other people are producing? In another part of his book, as we shall see later, Mr. Cole says that the workers must be freed "to choose whether they will make well or ill," the consumer being apparently invited to take the article made or leave it. But production will have to be dominated, under a system of National Guilds as under every other, by the needs of the consumer—either expressed by himself by his purchases in the market, as under the present system, or as expressed, as is conceivable under State Socialism, by the decision of a bureaucracy as to what sort of articles it is good for the community to enjoy. In whatever way the decision is arrived at, the producer, if he is to justify himself economically, has to produce what is wanted. If he does not produce what is wanted, his product has no economic value, and his freedom in production simply reduces him to a useless parasite working for his own enjoyment, instead of for the satisfaction of the needs of the community.
Until we go back to the state of the primitive savage supplying all his own wants, it is the inevitable lot of all workers to meet the wants of somebody else. We thus see at the outset that in this proposed partnership between the State and Labour there are seeds of a
