For this reason, the true ends of democracy are not achieved by state socialism or by any system which places great power in the hands of men subject to no popular control except that which is more or less indirectly exercised through parliament.

Any fresh survey of men’s political actions shows that, in those who have enough energy to be politically effective, love of power is a stronger motive than economic self-interest.  Love of power actuates the great millionaires, who have far more money than they can spend, but continue to amass wealth merely in order to control more and more of the world’s finance.[2] Love of power is obviously the ruling motive of many politicians.  It is also the chief cause of wars, which are admittedly almost always a bad speculation from the mere point of view of wealth.  For this reason, a new economic system which merely attacks economic motives and does not interfere with the concentration of power is not likely to effect any very great improvement in the world.  This is one of the chief reasons for regarding state socialism with suspicion.

[2] Cf.  J. A. Hobson, “The Evolution of Modern Capitalism.”

III

The problem of the distribution of power is a more difficult one than the problem of the distribution of wealth.  The machinery of representative government has concentrated on ultimate power as the only important matter, and has ignored immediate executive power.  Almost nothing has been done to democratize administration.  Government officials, in virtue of their income, security, and social position, are likely to be on the side of the rich, who have been their daily associates ever since the time of school and college.  And whether or not they are on the side of the rich, they are not likely, for the reasons we have been considering, to be genuinely in favor of progress.  What applies to government officials applies also to members of Parliament, with the sole difference that they have had to recommend themselves to a constituency.  This, however, only adds hypocrisy to the other qualities of a ruling caste.  Whoever has stood in the lobby of the House of Commons watching members emerge with wandering eye and hypothetical smile, until the constituent is espied, his arm taken, “my dear fellow” whispered in his ear, and his steps guided toward the inner precincts—­whoever, observing this, has realized that these are the arts by which men become and remain legislators, can hardly fail to feel that democracy as it exists is not an absolutely perfect instrument of government.  It is a painful fact that the ordinary voter, at any rate in England, is quite blind to insincerity.  The man who does not care about any definite political measures can generally be won by corruption or flattery, open or concealed; the man who is set on securing reforms will generally prefer an ambitious windbag to a man who