who pits himself against what he perceives is justice and the right, the
artist who does unbeautiful things or less beautiful things than he
might, simply to please base employers, the craftsman who makes
instruments for foolish uses or bad uses, the dealer who sells and
pushes an article because it fits the customer's folly; all these are
prostitutes of mind and soul if not of body, with no right to lift an
eyebrow at the painted disasters of the streets.


3.8. SOCIAL PARASITISM AND CONTEMPORARY INJUSTICES.

These broad principles about one's way of living are very simple; our
minds move freely among them. But the real interest is with the
individual case, and the individual case is almost always complicated by
the fact that the existing social and economic system is based upon
conditions that the growing collective intelligence condemns as unjust
and undesirable, and that the constructive spirit in men now seeks to
supersede. We have to live in a provisional State while we dream of and
work for a better one.

The ideal life for the ordinary man in a civilized, that is to say a
Socialist, State would be in public employment or in private enterprise
aiming at public recognition. But in our present world only a small
minority can have that direct and honourable relation of public service
in the work they do; most of the important business of the community is
done upon the older and more tortuous private ownership system, and the
great mass of men in socially useful employment find themselves working
only indirectly for the community and directly for the profit of a
private owner, or they themselves are private owners. Every man who has
any money put by in the bank, or any money invested, is a private owner,