Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/179

 comforts and even luxuries where by convention or imitation the demand is closely standardized. Alcohol and tobacco are State-owned or State-controlled industries in many countries. But since such “needs” cannot be regarded as based on common physiological needs, they will tend to vary with differences of taste and fashion and will not furnish a steady or calculable market. Most of them form a legitimate field for private profitable risk-taking adventure, in which the freedom of the producer matches the caprice of the customer.

But it will be generally recognized that socialism is not to be confined to planning secure and abundant supplies of goods to satisfy the primary personal needs of the animal man, or even his essential needs. It has another function. That is to supply those services of health, education, insurance, pensions which lie outside the knowledge and the capacity of their personal beneficiaries, and which are large contributions towards the welfare of the community. Few will deny that these conditions of stability and progress are essential to the enlargement of liberty and opportunity for ordinary men and women, and help towards a realization of the values of personality. Holding, as I do, that the life of a community is something other than the mere addition of the life of its members, | see in such “socialism” an enlargement and enrichment of the common life.