VIII
That this in its turn should be subject to a still higher court goes without saying. For in this capacity our industrial parliament represents the community only as producing. The general interests of the common man who has to eat, drink, clothe himself, find a roof over his head, marry, bring up children, are not subordinate to his interest as a producer; nor are they covered by a parliament which supervises the productive interests alone.[[43]] The standard of life must be fixed by the common will of the community; and it will be the business of the industrial parliament to see that the volume, quality and conditions of production shall correspond to this standard; and somewhere there must be a body which also sees to it that the industrial parliament is discharging its task efficiently. It must even be in a position to veto the acts of the industrial parliament should that course become necessary; and this position could be secured by vesting the purchase and control of raw material in the hands of this superior body. At the same time it is evident that there are functions which this superior body is not efficient to discharge simply on the ground of its being representative of the general consumer. The problems of education and public health, for instance, are highly specialised affairs which a purely representative assembly on the traditional lines has proved itself incompetent to handle—and it is notorious how both education and national hygiene have had their development governed and deflected from its proper course by the too great ascendency of trade and business interests in the legislature. Just as the industrial affairs of the community are committed to the charge of those who are directly engaged in them, so the education of the country should be in the hands of a self-governing body of teachers, and the public health to a self-governing medical association—in both cases the personnel being regarded as members of a public service serving under standardised conditions, and their representative and executive body being like the guild parliament answerable to the supreme national assembly.
[43]. It has been suggested that associations of Consumers, e.g. the Co-operative Societies, should be represented in the National Industrial Parliament.
It would be palpably beyond the province of this writing to do more than thus roughly indicate the general direction in which the organisation of government should and is likely to go; and there are conspicuous questions—such as national finance and the administration of law—which would enter deeply into a detailed discussion but have here to be passed by with no more than this cursory mention. It is now desired only to emphasise the fact that the actual conditions of modern life have made the existing legislative machinery obsolete, and that moreover they point to the nature of the changes which are required to make the machinery to fit the facts of the case. Summarily, therefore, it may be said that there are two types of social unit which must be recognised, the one being of the geographical, the other of the vocational order. Somewhere these two sources of representation must meet in a supreme common assembly; and the picture which passes through the mind—say in England—is of a joint house of county and municipal representatives chosen by way of ward and village and district councils, and of representatives of accredited national industrial and professional associations. Yet, insomuch as this process of delegation would make the sense of connection between the individual citizen and the supreme assembly somewhat weak and faint, it would appear to be necessary to provide for some measure of direct popular representation in the assembly. So that we should have a house drawing its personnel from three sources—from the people directly, and by delegation from the two types of social constituency, local and functional. In this body would be vested the supreme and final control of national affairs; and to this body the Guild-parliament and other departmental bodies would render account of their stewardship. It is only in some such way as this that remedy is to be found for a state of things, in which, apart from paid experts in administrative departments, the vital interests of industry, education and national health are committed to a body to which the chances of a general election may return not one single person competent to speak to these matters at first hand.