether he be engaged in carving an Aphrodite or splitting an almond for a If indirectly it is as a consumer also-that is, as exercising effective demand-that the individual affects the material conditions around him, directly it is as a producer-as exercising the invention, or the skill, or at best the vigour with which Nature endowed himthat he is powerful, since it is his labour-power which earns him his resources and so renders effective his demand. That act of life must be the hinge of life in the performance of which the individual exercises this power.

The hinge then to which the corporations must attach is economic effort. The central, though not the only activity of the Poleis which are to be constructed within the Nation-state, must be production. To the character of the shire communities must be added that of the Trade-Gild. The only real democracy is an industrial democracy, and the only real industrial democracy is the Associative State.

Yet the word "co-operation" has rarely been used in this book so far, and for an excellent reason. That form of co-operative enterprise which has been successful and which is familiar-the association of consumers for the elimination of the profiteering middleman and the maintenance of their own emporium, sharing out profits as

dividends, has no essential resemblance to the co-operation in production which we advocate. From the fountain-head, the inspired enthusiasm of Robert Owenwhich preferred the belief in the "Law of Functional Adaptation" (as it has been called) to the old blind confidence in invisible harmonies of Nature, which advised the abandonment of Laisser-faire and a new trial of paternalism, and which extolled the magic of fellowship and displayed the hideous dross of the cash-nexus-from the great enthusiasm of Owen two channels have sprung, one to broaden out into a dead, full-tided sea, the other to bubble at the first in a stripling torrent of inspiration, but soon to dry up for lack of tributary sympathy. The one, the tradition as inherited by the Rochdale pioneers, the ideal of Howarth, Greenwood, and G. J. Holyoake, has culminated in the Wholesale Societies of England and Scotland, which had respectively in 1910 capitals of £4,815,465 and £2,836,573; sales of £26,567,833 and £7,738,158; profits of £547,760 and £294,823; and output of manufactures £6,581,310 and £2,435,313. The other, the tradition inherited by the Society for Promoting Workmen's Associations from Owen on the one hand and from Buchez on the other, preached and propagated by the group of the Christian SocialistsMaurice, Ludlow, Neale, and Hughes-has lately seen, after what seemed an entire and final collapse, an insignificant revival, and now employs rather more than two millions of capital and transacts a business of about five and a half millions per annum.

Nevertheless it is the message of the Christian Socialists and not that of the Rochdale storekeepers that has rele

vance to-day. It is not denied that associations of consumers have been a success, and that associations of producers have on the whole been a failure. It is maintained that the former associations are not at all to the point; while the hopes wherewith the latter scheme was originally propounded may be resumed once more.

It was, for Mrs. Sidney Webb, the peculiar merit of the Rochdale pioneers that, reminiscent of Owen's attempt to devise a means of adjusting the supply of commodities to the demand without having recourse to competitive trading, they accepted Howarth's scheme of disposing of their profits by the method of dividend on purchase: "a unique democratic foundation to an industrial organisation". The " democracy" of the Consumers' Association, which conferred representative self-government upon customer-members, is contrasted by this good lady with the "individualism" of the Associations of Producers, which were the ideal of Maurice and which erected an autonomous and self-interested oligarchy by vesting the control of the productive enterprise in those engaged in producing. More, indeed. You must not, she asserts, call the societies after the Rochdale tradition "associations of consumers," and those of the Christian Socialists "associations of producers," "the real distinction between an association of consumers and an association of producers is not a matter of distribution or production, but resolves itself into a question of administration". "I do not wish here to imply," remarks the distinguished authoress of the "Co-operative Movement," "that the ideal of self-employment and profitsharing is unworthy of acceptance or impracticable in