"_Nowhere has this mechanical conception of progress worked more disastrously than in the movement towards Collectivism._ Suppose that the mechanism of reform were perfected, that each little clique of specialists and wirepullers were placed at its proper point in the machinery of public life, will this machinery grind out progress? Every student of industrial history knows that the application of a powerful 'motor' is of vastly greater importance than the invention of a special machine. Now, what provision is made for generating the motor power of progress in Collectivism? Will it come of its own accord? Our mechanical reformer apparently thinks it will. The attraction of some present obvious gain, the suppression of some scandalous abuse of monopolist power by a private company, some needed enlargement of existing Municipal or State enterprise by lateral expansion--such are the sole springs of action. In this way the Municipalization of public services, increased assertion of State control over mines, railways, and factories, the assumption under State control of large departments of transport trade, proceed without any recognition of the guidance of general principles. Everywhere the pressure of special concrete interests, nowhere the conscious play of organized human intelligence!... "My object here is to justify the practical utility of 'theory' and 'principle' in the movement of Collectivism by showing that reformers who distrust the guidance of Utopia, or even the application of economic first principles, are not thrown back entirely upon that crude empiricism which insists that each case is to be judged separately and exclusively on its own individual merits." Mr. Hobson then proposes his collectivist program, which he rightly considers to be not Socialist but Liberal merely--and we find it more collectivistic, radical, and democratic than that of many so-called Socialists. Moreover it expresses the views of a large and growing proportion of the present Liberal Party. Then he concludes as follows:--