Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/74

 70 to the facilities for using national wealth. Nor must I be assumed to argue that travellers are now unnecessary. They are part of the uneconomical use of labour occasioned by our present system. Under a better system they would be absorbed in other occupations.

The fact is, that our present modes of production and distribution are complicated, expensive, burdensome and wasteful, to an extent which few have grasped because so much of the waste is hidden under the appearance of useful labour. One seeing a printer at work assumes without a second thought that the man is a productive labourer. If, however, he is printing advertisements the only effect of which is to transfer custom from one firm to another, he is not a productive labourer at all. He is only getting a share of the wasteful expenditure of capitalist competition. No sane employer would employ two men to do one man’s job, but our present system of production and distribution employs an army of men who do not enter at all into the mechanism of real wealth production.

Hence, our present system does not bear the test of economy.

We can now apply the other test: Does our present system fulfil the ends of industry, namely, the keeping in decent comfort the people of the country? Again the answer must be in the negative.