e
economic or social transformation. Neither Karl Marx nor Lenin has
succeeded here, and on this reef will be wrecked every future State
that may be set up on the basis of current Socialistic ideas. In this
point lies the central problem of Socialism; undisturbed, as was till
lately that legendary conception of surplus-value, and bedded, like
that conception, in a rats'-nest of rhetorical phrases, repeated from
mouth to mouth and never tested by examination.

The bringing of Mind into the masses, the cultured State,[30] which is
the only possible foundation of a society worthy of humanity, must
remain unattainable until everything conceivable has been thought out
and done to alleviate the mischievous operation of this evil, which
dulls and stupefies the human spirit and which, in itself, is
ineradicable. No Soviet-policy, no socialization, no property-policy,
no popular education, nor any other of the catchwords which form _ad
nauseam_ the monotonous staple of our current discussion of affairs,
can go to the heart of the problem. Instead we must establish and put
into practice the principle which I have called that of the
Interchange of Labour, and which I must now, in broad outline,
endeavour to explain.

The object of this principle is to bring mind into labour. It
demands--since mind cannot be brought into mechanical work beyond a
certain degree fixed by technical conditions--that the day's work as
a whole shall have a share of it, by means of the exchange and
association of mental and mechanical employment. Until this principle
shall have been carried into effect, all true culture of the people
remains impossible. So long as there is no culture of the people, so
long must culture remain a monopoly of the classes, and of escapes
from the masses; so long must society be wanting in equilibrium, a
union open to breach from every side, and one which, however highly
its social institutions may be developed, holds down the people to
forced labour, and destroys culture.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 30: Bildungsstaat.]

XII

There is a way by which the day's work can be ennobled, and even have
mind brought into it,[31] on capitalistic lines. Before the War we
were just about to enter on this path--America is treading it now. Its
fundamental condition is a huge increase in general well-being.

The daily wages of the American working-man have risen, as we have
already remarked, to seven or even ten dollars, corres