IV

The cure for the evils and dangers which we have been considering is a very great extension of devolution and federal government.  Wherever there is a national consciousness, as in Wales and Ireland, the area in which it exists ought to be allowed to decide all purely local affairs without external interference.  But there are many matters which ought to be left to the management, not of local groups, but of trade groups, or of organizations embodying some set of opinions.  In the East, men are subject to different laws according to the religion they profess.  Something of this kind is necessary if any semblance of liberty is to exist where there is great divergence in beliefs.

Some matters are essentially geographical; for instance, gas and water, roads, tariffs, armies and navies.  These must be decided by an authority representing an area.  How large the area ought to be, depends upon accidents of topography and sentiment, and also upon the nature of the matter involved.  Gas and water require a small area, roads a somewhat larger one, while the only satisfactory area for an army or a navy is the whole planet, since no smaller area will prevent war.

But the proper unit in most economic questions, and also in most questions that are intimately concerned with personal opinions, is not geographical at all.  The internal management of railways ought not to be in the hands of the geographical state, for reasons which we have already considered.  Still less ought it to be in the hands of a set of irresponsible capitalists.  The only truly democratic system would be one which left the internal management of railways in the hands of the men who work on them.  These men should elect the general manager, and a parliament of directors if necessary.  All questions of wages, conditions of labor, running of trains, and acquisition of material, should be in the hands of a body responsible only to those actually engaged in the work of the railway.

The same arguments apply to other large trades:  mining, iron and steel, cotton, and so on.  British trade-unionism, it seems to me, has erred in conceiving labor and capital as both permanent forces, which were to be brought to some equality of strength by the organization of labor.  This seems to me too modest an ideal.  The ideal which I should wish to substitute involves the conquest of democracy and self-government in the economic sphere as in the political sphere, and the total abolition of the power now wielded by the capitalist.  The man who works on a railway ought to have a voice in the government of the railway, just as much as the man who works in a state has a right to a voice in the management of his state.  The concentration of business initiative in the hands of the employers is a great evil, and robs the employees of their legitimate share of interest in the larger problems of their trade.