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Public Utilities and Administrative Boards

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

J. W. Dafoe
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The question discussed in this paper is, How can the state, in the collective facilities which it supplies to the community, best ensure the maximum service in efficiency. Involved in the issue is the question of the functions of the state itself.

Upon this question there is a controversy of steadily-deepening vigour covering a very wide range. At the one extreme are those who hold that the state has no duties towards the citizens except to “keep the ring”. There must be such people in the world, for I hear them constantly denounced; but I have never met any of them. So far as I know, no one now questions the necessity of the state playing a great and ever-increasing part in the functioning of the community. Or, as Lord Salisbury said. “We are all socialists now”. At the other extreme is the hundred per cent. socialist who regards the state not as a functioning agency of the community but as embodying in itself the total activities of the state. In the words of G. D. H. Cole:

The essence of Socialism is to be found, not in a particular way of organizing the conduct of industry, but in a particular relationship among men. Socialists hold that this relationship, which they desire to see established throughout the world, cannot exist where industries and services and the ownership of capital are left in private hands; and for this reason as well as in the interests of productive efficiency they wish to socialize the business of production and exchange.

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Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , August 1936 , pp. 317 - 330
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1936

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References

1 Cole, G. D. H., The Intelligent Man's Guide through World Chaos (London, 1932), p. 580.Google Scholar

2 MacIver, R. M., The Modern State (Oxford, 1926).Google Scholar

3 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 03 22, 1921, p. 1181.Google Scholar

4 Public Administration, vol. IV, p. 314.Google Scholar

5 Dimock, M. E., British Public Utilities and National Development (London, 1933), p. 261.Google Scholar

6 The findings of this study group in their entirety can be read in The Liberal Way: A Record of Opinion on Canadian Problems as expressed at the First Liberal Summer Conference, Port Hope, September, 1933 (Toronto, 1933).Google Scholar