of this imperialism. Political realism must reckon with this fact. While therefore Sir Norman Angell may be right in holding that capitalism as a whole system and in the long run is weakened and imperilled by such operations, it must be borne in mind that capitalism does not work as a single profitable system, and that capitalists often prefer a short to a long run in the pursuit of profit.
But there remains a wider issue for our consideration. Suppose it to be the case that the education of the workers in most capitalist countries has been bringing into the forefront of their consciousness the injustices, the wastes, the cruelties of the current economic system in its effects on the production and distribution of wealth. Suppose some demand for a new economic system that shall displace the imperfectly competitive capitalism, and shall organise the available human and material resources of production on a conscious basis of the satisfaction of human needs — suppose that such a demand is visibly seeking expression through the democratic machinery of popular self-government, is it not reasonable to expect that strong capitalist interests would seek methods of repressing these thoughts and designs of the workers?
For though capitalism might hope to maintain some of its supremacy by such concessions to labour and such extensions of social services as would buy off the organised resentment of the workers, the results of such a concession policy might be inadequate to meet the actual economic pressure. For the larger working class and public consumption involved in this policy might be conducive to an increased efficiency of labour and advance of productive technique great enough to keep. capitalism upon a basis so profitable that the disequilibrium between production and consumption continues as a disturbing influence in industry. This issue of the sufficiency of this concession policy is,
