is already food, shelter, and clothing of a sort for everyone, in spite
of the fact that enormous numbers of people do no productive work at all
because they are too well off, that great numbers are out of work, great
numbers by bad nutrition and training incapable of work, and that an
enormous amount of the work actually done is the overlapping production
of competitive trade and work upon such politically necessary but
socially useless things as Dreadnoughts, it becomes clear that the
absolutely unavoidable labour in a modern community and its ratio to the
available vitality must be of very small account indeed. But all this
has still to be worked out even in the most general terms. An
intelligent science of economics should afford standards and
technicalities and systematised facts upon which to base an estimate.
The point was raised a quarter of a century ago by Morris in his "News
from Nowhere," and indeed it was already discussed by More in his
"Utopia." Our contemporary economics is, however, still a foolish,
pretentious pseudo-science, a festering mass of assumptions about buying
and selling and wages-paying, and one would as soon consult Bradshaw or
the works of Dumas as our orthodox professors of economics for any
light upon this fundamental matter.

Moreover, we believe that there is a real disposition to work in human
beings, and that in a well-equipped community, in which no one was under
an unavoidable urgency to work, the greater proportion of productive
operations could be made sufficiently attractive to make them desirable
occupations. As for the irreducible residue of undesirable toil, I owe
to my friend the late Professor William James this suggestion of a
general conscription and a period of public service for everyone, a
suggestion which greatly occupied his thoughts during the last years of
his life. He was profoundly convinced of the high educational and
disciplinary value of universal compulsory military service, and of the