he theatrical trade, the clerical trade,
schools, hotels, almost every trade, will have to undergo as
complete an internal change as a caterpillar does when it becomes a
moth ... a change as profound as the abolition of private property
in slaves would have been in ancient Rome or Athens." (The italics
are mine.)

Here is the exact opposite view to that which has been taught for many
years by the Fabian Society to no small audience of educated Englishmen
(and Americans). For there are comparatively few who have neither read
any of the Fabian pamphlets nor seen or read any of Bernard Shaw's plays
in which the same standpoint is represented.

Mr. John A. Hobson classes the Socialist and non-Socialist reformers of
Great Britain together as regards their opportunism. Though a Liberal
himself, he objects that some Socialists are not radical enough, and
that "the milder and more opportunist brand suffer from excessive
vagueness." Of the prevailing tendency towards opportunism, Mr. Hobson
writes:--

"This revolt against ideas is carried so far that able men have
come seriously to look upon progress as a matter for the
manipulation of wirepullers, something to be 'jobbed' in committee
by sophistical motions or other clever trickery. Great national
issues really turn, according to this judgment, upon the arts of
political management, the play of the adroit tactician and the
complete canvasser. This is the 'work' that tells; elections, the
sane expression of the national will, are won by these and by no
other means.

"_Nowhere has this mechanical conception of progress worked more
disastrously than in the movement towards Collectivism._ Suppose
that the mechanism of reform were perfected, that each little
clique of specialists and wirepullers were placed at its proper
point in the machinery of public life, will this machinery grind
out progress? Every student of industrial history knows that the
application of a powerful 'motor' is of vastly greater importance
than the invention of a special machine. Now, what provision is
made for generating the motor power of progress in Collectivism?
Will it come of its own accord? Our mechanical reformer apparently
thinks it will. The attraction of some present obvious gain, the
suppression of some scandalous abuse of monopolist power by a
private com