The "new model" of trade unionism had not yet been tested in the political field.

But it was discovered impossible to act any longer upon the assumptions of the abstract economic man.

The infallible sense of his own interest was discovered to be without basis in the facts for the simple reason that the instruments of his perception obviously required training if they were to be applied to a complex world.
Individualism, in the old, utilitarian sense, passed away because it failed to build a State wherein a channel of expression might be found for the creative energies of humble men.
It is only within the last two decades that we have begun to understand the inner significance of the protest against this economic liberalism.
Adam Smith had declared the source of value to lie in labor; and, at the moment of its deepest agony, there were men willing to point the moral of his tale.

That it represented an incautious analysis was, for them, unimportant beside the fact that it opened once more a path whereby economics could be reclaimed for moral science.

For if labor was the source of value, as Bray and Thompson pointed out, it seemed as though degradation was the sole payment for its services.