ased on fears of possible war in future. The moral is that
this war has to be brought to such an end that war and its barbarisms
shall be "spurlos versenkt," and that humanity shall be able to
go about its business unimpeded by all the stupid bothers and
complications that arise from its possibility.

XIV

NATIONAL GUILDS

_October_, 1918

The Present Economic Structure--Its Weaknesses and Injustices--Were
things ever better?--The Aim of State Socialism--A Rival
Theory--The New Movement of Guild Socialism--Its Doctrines and
Assumptions--Payment "as Human Beings"--The "Degradation" of earning
Wages--Production irrespective of Demand--Is that the Real Meaning
of Freedom?--The Old Evils under a New Name--A Conceivably Practical
Scheme for some other World.

Most people will admit that there are many glaring faults in the
present economic structure of society. Wealth has been increased at an
exhilarating pace during the last century, and yet the war has shown
us that we had not nearly realised how great is the productive power
of a nation when it is in earnest, and that the pace at which wealth
has been multiplied may, if we make the right use of our plant and
experience, be very greatly quickened in the next. The great increase
in wealth that has taken place has been certainly accompanied by some
improvement in its distribution; but it must be admitted that in this
respect we are very far from satisfactory results, and that a system
which produces bloated luxury plus extreme boredom at one end of the
scale and destitution and despair at the other, can hardly be called
the last word, or even the first, in civilisation. The career has been
opened, more or less, to talent. But the handicap is so uneven and
capricious that only exceptional talent or exceptional luck can fight
its way from the bottom to the top, the process by which it does so
is not always altogether edifying, and the result, when the thing
has been done, is not always entirely satisfactory either to the
victorious individual or to the community at whose expense he has won
his spoils. The prize of victory is wealth and buying power, and the
means to victory is, in the main, providing an ignorant and gullible
public with some article or service that it wants or can be persuaded
to believe that it wants. The kind of person that is most successful
in winning this kind of victory is not always one who is likely to
make the best possible use of the e