ter how individualistic and anti-Socialist it may be,
is often, as Mr. MacDonald says, more akin to International Socialism
than that kind of "State Socialism" or State capitalism Mr. MacDonald
represents.

Mr. MacDonald typifies the majority of British Socialists also in his
opposition to every modern form of democratic advance, such as the
referendum and proportional representation. Far from being disturbed,
as so many democratic writers are, because minorities are suppressed
where there is no plan of proportional representation, he opposes the
second ballot, which has been adopted in the majority of the countries
of Continental Europe--and, in the form of direct primaries, also in the
United States. The principal thing that the electors are to do, he says,
is to "send a man to support or oppose a government."

Mr. MacDonald finds that there is quite a sufficiency of democracy when
the elector can decide between two parties; and far from considering the
members of Parliament as delegates, he feels that they fill the chief
political role, while the people perform the entirely subordinate task
either of approving or of disapproving what they have already done.
Parliament "first of all initiates ideas, suggests aims and purposes,
makes proposals, and educates the community in these things with a view
to their becoming the ideals and aims of the community itself."[118]

While Mr. MacDonald continues to receive the confidence of the trade
union party, including its Socialistic wing, the Trade Union Congress
votes down proportional representation by a large majority, apparently
because it does not desire its members to be constituted into a truly
independent group in Parliament, does not care to work for any political
principle however concrete, but prefers to take such share of the actual
powers of government as the Liberal Party is disposed to grant.
Proportional representation would send for the first time a few outright
Socialists to Parliament, but the election returns demonstrate that the
trade unionists, if more independent of the Liberals, would be fewer in
number than at present. A part of the Socialist voters desire this
result and, of course, believe it is their right. The majority of the
trade unionists, however, who have won a certain modicum of authority in
spite of the undemocratic constitution of their party, do not care to
grant it--as possibly conflicting with the relatively conservative plans
of "the ar