Liberals, on the other hand, reject these solutions, and desire not to
end the present system but to mend it. The grounds for this conclusion
need to be clearly expressed, for after all it is the fundamental point
of doctrine which distinguishes them from the Labour party. In the first
place, there is the fact that Liberals attach a special importance to
the liberty of the individual. The general relation of the individual
to the State is rather outside my subject, but we start from the fact
that the bias of Liberals is towards liberty in every sphere, on the
ground that spiritual and intellectual progress is greatest where
individuality is least restricted by authority or convention. Variety,
originality in thought and action, are the vital virtues for the
Liberal. It is still true that "in this age the mere example of
Nonconformity, the mere refusal to bow the knee to custom, is itself a
service." The Liberal who no longer feels at the bottom of his heart a
sympathy with the rebel who chafes against the institutions of society,
whether religious, political, social or economic, is well on the road to
the other camp. But the dynamic force of Liberty, that great motive
power of progress, though a good servant, may be a bad master; and the
perennial problem of society is to harmonise its aims with those of the
common good.
When we come to the more specific problem of industry, which is our
immediate concern, a glance at history shows that the era of most rapid
economic progress the world has ever seen has been the era of the
greatest freedom of the individual from statutory control in economic
affairs. The features of the last hundred years have been the rapidity
of development in industrial technique, and constant change in the form
of industrial organisation and in the direction of the world's trade.
Could any one suppose that in these respects industry, under the
complete control of the State or of corporations representing large
groups of wage earners and persons engaged in trade, could have
produced a sufficiently elastic system to have permitted that progress
to be made? In reply to this it may be said that though this was true
during the industrial revolution, it does not apply to-day; that our
industries have become organised; that methods of production,
population, and economic conditions generally are stabilised, and that
we can now settle down to a new and standard form of industrial
organisation. But this agreement is based on false premises. The
industrial revolution is far from complete. We are to-day in the full
flood of it. Look at the changes in the last four decades--the evolution
of electricity, the development of motor transport, or the discoveries
in the chemical and metallurgical industries. Consider what lies ahead;
the conquest of the air, the possible evolution of new sources of power,
and a hundred other phases which are opening up in man's conquest of
nature, and you will agree that we are still at the threshold of
industrial revolution.
I may mention here a consideration which applies practically to Great
Britain. We are a great exporting country, living by international
trade, the world's greatest retail shopkeeper whose business is
constantly changing in character and direction. The great structure of
international commerce on which our national life depends is essentially
a sphere in which elasticity is of the utmost importance, and in which
standardised or stereotyped methods of control of production or exchange
would be highly disastrous. Liberal policy, therefore, aims at keeping
the field of private enterprise in business as wide as possible. But in
the general discussion of political or personal liberty in economic
affairs, we have to consider how far and in what way the freedom of
private enterprise needs to be limited or curtailed for the common good.
We must solve that problem. For Liberals there is no inherent sanctity
in the conceptions of private property, or of private enterprise. They
will survive, and we can support them only so long as they appear to
work better in the public interest than any possible alternatives.