Free Rotting Hill by Wyndham Lewis

something else: into its real self. They have bought something they did not bargain for. Now the kind of socialism which people, in their woolly and hazy way, have fastened on their back, may be one of those things that look very different later on to what at first it seemed. As an indication of what I have in mind, there have been many things to cause misgivings in socialist behaviour (especially in the official class) since the Welfare State took over from free enterprise. In a word, those who have come to rescue us from Power have themselves displayed too patent an appetite for power. The old bosses are being economically liquidated. Too often it seems that Bossiness has come in their place. As this state-power grows more absolute, will not these disquieting symptoms develop? English socialism as we know it today is complex: in it what is desirable and what is undesirable do battle.”
        “Because a few officials misbehave…” Rymer waved his hand to dismiss such insignificant blemishes.
        “There should be an extremely searching debate upon the type of new society—‘collective’, as it is called—being thrust upon everyone in England with practically no debate—such as a parliamentary Opposition is supposed to provide. I am not against that new society: I am against the way it is being adopted. To confer such unheard-of powers (such as no feudal king in England has ever possessed) upon a group of politicians just because they say they are ‘socialist’, is absurd. In the mind of the majority ‘socialist’ signifies a selfless person dedicated to the welfare of mankind. Somebody may not like socialists, because he thinks they are too good and moral to suit him. But the moral status is taken for granted.”
        “Are you disputing the bonafides of socialism?” he asked me.
        “No,” I answered. “It is frightfully important that that moral essence of socialism should be a reality, that is all, and even more that it should stop a reality. I believe that some machinery should be invented to make certain that it does so stop. Finally there should be no blank cheque.”
        “You are too distrustful.”
        “You are too authoritarian. Are we for Authority, however corrupt or callous it may become? My conscience cries out for checks.”
        “That conscience of yours is dreadfully over-developed, isn’t it. I don’t remember ever hearing of one like it.” His face was furrowed in mock-concern.
        “I think it is yours that is under-developed,” I told him. “If it is as modest in size as I suspect, mine must, of course, seem enormous.”
        “An enlarged conscience is pathologic,” was how that bout ended, he nodding his head admonitorily as he spoke. “It is nothing to be proud of; I should keep it quiet if I were you.”
        We laughed humourlessly.
     
IV
     
        In this talk we were having it was my idea to say just enough to oblige him to forsake some of his romantic conventions and to adopt a more realistic attitude: or come out and defend his obscurantist absolute. “I have been speaking,” I went on, “ of socialism by consent. It is an odd phenomenon to occur in a country like England. But the English voted themselves into ‘Labour’ (which promptly transformed itself into ‘socialism’, of the toughest, the ‘total’, type). They would have voted themselves into anything that promised speedy demobilization. Six years of Churchillean Tory heroics had been too much. They knew Labour would turn them back into civilians much quicker than Churchill would. That was Aneurin Bevan’s explanation of the Labour landslide. It was, I think, the right one, in the main.”
        “You think that is all—an over-long war?” Rymer breathed a little crossly and sleepily.
        “Something the long war precipitated. The background was a hundred years of Liberalism. A hundred years rushed down in the 1945 landslide. The