Page:The Economics of Unemployment.djvu/147

causes periodic congestions of goods with ensuing depressions. If capitalism can keep firm hold of national and international policy, this new phase, in which whole Western nations become parasitic upon the weaker and the backward peoples of Asia and Africa, may be practicable. If, however, this economic imperialism which has made such rapid advances during the past few generations is successfully combated by the extension of a liberal equalitarian and humanitarian policy from the narrower field of national democracy to the relations between advanced and backward peoples, some gradual solution of our problem may be found in a rising standard of world consumption.

There are those who hold that nothing short of international socialism is capable of achieving this result. If so, there seems little prospect of any early escape from or abatement of our economic troubles. If, however, I am right in holding that some movement towards equalisation of incomes is afoot within most of the advanced nations, an increasing proportion of surplus being diverted into wages or intercepted for public services, it seems reasonable to hope and expect that the same conjunction of economic, political and moral forces which has been working for this equalitarianism within each nation may be operative on the wider international scale. The new experiments in constructive internationalism might make very serviceable contributions to this end. A new body, at present feeble but capable of growth and activity, has been provided for that international labour movement which hitherto has been little more than an exuberant aspiration. Intergovernmental