the factory the government of natural law must replace the rule of 

 force and opinion. 



This view is, of course, highly controversial, and, despite Mr. Taylor's 

 elaborate promises of the beneficent effects which his system would 

 have upon the workers, it is, I think, a theory which Labour is not 

 likely to accept. The central point at issue can most easily be made 

 clear by an analogy. We are all familiar with disputes concerning the 

 place of the expert in political government. From time to time, writers 

 have arisen who have proclaimed that the government of men is an 

 exact science, and that its basis and application should be determined 

 by law and not by opinion. In all ages, from Plato to that talented 

 French publicist, M. Emile Faguet, in our own day, such writers have 

 challenged democracy as the denial of political science and as the ' cult 

 of incompetence.' For the inexact and unscientific opinion of demo- 

 cracy they have desired to substitute the rule of knowledge by placing 

 the expert in the seat of power. Against them, democrats have con- 

 tended that, while the expert and science have their place in government, 

 the social life of man is finally not a matter of abstract science, but a 

 matter of positive will. They have based their conception of society 

 upon the will of the governed, and have made the realisation of self- 

 government their primary objective. 



I do not think the advocates of Scientific Management in industry 

 really believe in political democracy ; but they are, as a rule, careful 

 to maintain that there is no analogy between industry and politics. 

 Democracy, they say, may be good enough in politics ; but it will 

 not do in industry. Whatever politics may be, they hold that industrial 

 management is an exact science. 



This point of view I challenge. I hold firmly that no sphere of 

 human action or conduct can be reduced to the formulae of an exact 

 science. I hold that political self-government is good, not simply as 

 ministering to ; efficiency,' but because it is self-government ; and I 

 hold that in every sphere of human action self-government is in itself 

 good, because the greatest of man's achievements is self-government. 

 I set out, then, from a fundamental criticism of the whole principle 

 on which Scientific Management rests, and with an assertion that 

 self-government is good in industry as well as in politics. 



This is no denial that the expert has a place and an important 

 place in industry ; but it is a denial that the expert can be regarded 

 as supreme. No less than in politics, the problem of democracy in 

 industry is that of reconciling its own rule with an adequate recognition 

 of the expert ; but my point is that this is a problem for democracy 

 to solve, and cannot be made a point against democracy itself. 



Throughout this paper, then, I shall have primarily in mind the 

 principle of industrial democracy, and I shall regard it as the weightiest 

 of arguments against any system that it makes against self-government. 

 I postulate at the outset that our ideal in industry should be that 

 of securing self-government for the workers engaged in it ; and I am 

 not interested in arguing with those who decisively reject this principle. 



