GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

748 ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE MODERNS
the political division of mankind into sovereign Nation-
States will persist for all time in the face of the economic
need for a single World-State or a world federation of
States. If it does not, the presuppositions of the idealist
theory will be shown to have been falsified by the facts.
Indeed, the growth of economic activities which cut
across the bounds of the Nation-State is already exposing
their falsity .
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF TRADE UNIONS. The
foregoing considerations relate to those economic groupings
of mankind which traverse the boundaries of the modern
Nation-State. Not lev important for our present purpose
are those that fall within the Nation-State. Pre-eminent
among these are labour organizations; and of these the
Trade Unions, because of their functional bans, have a
peculiar significance. For the Trade Unions are organizations,
not erf* men who happen to live in the same place, but
of men who happen to be engaged in the same work. In
other words, Trade Union organization substitutes for the
geographical grouping of mankind, which is the basis
of the Nation-State, a functional grouping. The development
of Trade Union organization on these lines can be
most dearly observed in Soviet Russia.
FUNCTIONAL DEMOCRACY IN SOVIET RUSSIA.
The basis of representation in Soviet Russia is not geographical
but functional. Starting from the assumption
that the office or the factory rather than the tenement
block or the village is the centre of the lives of most workers,
the Russian electoral system organizes representative bodies
on the basis of place of work rather than of place of residence.
It is at the place of work that contacts are made,
problems discussed, opinions canvassed, and the collective
will formed. In every State, moreover, there are
certain classes of dtizcnssokiierf, sailors and airmen
are the most outstanding examples who have no fixed
place ofabode. The Soviet system ofdemocracy accordingly