NEWS OF THE WEEK T HE see-saw Of Labour polities would
be puzzling if . its reasons were not already fairly well known, but it must in any case be annoying to those who look for 'Coherency. What. was .dorie at Scarborough has been ithddrie- at -Liverpool. This-. is what we expected and predicted. The Trades Union Congress at Scarborough jerked heavily -across to the Left, and now the Labour Party -meeting at Liverpool has lurched to the other side... It is all to the good, however, that circumstances are forcing. upon the Labour Party the need for living like real men in a real world: The Party has too lohg bandied about abstractions which, if. capable of plain . definition have- at all events- never received it.' What is Capitalism, that thing to be destroyed, which for years has been to the Labour. Party what Carthage was to Cato ? The -moderates of the Labour Party have gome- how reconciled it with their consciences habitually to please their audiences by denouncing it and prophesying its disapPearance:, But-they never explained that they were capitalists themselv,es—seme of theni in 'quite a: considerable degree---or that on any rational definition qf the word every man who owns anything, or indirectly employs anybody, is and always will be a capitalist:
