Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/176

 172 examination of Socialism that is worthy of serious consideration—in an unguarded outburst of grandiloquence has declared: "Socialism has never inaugurated an improved chemical process." He might as well have proclaimed that the Binomial Theorem has never woven a nightcap nor patched a pair of dilapidated trousers. I know a Socialist who has "inaugurated an improved chemical process"; and I know another who, by the discovery of radium, has opened out the way for a revision of our physical theorising; I know a third who shares with Darwin the honour of having established the greatest scientific generalisation of the century, and of having revolutionised every department of thought in consequence. But that is not the question. It is: Can Socialism guarantee the conditions under which improved chemical processes will be inaugurated? If it can, we may think more about it; if it cannot, we may dismiss it altogether from our minds, and pay attention to Mr. Mallock's amusing theories about Ability and Aristocracy.

Every system of production must bear the cost of its own improvement. A recognition of this has been the secret of German business success. We got our markets under the favourable smiles of our political conditions; we have lost many of them because we were not prepared to pay for the brains of discoverers and inventors, and this was necessary to enable us to keep our customers. America got its markets because the forceful wills of