nd America the Labour movement has
never as a whole been revolutionary or insurrectionary in spirit, and
in these countries Socialism has been affected from its very
beginnings by constructive ideas. It has never starkly antagonized
Labour on the one hand, and the other necessary elements in a
civilized State on the other; it has never--I speak of the movement as
a whole and not of individual utterances--contemplated a community
made up wholly of "Labour" and emotionally democratic, such as the
Marxist teaching suggests. The present labouring classes stand to gain
enormously in education, dignity, leisure, efficiency and opportunity
by the development of a Socialist State, and just in so far as they
become intelligent will they become Socialist; but we all, all of us
of Good Will, we and our children, of nearly every section of the
community stand also to gain and have also our interest in this
development. Great as the Labour movement is, the Socialist movement
remains something greater. The one is the movement of a class, the
other a movement of the best elements in every class.

None the less it remains true that under existing political conditions
it is to the Labour Party that the Socialist must look for the mass
and emotion and driving force of political Socialism. Among the wage
workers of the modern civilized community Socialists are to be counted
now by the hundred thousand, and in those classes alone does an
intelligent self-interest march clearly and continuously in the
direction of constructive civilization. In the other classes the
Socialists are dispersed and miscellaneous in training and spirit,
hampered by personal and social associations, presenting an enormous
variety of aspects and incapable, it would seem, of co-operation
except in relation to the main Socialist body, the Labour mass.
Through that, and in relation and service to that, they must, it would
seem, spend their political activities (I am writing now only of
political activities) if they are not to be spent very largely to
waste. The two other traditional parties in British politics are no
doubt undergoing remarkable changes and internal disruptions, and the
constructive spirit of the time is at work within them; but it does
not seem that either is likely to develop anything nearly so
definitely a Socialist programme as the Labour Party. The old
Conservative Party, in spite of its fine aristocratic traditions,
tends more and more to become