Only a few weeks after the bombardment of the Viennese Karl Marxhof, the Labor party of Britain has gained control of London and with a promptness devoid of any sense of the ironic, has outlined a huge new plan for the construction of model apartment houses for the city's working class. That these schemes for slum-clearance and better housing are desirable in themselves is, I think, undeniable. Even the Conservatives recognize this, cautiously. But is the Labor party really cognizant of the implications of this project? Judging from the political naivete it has shown in the past, one would think not.

Of the economic aspects of this housing plan, there are one or two things which may have slipped even the nimble brains of the Party, First, will not the purchase of tenement land reduce the taxable area of the municipal government, causing it either to sustain a further loss on the investment or to plaster another burden on the rich and near rich which may impede the further burgeoning of the little buds of recovery which seem to be cropping up in the British Isles? Second, will not the costs of purchase, destruction, and reconstruction force a high rental, higher than slum-dwellers can pay. That this objection is valid seems to be granted by the National government, who in their nascent proposal along these lines are said to have included a decree to prevent overcrowding in neighboring tenements--implying that ht maximum limit of inhabitants per square foot of rooming space will be made necessary by the flood of dispossessed tenants who cannot afford the rents of the model housing. This has been the experience of every major city which has ever tried slum-clearance on a significant scale.

But aside from these facets of the problem, which can probably be met somehow, through not with the case expected by the scheme's proponents, there is a definite political issue. Can the Labor Party afford to set its attention on these minor material salients without a corresponding change in its psychology? For the danger is this, that a Socialist Party, as history has shown, exhibits a fatal tendency to regard these concessions which in a parasitical way it has sucked from the sick body of capitalism as ends in themselves and not simply as incidental to their larger goal of socialism. And this attitude tends to betray government, for these workers' apartments, social services, and all the rest, depend on the sufferance and the health of the capitalist system. In short, the Labor Party will be led to compromise again and again on specific issues to save these concessions, and on general issues in order to save the system which supports them.

Thus, though all such schemes on material social betterment may have a clear justification in the eyes of well-meaning Party officials, they bear concomitant risks, not simply of antagonizing the middle-classes (which can hardly be avoided), but of blinding the officials themselves to the stature of these achievements, a blindness which leads inevitably to the familiar pitfall of the "lesser evil" policy. CASTOR.