If it involves certain injustices, Mr. Tressall's scheme also carries with it, if it could be carried out, very great benefits to a very large proportion of the population. But there remains still the question whether, if we could swallow all the injustices and all the assumptions in return for all the promised benefits, the result achieved would be one in which anything like economic freedom would be secured, and in which the nation as a whole would be better off in every sense of the word.
On this subject, as has already been observed, the most outspoken critics of State Socialism are the exponents of the new variety of Socialism known as Guild Socialism. Mr. Cole, who has already been quoted in former chapters, says on page 5 of his book on Self-Government in Industry that "Before the war the problem of industrial control had forced its way to the front. State Socialism, in part a bureaucratic and Prussianizing movement and in part a reaction against the distribution of wealth in capitalist society, continued to develop, at least in its Prussian aspects. But, from the working-class point of view, State Socialism was intellectually bankrupt. The vast system of regimentation inaugurated by the Insurance Act was opening men's eyes
