why America will not follow England along that
particular road. But what is likely to be the effect
upon popular movement in America if a great eco-
nomic democratization and emancipation is brought
about in Britain, through an ease of political action
which is denied Americans by that Constitution which
they have been taught to believe the last word in
political wisdom? If the contrast is striking, which
it might well be, it cannot leave the mass of the
American workers unaffected in their attitude to-
wards existing political institutions.

As to Utopianism and Impossibilism in social re-
form, which some American critics anticipate as the
result of "political" Labour Parties, it is certain that
actual participation of working class organization in
definite legislation would be a corrective of such
tendencies. If the Bolsheviks had been for a gener-
ation represented in a free parliament, if they had
been obliged to submit their proposals to discussion,
compelled publicly to meet objections; and if the
public as a whole had been witnesses of that debate
during a generation, one of two things would have
happened: either the Bolsheviks would have lost all
practical influence with the public, or they would have
been compelled to eliminate the impracticable fea-
tures of their programme.

If we recall the outstanding feature of that English
Parliamentary mechanism which has already been in-
dicated, we shall see that participation of Labour
leaders in parliamentary life will be a corrective of
"impossibilism" in social legislation. That correct-
ing influence is indeed likely to be all too strong.

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