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The Report on Reconstruction of the new British Labour Party is perhaps the most important political document presented to the world since the Declaration of Independence. And like the Declaration, it is written in the pure English that alone gives the high emotional quality of sincerity. The phrases in which it tersely describes its objects are admirable. “What is to be reconstructed after the war is over is not this or that government department, this or that piece of social machinery, but Society itself.” There is to be a systematic approach towards a “healthy equality of material circumstance for every person born into the world, and not an enforced dominion over subject nations, subject colonies, subject classes, or a subject sex.” In industry as well as in government the social order is to be based “on that equal freedom, that general consciousness of consent, and that widest participation in power, both economic and political, which is characteristic of democracy.” But all this, it should be noted, is not to be achieved in a year or two of “feverish reconstruction”; “each brick that the Labour Party helps to lay shall go to erect the structure it intends and no other.”

In considering the main features of this program, one must have in mind whether these are a logical projection and continuation of the Anglo-Saxon democratic tradition, or whether they constitute an absolute break with that tradition. The only valid reason for the adoption of such a program in America would be, of course, the restoration of some such equality of opportunity and economic freedom as existed in our Republic before we became an industrial nation. “The first condition of democracy,”–to quote again from the program, “is effective personal freedom.”

What is called the “Universal Enforcement of the National Minimum” contemplates the extension of laws already on the statute books in order to prevent the extreme degradation of the standard of life brought about by the old economic system under industrialism. A living minimum wage is to be established. The British Labour Party intends “to secure to every member of the community, in good times and bad alike . . . all the requisites of healthy life and worthy citizenship.”

After the war there is to be no cheap labour market, nor are the millions of workers and soldiers to fall into the clutches of charity; but it shall be a national obligation to provide each of these with work according to his capacity. In order to maintain the demand for labour at a uniform level, the government is to provide public works. The population is to be rehoused in suitable dwellings, both in rural districts and town slums; new and more adequate schools and training colleges are to be inaugurated; land is to be reclaimed and afforested, and gradually brought under common ownership; railways and canals are to be reorganized and nationalized, mines and electric power systems. One of the significant proposals under this head is that which demands the retention of the centralization of the purchase of raw materials brought about by the war.

In order to accomplish these objects there must be a “Revolution in National Finance.” The present method of raising funds is denounced; and it is pointed out that only one quarter of the colossal expenditure made necessary by the war has been raised by taxation, and that the three quarters borrowed at onerous rates is sure to be a burden on the nation’s future. The capital needed, when peace comes, to ensure a happy and contented democracy must be procured without encroaching on the minimum standard of life, and without hampering production. Indirect taxation must therefore be concentrated on those luxuries of which it is desirable that the consumption be discouraged. The steadily rising unearned increment of urban and mineral land ought, by appropriate direct taxation, to be brought into the public exchequer; “the definite teachings of economic science are no longer to be disregarded.” Hence incomes are to be taxed above the necessary cost of family maintenance, private fortunes during life and at death; while a special capital levy must be made to pay off a substantial portion of the national debt.