revolutionary, it is not disposed to dispute with them as to the use of
words. The dangerous revolutionaries are not those who seek power
to initiate reforms which are long overdue, but the reactionaries who
dam the stream till it bursts its banks in a raging torrent.
LABOUR PRINCIPLES
The Labour Party will carry out its policy by peaceful means, but
it will carry it out. Since it has set the example of working out, in
practical detail, the social and international reconstruction which it
proposes, the character of its programme is generally known, and we
need not here do more than recapitulate briefly the fundamental principles
upon which it rests. They are the protection against exploitation of the
worker and the consumer; the increase of national wealth by the
application to production and distribution of the possibilities revealed by
the progress of scientific knowledge and of the art of administration;
the extension of common provision for the common requirements of a
civilised existence; the utilisation for the public benefit of the surplus
wealth which to-day too often at once enriches and degrades a small
minority of the population; and the systematic pursuit of a policy of
peace and co-operation in international affairs. The roads along which
the Labour Party will advance to the establishment of the Socialist
Commonwealth are. therefore, five. It will use its power
{(i.) To secure to every member of the community the
standards of life and employment which are necessary to a healthy,
independent and self-respecting existence.
(ii.) To convert industry, step by step, and with due regard
to the special needs and varying circumstances of different
occupations, from a sordid struggle for private gain into a
co-operative undertaking, carried on for the service of the
community and under its control.
(iii.) To extend rapidly and widely those forms of social
provision—education, public health, housing, pensions, the care
of the sick, and maintenance during unemployment—in the absence
of which the individual is the sport of economic chance and the
slave of his environment.
{iv.) To adjust taxation in such a way as to secure that due
provision is made for the maintenance and improvement of the
material apparatus of industry, and that surpluses created by social
effort shall be applied by society for the good of all.
(v.) To establish peace, freedom and justice by removing
from among the nations the root causes of international disputes,
by conciliation and all-in arbitration, by renouncing war as an
instrument of national policy, by disarmament, by political and
economic co-operation through the League of Nations, and by
mutual agreements with States which are not members of the
Leaope.