there would be less chance of friction between the various parts of the
governmental machinery, and a greater likelihood of effective
co-operation between the various departments of the government. Above
all, the citizen would know where to look for action and where to place
the responsibility for failure to act.
10. _The Detail of World Administration_
There is something of the grotesque in discussing the problems that
would come for solution before a world producers' federation. The
organization in question does not exist. How impossible, then, to
predict what it will do when it comes into being. Still, the
effectiveness of any proposal must be determined by its results in the
realm of those routine affairs with which the organization will be
called upon to deal. A world producers' federation will be constituted
for the purpose of handling certain world economic problems, and the
means by which this control will be exercised is a matter of the first
importance.
The plan for world administration, as here outlined, is based on two
general ideas. The first is that certain problems of world importance
would come before the world parliament for solution; the second is that
in dealing with any problems of administration, local autonomy should be
preserved, the function of each administrative group should be clearly
defined, and the control of the central authority should be exerted
primarily for the purpose of approving or of disapproving the actions of
the administrative divisions, leaving with them the task of initiating
and carrying out the plans involved in the work of their respective
divisions. With these simple principles of administration in mind, it is
easy to plan almost any kind of administrative organization.
The real test will come when an issue is raised over the status of a
given problem. When has the question of resource distribution ceased to
be a local matter and become a world matter? When has the problem of
credit become a world problem? To such questions there is but one
answer: when these matters are of vital concern to more than one
division or to more than one of the major industrial groups--in other
words, when they pass beyond the control of one group, they are matters
for world jurisdiction.
No plan can be drafted that will anticipate the difficulties of world
economic organization. The utmost that men can hope to do is to draft a
set of working rules that will enable them to act wisely when confronted
by difficulties.
The world is still in a state of chaos. There are many local
authorities, but no central authority. There are plans and policies,
looking to the relief of the more pressing economic and social
difficulties, but all of them are conditioned upon the establishment of
some world power that shall prove competent to handle world affairs. Out
of this chaos there must emerge, first, clear thinking as to the next
steps that are to be taken in the reorganization of the world; second, a
willingness to make the concessions necessary to this reorganization,
and third a conscious purpose to build a better living place for human
society.
VII. TRIAL AND ERROR IN ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION
1. _Trying Things Out_
A society, like the individuals of which it is composed, learns first by
trial and error. The earliest lessons that the human race received were
obtained by this method, and all new information is thus secured. The
numerous economic difficulties that lie ahead of the present generation
must be met and solved by the method of trial and error, or, as it is
sometimes called in political jargon, "muddling through."
During historic times men have spent vast stores of energy in trying
things out. It has frequently been observed that man is a social animal.
It might be said with equal truth that he is an experimenting animal. He
is curious, he is venturesome, he enjoys change, he relishes novelty, he
is eager to better his condition. Animals live on from generation to
generation, building nests after the same pattern and migrating over the
same territories. But man investigates, ponders, experiments, improves.
This principle of experiment--the appeal to trial and error--holds true
of social as well as of individual life. The hunter tries out a new
snare or weapon, the machinist constructs a new tool, the chemist works
out a new formula, the architect creates a new variety of arch or
buttress, the educator writes a new kind of text-book, the sanitary
engineer devises new methods for securing and safeguarding a water
supply, the statesman plans a new system of roads that will open up the
rural districts, the social scientist draws the design for a new type of
economic organization. From the most personal to the most social, from
the most local to the most general or universal, human activities are
directed over new fields and into new channels on the principle of
experiment, by the method of trial and error.
The scientist or inventor works in his laboratory or in his shop,
devoting his energies to investigation and research which are nothing
more than the application of the principle of trial and error to the
particular problems with which his science is confronted. Once the
experimenter has discovered a way to compel mechanical power to toil for
man, or to destroy the typhoid germ, or to talk across a continent
without wires, the next task is to find a better way or an easier way.
Far from decreasing the necessity for experiment, each new discovery in
the realm of natural science opens the door to additional possibilities.
To-day every important college, most cities, many industries, and public
institutions maintain experimental laboratories in the various fields of
applied knowledge, and employ highly trained experts whose sole duty it
is to try things out.
Inventors frequently hit upon new ideas or upon novel devices by chance,
but for every such chance discovery, there are scores and probably
hundreds of ideas and devices that have been carefully thought out,
worked over, rejected, revised, modified, until they produced the
desired results. There is a margin of chance in all experiment, but
surrounding it there is a vast field of careful thinking and planning
and of endless purposeful endeavor.
These observations are commonplaces in the laboratory and in the
department of research. They have filtered through to thinking people
who begin to understand the part that experiment plays in all forms of
scientific progress. There is a general agreement that if there is to be
an increase in the knowledge that men possess regarding the mechanical
forces, the only sure way of gaining this knowledge is to weigh,
measure, describe and classify. This applies to solids, liquids, gases,
rocks, plants, animals, and even to the structure and function of the
human body. But when it comes to social institutions, even the wisest
hesitate and question. Is it possible that social knowledge can be
gained only in this way?
There is no other way! Like the individuals of which it is composed,
society must investigate, experiment, and learn through trial and error.
Indeed, that is the tacitly accepted method by which social knowledge is
accumulated. History is a record of social experiments--not so
consciously directed nor so carefully planned as the experiments that
are taking place in the chemical laboratory, but experiments none the
less. What other explanation can account for the many forms of family
relationship, the many varieties of religious organizations, the
numerous types of political institutions, the multitude of educational
institutions. "Educational experiments" are the commonplaces of the
pedagog. Slavery was one of society's economic experiments, feudalism
was another, capitalism is a third. Through successive generations these
institutions have been built up, reformed, discarded and replaced. The
history of social institutions is a history of social experiment--of
community progress through trial and error.
Obstacles are thrown in the way of the social experimenter. Vested
interests seek to convince the credulous and the ignorant that whatever
is, is right. The jobs of office holders, the possessions of property
owners, the security of ruling classes, depend upon their ability to sit
on the lid of social experiment. "Do not touch, do not think, do not
question!" is the warning of masters to their social vassals. Those who
eat of the apple of experiment acquire the knowledge of good and evil,
and with this knowledge comes the desire to reject and destroy the evil
while they hold fast and augment the good.
Those who have learned, and who have dared to protest, have been
ridiculed, persecuted, outlawed. Sometimes their bones have bleached on
the gibbet or rotted in dungeons. Still, the jail, the gallows and the
lynching-bee have not kept experimenters quiet in the past, and they
will probably not do so in the future.
During recent times--particularly in the last fifty years--the changes
in economic and social life have been so rapid that the "always was and
always will be" protest is having a harder and harder time to make
itself heard above the clatter of the social house-wreckers, and the rap
and beat of the social construction engineers.
2. _The Capitalist Experiment_
The present economic society is an experiment--less than a century old
in most parts of the world. It has evolved rapidly through a series of
forms, corresponding with the rapid advances in the methods by which men
wrested a living from nature.
The masses of the people in industrial countries have abandoned their
farms, their villages and their rural life, have moved into the cities,
and have gone to work in the mines, factories, mills, stores and
offices, very much as the mechanics and farmers dropped their accustomed
tools and rushed to the gold fields of California and Australia. Within
two or three generations the whole basis of life has been shifted and a
new order has been established. This change has been made for the
purpose of securing a better living.
The people in the industrial countries have accepted capitalism as an
essentially desirable means of gaining a livelihood. The new order has
given them an opportunity for mass living that has been reserved in the
past for a small percentage of the people. It has provided an immense
number of things, for the most part inconsequential and tawdry, but
things nevertheless which would appeal to the possessive instincts of
those who had never enjoyed many possessions.
The new order has made each family in an industrial district doubly
dependent--dependent on a job which it can in no wise control, and
dependent on the economic mechanism for the supply of goods and services
without which mass city life is quite impossible. The rural family had a
supplementary source of living in its chickens, pigs, cows, goats, bees
and garden. Fuel was cheap and nature provided berries, nuts and game.
Life was rough, but the means of maintaining it were relatively
abundant. City life has cut away almost all of these forms of
supplementary income, at the same time that it has imposed upon the
family the need to pay for practically all goods and services. The city
breadwinner must get and hold a job, if his family is to live.
Mass life in cities, mass work in factories, job-dependence--all of
these experiments are being made in a field that up to the present time
has been virtually untouched by the human race. Mankind has gone into
these experiments hopefully, trustingly, blindly, without any guarantee
of their workability.
A casual examination of the premises on which the capitalist experiment
is built will show the extremely precarious position in which the people
who are dependent upon it now find themselves.
The capitalist experiment is built on the assumption that competition
rather than co-operation is the effective means of promoting social
well-being. Acting under this theory, each man is to forage for himself.
This individual activity was relied upon to promote initiative and to
stimulate ambition. In practice, capitalist society has been compelled
to abandon competition in many of its aspects. Monopoly is the opposite
of competition, yet the modern capitalist world is full of monopoly
because monopoly pays better than competition--it is a more workable
economic scheme.
Following out the assumption that competition is the life of economic
society, one arrives at a necessary corollary to the general theory. The
purpose of competition is to injure, wipe out and dispose of the
competitor. Therefore the misfortune of our competitors is our good
fortune. This would lead, as applied to the actual conditions of life,
to some such formula as:
1. Bankrupt your competitor and you will profit.
2. Impoverish your neighbor and you will benefit.
3. Injure your fellow-man and you will gain.
Stated thus baldly and harshly, these three propositions sound
incredibly silly, particularly in view of the example the world has just
had of large scale competition--the World War--yet they are a fair
picture of the line of thought and conduct accepted as rational by
modern economic society. The normal processes of competition are
directed to the destruction of competitors. War is a frankly avowed
means of smashing rivals. Nationalism is built on the theory that "our"
nation is superior to all other nations, and that, in the long run, it
is capable of defeating (injuring) them.
The practice of such ideas render an effective organization of society
virtually impossible, and it renders social catastrophe almost
inevitable. Bankruptcy breeds bankruptcy. Impoverishment is a contagious
economic plague. Injury leads to bitterness, hatred and further injury.
These logical fruits of competition once admitted into the economic
body, threaten its very life.
The tenets upon which capitalism is founded have already been abandoned
in part by their sponsors as unworkable. But at best they represent a
standard of social morality that is essentially destructive of social
well-being.
The human race has no guarantee of the success of any experiment, and
recent experiences with the war, and with the present post-war plight of
Europe suggest that the capitalist experiment will fail disastrously
unless some extraordinarily successful efforts are made to put things to
rights.
Society experiments, trying first one means of advancement and then
another. A certain number of these new ventures, which prove to be of
social advantage, are adopted and incorporated into the social
structure. The vast majority are rejected as inadequate to meet the
social need. Capitalism is apparently in this latter class.
3. _The Cost of Experience_
Experiment is the necessary road to new experience, and the cost of
experiment is written in the immense wastes that it involves. Experience
gained through experiment is sometimes very costly. It is never cheap.
Frequently these costs, measured in terms of misery, are so great as to
overbalance the advantages gained through the experiment. If, therefore,
there were another way to gain knowledge except through the processes of
experiment, it would result in an immense saving for mankind.
4. _Education_
There is a way, other than experiment, in which knowledge may be gained.
Instead of relying on experiment (direct experience) for the spreading
of knowledge, it is possible to utilize the indirect channel called
education. If this method is followed, and the results of the race
experiment and experience are made available to the young of each
generation, the need for experiment will be limited to a narrow field,
since most of the necessary knowledge will be communicated through
education.
The individual need not repeat all of the experiments of his ancestors
with animal breeding, harvesting, weaving, smelting, writing,
house-building, etc. One by one these arts and crafts were built
up--each generation adding its quota to the total of knowledge. These
results of past experience, which were first passed from hand to hand,
then from mouth to mouth, and finally written down, and which have been
handed from generation to generation through the processes of education,
are among the most important of all social assets.
The farther the race goes in its accumulation of knowledge, the more
important does education become, since there is more to transmit from
one generation to the next. Among primitive people the educational
process is completed at a very early age. With the emergence of arts and
crafts, the apprenticeship to life becomes longer. At the present time,
the individual may continue his education as long as he is capable of
acquiring new ideas. Under the present society, therefore, the
educational processes are the chief reliance for the transmission of new
ideas.
5. _Facing the Future_
The accumulated knowledge of the ages, handed on from one generation to
the next, enables the scientist to suggest the direction in which new
experiments should be made as well as to predict their probable outcome.
His work ceases to be haphazard. It has a well-understood policy and
common problems.
Particularly in the realm of natural science, has there been a vast
accumulation of verified knowledge, from which there have been deduced
principles and laws which enable the electrician or the astronomer to
predict the action of the electric current or the course of the stars
with almost unerring accuracy. To be sure, these predictions do
sometimes go wrong, but for the most part they are founded on verified
and tested hypotheses.
The past thus advises the present, which, from the vantage ground so
gained, prepares its contribution to the future. If each generation were
compelled to learn how to build fires, to employ language, to shape
pottery, to weave, to print and to harness electricity all over again,
it would seldom get farther than the rudiments of what is now called
civilization.
The new knowledge that is gained in each generation is obtained through
experiment, but many costly errors are avoided in these experiments
through the wisdom that is based on the accumulated knowledge of the
past.
Thus each generation of scientists accepts from its predecessors a trust
for the future. Not only must it preserve the body of knowledge, but it
must verify, amplify and enrich it. This is as true of the social
scientist as it is of the natural scientist. The difference between them
is that the natural scientist has worked out his technique and
established his field, while the social scientist has reached only the
threshold.
6. _Accumulating Social Knowledge_
Social knowledge is yet in its infancy. It is only within the century
that Comte, Buckle, Marx, Spencer and other historians and sociologists
have made an attempt to place the accumulations of social knowledge on a
par with the accumulations of mathematical or chemical knowledge.
Until some effort was made to study society in a scientific spirit,
there was no reason for supposing that men might be able to cope with
social ills or to prevent social disaster. Even to-day, while there is
no longer any question as to the possibility of classifying social
facts, and while sociology is regarded as a science of great promise,
the feeling lingers that social events are fore-ordained. Many people
feel to-day about social disaster as the men of the middle ages felt
about the plague--that it is outside the field of man's preventive
power. Another fatalistic school of thought holds that men learn their
social lessons only through failure and disaster. According to the first
line of thought it is useless to interfere with social processes because
they are in the hands of the gods; according to the second, men will not
interfere until they have been whipped into rebellion by the adverse
conditions surrounding them.
Men in the past have modified the course of human events in the most
profound way. The first smelter of iron and the first constructor of a
wheel began a series of events that is still molding social life. It is
quite possible to say that these events were fore-ordained, but it is at
least equally possible to reply that the same process of
fore-ordination is still busy, and that the changes that it will make
through the present generation will be at least as important as those
which it has made in the preceding ages.
Those who believe that the race learns only through hardships and
suffering should bear in mind: first, that most of the knowledge
communicated to the individuals of each generation is communicated
indirectly through some process of education; second, that society is
composed of those individuals; third, that modern communities have built
a vast machine whose sole purpose it is to influence opinion by teaching
(indirectly) in the school, in the church, through the printed page and
the film. In Japan this machine is employed to teach the people the
sanctity of the emperor; in Britain it is used to convince the masses of
the sanctity of business-as-usual; in France it is used to proclaim the
sanctity of property; in Russia it is used to inculcate the sanctity of
the revolution. If people learned only through first hand experience,
these propaganda machines would be failures. In practice, they are
highly successful.
Social disaster is not the only path to social knowledge. It is not
necessary for a generation to suffer from typhus or to be ruined by war
in order to be convinced that these dread diseases are menaces. The
desire to prevent famine is felt by millions who have never come any
nearer to it than the stories in the papers. Society learns, indirectly,
through education--slowly of course, but none the less surely.
The average man is convinced of the desirability of trying to avoid
disease, hunger and the other ills that effect him personally and
immediately. He is not yet convinced of the efficacy of a similar
attitude toward war, revolution and other disasters which inevitably
destroy some portion of society, and which, in the end will prove as
preventable as disease and famine. Social disaster seems more inevitable
because it strikes more people at one time, while individual disaster
has been more carefully studied, is better understood and is more
localized.
Grave dangers menace present-day society. Economic breakdown, war and
social dissolution with their terrible scourges--pestilence and
famine--have already overtaken millions. It is plain that some new
course of social action must be planned; that some social experiment
must be inaugurated that will ward off the impending disasters.
Social experiments should be made, as chemical and electrical
experiments are made, after all of the available facts have been
carefully considered and digested. The results of such wisely planned
experiments in the social field may be just as dramatic as the results
of similarly planned experiments in the field of natural science.
Never in the history of social change has there been an intelligent
direction of social processes. Many men in many ages have had ideals and
aspirations, coupled, in some cases, with a limited knowledge of social
practice, but social changes have come upon mankind for the most part,
as a meteor comes upon the earth's atmosphere--unexpected and
unheralded, startling those who have seen it by the suddenness of its
appearance. Nor has there been any attempt on the part of the ruling
powers to instill a different point of view with regard to these
matters. On the contrary, there has been a determined effort to convince
men that social changes were beyond their ken. The air of mystery has
been blown away from natural phenomena, but it is encouraged and
permitted to surround social changes. While it endures, an intelligent
direction of social life is, of course, quite out of the question.
This attitude is being broken down, however. The past hundred years of
experiment and experience with a competitive order have convinced
multitudes that such an order is unworkable. During the same period, the
development of economic organization on ever broader lines has
emphasized the need of common purposes and common activities.
Recent social experience teaches plainly that an injury to one is an
injury to all; that a benefit to one is a benefit to all; that men rise
in the scale of well-being with their fellows and not from them, and
that a co-operative social life is the only one that will prove livable
and workable. These four propositions include the best thinking of the
modern world on the fundamentals of a social structure that will prove
livable and workable.
The acceptance of any such standards of social life involves a
right-about-face in the basic social philosophy of the world.
1. _The doctrine of laissez-faire must be accepted for what it is--an
exploded theory that has promoted, not social well-being, but the
interests of favored classes._
2. _Catastrophe must be recognized as the most costly avenue to
progress._
3. _Social science must be made at least as effective, in guiding the
life of the world as is physical science._
Social science alone will not protect men from the dangers that surround
them. Every social group is dependent for its effectiveness upon the
kind of individuals of which it is composed, and their ideas and ideals
limit the ideas and ideals of the group. At the same time, a carefully
thought out course of social action, like a carefully thought out course
of individual action presents a standard toward which society may work.
A plan for social organization is like the blue-print with which the
mechanic works. Science comprises his rules and methods of procedure,
but the driving power comes, not from the blue-print and not from the
formulas, but from the man himself. This holds equally true of society.
7. _Conscious Social Improvement_
Conscious social improvement is the improvement made by society in
pursuance of plans that are prepared and carried out with the knowledge
and approval of the mass of the community. It is the product of
community intelligence directed to public affairs.
The individual can make conscious improvements in his condition only
through observation, analysis, conclusion and experiment. The community
is under the same limitations. Its progress will be intelligent only
when it works rationally and purposefully upon the problems with which
it is confronted.
The individual faced with a perplexing situation in his business or in
his private life, sits down and goes over the matter, examining it point
by point, until he thinks that he has a solution for his difficulties.
Society, under similar circumstances, must follow a like course of
action. People must ponder and discuss the issues before them until
there is some consensus of opinion as to what course should be followed.
It is only under such conditions of intelligently directed social action
that conscious social improvement is made.
Conscious social improvement is therefore practicable when the available
knowledge about social problems has been socialized or popularized to a
degree that renders the community intelligent concerning its own
affairs. The task of popularizing any form of knowledge falls primarily
to the educator, the journalist and the other moulders of public
opinion.
8. _The Barriers to Progress_
There are two important barriers to intelligent social progress. One is
the lack of organized knowledge concerning social matters. The other is
the restriction of this knowledge to a tiny fraction of the population.
Social science, still in its infancy, has ahead of it decades of
advancement before it attains a position corresponding with that of the
physical sciences. Even at that its progress must be slower, first
because of the intricate nature of social phenomena, and second because
of the herculean efforts that the vested interests make to destroy any
form of social experiment that threatens their privileges.
Equally serious, as a limitation on the efficacy of social knowledge, is
its restriction to a very small fraction of the community. Progress in
the physical sciences is initiated in the laboratory, without any
considerable participation by outsiders, but progress in social science
depends on the attitude if not on the consent of the community, and
therefore the socialization of social knowledge becomes one of the
indispensable elements in social progress.
The handling of social problems has been confined, in the past, to a
very small minority of each community. An aristocracy or plutocracy has
taken charge of domestic and foreign affairs, and has made the decisions
on which community well-being has depended. With the advent of "popular
government" certain of these decisions have been turned over to the
masses of the people or have been seized by them. The essential economic
decisions, however, are still made by the owners of private wealth. If
there is to be an organization of economic society that will function
successfully and autonomously, the knowledge on which the decisions
affecting economic policy are made must be public property. Until that
step is taken the economic life of society will be directed by the
chance desires of those who own the machinery of production.
Social students will accumulate knowledge and reach deductions, but that
is not enough. The task is not completed until the results of their
researches are common property.
Recent inventions and discoveries make the distribution of knowledge
comparatively easy. Cheap paper, rapid printing, the newspaper, the
magazine, the book, have all facilitated the scattering of information
to those who could read, and in the western world this is more than
nine-tenths of the adult population. For those who cannot read, the
camera is an educational power. The machinery for public education--the
schools, the press, the lecture-platform, has grown within a century to
a point that renders possible the speedy distribution of knowledge to
the most remote parts of the world. One of the greatest single steps in
the reconstruction of the economic life of the world is the use of this
machinery to distribute such information as is essential to a clear
understanding of the economic problem and the normal course of its
development.
9. _Next Steps_
Accept the foregoing analysis, and what lies immediately ahead of
society?
1. The socialization and persistent distribution of extant knowledge.
2. A decision with regard to the next great social experiment.
3. The selection of the group best able to carry through this
adventure.
4. The preparation of this group for its task.
5. The placing of the task upon their shoulders, and the backing of
them with every possible assistance.
The working out of the detail of this program is far afield from the
purpose of the present study, which must confine itself to the problems
of world economics. Let it suffice to indicate here that in pursuance of
the program outlined above there must be inaugurated a widespread
propaganda the object of which will be to get the facts and their
implications to the people: the facts regarding the disintegration of
the present order; regarding the possibilities of a new society;
regarding the next steps that are necessary in its establishment.
This propaganda is being carried on by those branches of the labor
movement that are concerned with the working out of a new order of
society. Since it is apparent that the organized producers will be the
dominant element in the new society, they are its logical architects and
builders. It is to this end that the energies of labor education must be
directed.
When the producers are ready for their stupendous task, and when the
time is ripe, they will assume the responsibility for erecting the
superstructure of the new society. They will make costly blunders, some
of which may be anticipated. They will be compelled to face difficult
questions of tactics. In the course of their activities they will make
day-to-day decisions that will play a vital part in the ultimate outcome
of their experiments.
10. _The Success Qualities_
For the rest, the movement for a producers' society needs an emphasis on
those qualities that will bring triumph out of defeat, and that can
convert the most menacing situations into assets:
1. A willingness to learn better ways of doing things, and to abandon
outgrown ideas and ideals for new ones.
2. A faith that will stand up under failure.
3. A vision that sees beyond a lowering horizon.
4. The courage to keep looking and trying, even in the face of
difficulties that seem insuperable.
All human achievement is conditioned on these qualities, and their
development is a pre-requisite to successful experiment.
VIII. ECONOMIC LIBERATION
1. _Why Organize?_
From many sides echo voices urging the human race to co-operate for the
general advantage. The world, torn and distracted by the subsistence
struggle, yearns toward a method of life that will ease the strain and
relieve the heart-ache that are involved in the present-day conflict. It
seems that this world-need can be met by a world economic organization
built along the lines of productive activity controlled by those who
produce, and sufficiently powerful to utter the final word with regard
to the disposition of resources and raw materials, of transport, of
credit, and of the more general phases of production and consumption.
There can be little difference of opinion concerning the necessity for
some such organization. A question may well be raised, however, with
regard to the probable developments of so vast a world machine. What are
its ultimate purposes? Why, in the last analysis, do men seek to improve
the economic and political structure of human society? Why organize at
all?
There is a clear-cut answer to these questions: Men desire changes and
improvements in their economic life in order that they may attain
greater freedom, and they organize for the purpose of making these
changes and improvements more easily.
Man is subject to many drastic limitations. First, there are the
physical limitations of his own body--its height, its reach, its
flexibility, its resistance, its fund of energy. Then he is limited by
nature--by the climate, the altitudes, the fertility of the soil, the
deposits of minerals, the movement of water. Man is further limited by
habit, custom, tradition, and by the opinions of his friends and
neighbors. Again, he is limited by ignorance, by fear, by cowardice, by
prejudice, and by his own lack of understanding as to the true nature of
freedom. In addition to all of these restrictions he is limited by the
economic bonds that hold him to his job, that tempt him with gain, that
drive him, day by day, to seek for food, clothing, shelter: for comfort
and luxury.
Only dimly do men realize these limitations. The more they learn, the
more clearly they understand the nature of the bonds that hold them, and
the better are they prepared to break down the most hampering barriers,
and to follow where aspiration and hope beckon. Yet, even among the
masses of the people, who have had little time to learn, and less in
which to reflect, there is a persistent longing to be free. The plea for
liberty always awakens a response in them because, through their own
lives they come into such intimate contact with the hateful burdens that
oppression lays upon its victims.
The longing to be free is probably one of the most widely distributed of
human qualities, and one, moreover, which men share with many of the
higher animals. The World War focused this longing and raised it to a
pitch of frenzied exaltation, under the spell of which hundreds of
millions fought and worked, as they thought, for liberty. The fact that
they were mistaken in their ideas regarding the purposes of the war does
not in any sense detract from the sincerity of their desires, nor from
the earnestness of their efforts.
The World War fervor was typical of the eager attempts that men have
made at intervals all through history, to win freedom against immense
odds. During the past three or four centuries this struggle has been
particularly severe in the political, the social and in the economic
fields alike.
Although the Dark Ages almost obliterated the expression of creative
energy in the Western World, the Renaissance, the Reformation and the
industrial revolution, following in quick succession, proclaimed its
reawakening, and to-day there is scarcely a group of people--in Egypt,
in Ireland, in Korea, in the Philippines, or in dark, enslaved Africa
that does not hold a molten mass of sentiment surging toward freedom,--a
seething, smouldering pressure, continually seeking an outlet.
Economic emancipation does not include all aspects of freedom. Many
other chains remain to be broken. But the economic organization of the
world would be one step in the direction of freedom, and would burst
many a bond that now holds the human race in subjection.
2. _Freedom from Primitive Struggle_
The first step in economic liberation is to free man from the more
savage phases of the life struggle--the struggle against nature: the
struggle with other men.
Since those far-off times when men lived by tearing away clusters of
nuts, by picking berries, by digging roots, by snaring fish and by
clubbing game, they have been compelled to wrest from nature the means
of subsistence. In this struggle, there have been the terrible phantoms
of hunger, thirst, cold, darkness and physical suffering of every sort,
driving men on. He who won in the contest with nature was able to escape
the worst of these miseries, but he who lost was tortured by them as
long as life remained in his body. The race is saddled, even to-day, by
an oppressive fear of these physical hardships that makes the strongest
a willing servant of any agency that will promise to ward them off.
The first victory that men must gain in their battle for economic
liberation, will be won when hunger, thirst, cold, darkness and other
aspects of physical suffering are banished from the lives of all people
as effectively as yellow fever and cholera have been banished from the
western world during recent generations.
This end has already been attained for the favored few in most
countries, but famine still stalks periodically among the peoples of
Asia, and even Europe, since the Great War, has felt its grip. Among the
industrial workers of the imperial countries, and among the citizens of
the exploited countries, the wolf is a far more frequent visitor than is
the fatted calf.
Liberation from this widespread physical hardship can be achieved by
producing enough of the necessaries of life to feed, clothe and house
all of the people of the world, and by supplementing an adequate
production by a system of distribution that will eliminate hunger and
cold. Machine industry has made such an achievement possible. It only
remains for a world economic organization to co-ordinate the resources,
the productive machinery and the labor, and to distribute the
commodities produced to those who need them.
The conflict with nature is but one aspect of the primitive struggle in
which men are engaged. In addition, there is the struggle of man against
man; not to aid, to emulate, to excel, but to rob, cripple and destroy.
The existing economic system is built upon the assumed desirability of a
struggle whose outward manifestations are: (1) competition between
economic groups; (2) the class war between owners and workers, and (3)
wars between the nations. Throughout the business world one
establishment seeks to build up its organization by wiping out its
competitors; one class seeks to win supremacy at the expense of a rival
class, and one nation seeks to found its greatness on the prostrate
remains of those opposing nations that it has been able to overthrow.
These three phases of competition are accompanied by three forms of
war--the economic war, the class war and international wars.
All three forms of war have an economic background. The economic war is
the contest for resources, trade, markets, monopolies and investment
opportunities. The class war between the exploiter and the exploited,
grows out of the economic relations existing between the owner and the
worker. International wars are fought for economic advantage--for
resources, trade, markets.
The object of all war is the destruction of a rival by resorting to
those measures calculated to bring the desired result. Since all is fair
in war, the end (destruction) justifies the means, no matter what it may
be.
What need is there to speak to this generation of the devastation caused
by these wars? of the killing, the maiming, the famine, the disease, the
disorganization and chaos?
The western world has not yet recovered from the latest international
war, while the economic war and the class war are being fought on the
six continents and the seven seas. The cost of wars in blood, treasure,
happiness and usefulness is an intolerable one. The chains with which
Mars loads the human race weigh men down to the earth.
The organization of a world producers' society would go far toward
freeing men from the ravages of war. The necessity for economic
competition being removed, and exploitation being done away with, the
basis of international war and of the class war would be swept away.
Thus the same economic world organization that enabled man to free
himself from the more brutal phases of the struggle with nature would
likewise enable him to eliminate the principal causes of war.
3. _Freedom from Servility_
The organization of a producers' society would do more than abolish the
cruder aspects of the present economic struggle. It would lay the
foundation for a new culture founded on the dignity and the worth of
labor.
There are two groups of human instincts in ceaseless contention for
supremacy--the possessive and the creative. Both are of immediate
economic importance, and the triumph of the one usually means the
subordination of the other. The instincts which urge in the direction
of acquisition and accumulation tend to make the man a conservator. Once
let him possess an abundance of the world's goods and his chief object
is to hold what he has gained. The instincts which urge toward
construction and creation tend to make man an innovator, initiator, an
improver. The side of man's nature that urges him to possess, directs
him toward wealth and power. The side of his nature that leads him to
create points to invention, to craftmanship, to artistry. Thus the
possessive and the creative instincts are not merely at odds. Possession
leads to status while creation leads to improvement.
There are some natures that are definitely inclined toward acquisition.
There are others as firmly set in the direction of creation. For such
natures the social standards possess little importance. They have their
bent and they follow it. The great mass of men, however, have no
positive set in either direction. Their lives will be primarily
possessive or primarily creative, depending upon the kind of training
that they receive.
Modern society lays its emphasis on possession and accumulation, and
upon the wealth and power which they yield. The owner of land or of
capital, under the present economic order, is not required to work for
his living. His rents and dividends furnish him a source of income far
more regular and much more dependable than the wage of the worker, or
even than the salary of the man higher up. The rewards of the property
owner, moreover, are far larger than those of the worker. Compare the
income tax returns of Germany, Britain and the United States with the
wage scales from the same countries. The incomes above ten thousand
dollars (two thousand pounds or 40,000 marks in pre-war values) per year
are derived largely or exclusively from the ownership of property. It
pays far better to own than it does to work. The ownership of capital,
like the ownership of land, carries with it power over those who must
use the capital and work the land, thus setting up an owning group or
class which is able to control the lives of the workers, at least to the
extent of taking a part of their product and living upon it without
rendering any commensurate service in return. With the economic rewards
go social honors and distinctions, and the wealthy enjoy social as well
as economic privileges. They develop a system of dress, of language, of
manners and customs that will distinguish them as far as possible from
the common herd, namely, those who work for a living. Veblen describes
the process admirably in his "Theory of the Leisure Class." The leisure
class, he says, has its origin in some form of ownership, on which it
builds the structure of its prerogatives.
The existence of an owning, ruling class divides society into factions,
whose contentions threaten the destruction of any social group in which
they take place. From the intolerable social situation which they
create, there seems to be but one logical means of escape, and that is
through the establishment of a society in which labor and not parasitism
is the ideal toward which children are taught to strive.
Such a society would shift the emphasis from possession to creation
(production) by rewarding the worker rather than the owner. This result
may be accomplished quite simply by giving the chief rewards to those
who create, and by denying to the owner any direct reward for his
ownership. Another step in the same direction could be taken by limiting
individual ownership to the things that men use, and concentrating in
the producing group the ownership of all productive tools.
When economic rewards are withdrawn from possession and given to
creation, it will pay better to create than it will to own. Furthermore,
since ownership of itself would involve no power over others, another
important incentive to accumulation would be removed.
A producers' society, as a matter of course, would accord the most honor
to those who engaged in productive activity, thus registering the
social opinion in favor of creating rather than of possessing and
exploiting. With the economic and the social rewards going to producers,
the young of each generation would learn that it was more worth while to
be a producer than to be an owner.
Again a producers' society would aim to secure the common participation
in the necessary social tasks--the drudgery and the "dirty-work." With
the essential work performed in part by all able-bodied persons, no
stigma would attach to those who were engaged in it, the class of
economic pariahs would be eliminated, and each participant in the
necessary economic work of the world would feel that he belonged to the
group in which he was playing so important a role.
"But," argues the doubter, "all of this is against human nature. How is
it possible to expect that men will stop possessing, or will lose the
desire for possession?"
They cannot be expected to do either, of course. But it so happens that,
in any industrial society, the group living on its ownership is a very
small one compared with the group living by its labor. The preference,
in an industrial community, can therefore easily incline to labor rather
than to ownership. As for the chief rewards of life going to producers
rather than to owners, this is historically practicable. Greek society
worked out an elaborate system of honors and rewards for those who could
create. Human nature has not been fairly or adequately tested in recent
years. Only certain of its phases have been developed by social demands,
and those phases--the possessive instincts--are among the least socially
advantageous of human qualities.
An emphasis on production rather than on accumulation would have another
important result--more important, in a sense, than any of those named.
It would establish a feeling of self-respect among those who work by
giving them the only conceivable economic basis for self-respect--the
ownership and control of their jobs.
While one man owns a job on which another man must work in order to
live, the job-owner is the master, and the job-taker is his vassal.
Necessarily, the vassal occupies a position of servility. When he asks
for an opportunity to work, he is asking for an opportunity to live.
When he takes a job he is binding his life and his conduct under terms
prescribed by the job-owner. If he has a family, or owns a home, or is
in any way tied to one spot, he is doubly bound.
The establishment of a producers' society would make each man his own
master in somewhat the same sense that the farmer or the artisan who
owns his land or tools is the arbiter of his own economic destiny. That
is, he would own his job and share in its control.
Thus society would eliminate the inequalities that are now created by
the concentration of ownership and power in a few hands, and would
establish a relative equality among those who produced. The great fear
of the modern worker--the fear of unemployment or job-loss--would also
be eliminated, since the producers, in a society of which they had
control, would be able to hold their own jobs.
These various means would serve to dignify labor and production, and to
establish a society in which prestige and honor would attach to creation
rather than to ownership.
4. _Wisdom in Consumption_
One of the chief weapons of a leisure class is some mark that will
easily distinguish its members from the workers. This mark, in modern
society, is conspicuous consumption. By the quality and style of its
wearing apparel, by the scale of its housing, by the multitude of its
possessions, its luxuries and its enjoyments, the leisure class sets
itself apart from the remainder of the community, advertising to the
world, in the most unmistakable manner, its capacity to spend more than
the members of the working class can earn.
This need for distinction through consumption has set a living standard
which the less well-to-do families seek to emulate. Among the leisured,
there is an eager race to decide which can spend the most lavishly,
while those of less economic means make a determined effort to put on
front and to appear richer than they really are.
The result of this competition among neighbors is an absurd attention to
the quantity and to the cost of possessions, with a comparative
indifference to their intrinsic beauty or to their utility. Nowhere is
this better illustrated than in the rapidly altering styles of woman's
dress. One season silk stockings and low-cut waists are worn in the
middle of winter: the next, expensive furs appear in mid-summer. With
little reference to artistic effect, and with even less attention to the
needs of the individual, the procession of the styles moves across the
social stage with tens of millions eagerly watching for the tiniest
change in cut or color.
The devotion of an entire class to this conspicuous leisure has no
social justification save the silly argument that "it makes work." It is
one of the logical products of a stratified or class society where the
lower classes seek to ape the upper classes, while the latter engage in
a mad scramble to determine which shall set the most grotesque standards
of social conduct.
A producers' society will of necessity take a stand of far-reaching
consequence on the question of consumption. In the first place it will
realize that one of the most signal failures of the present order lies
in the inability of the people to find either happiness or growth in the
accumulation of possessions. If the multitude of things owned would
satisfy men's needs, the upper classes of the present society would be
the happiest that the world has ever known, since they are able to
command a quantity and a variety of things that far surpasses previous
historic records. Instead of bringing happiness, however, these things
have merely brought care, anxiety and finally disillusionment. Now, as
always, it is true that a man's life does not consist in the abundance
of his possessions, or, as Carlyle puts it, "Not what I have but what I
do is my kingdom."
The citizens of a producers' society will therefore teach to their
children, and will practice an abstemiousness in the midst of plenty--a
withdrawal from possessions--in order that the body may have enough, but
not too much, and that the spirit may be freed from an undue weight of
things. The Greeks understood the principle well; so did the American
Indians. They desired, not many things, but an enrichment of life, which
they realized could come only through understanding, tranquillity and
inner growth.
As a matter of course, a producers' society will enforce the axiom: No
luxuries for any until the necessaries are supplied to all. This
corresponds with the well-established practice of many primitive
peoples. It is likewise the application of the highest ethical
principles to economic life, and is the course of procedure that man's
most elemental sense of justice demands.
A more or less rigid adherence to the principle of necessaries first,
and an understanding of the futility of seeking for happiness through
possessions, will place a rigid limitation upon the amount of time
devoted to satisfying economic needs, and will release a generous share
of time and energy that may be devoted to supplying the other needs of
man. Heretofore, leisure has been absorbed by one class or group. Under
a producers' society it would be distributed, like any other social
advantage, on an equitable basis.
Already sufficient advances have been made in machine production to
enable the human race to produce the economic necessaries of each day in
a few hours of labor--two, or three, or four, perhaps. It remains for a
producers' society to take advantage of this productive efficiency, and
to convert the increased productivity, not, as at present, into more
goods, but rather into more free time for people.
5. _Leisure for Effective Expression_
The primary aim of a producers' society would be leisure rather than
goods--an opportunity for expression rather than an increase in the
amount of possessions. One of its great tasks would therefore be the
education of its citizenship in the effective use of leisure.
This new, socialized leisure, which yesterday was a privilege of the
ruling classes and of many of the artisans and farmers, which is to-day
the heritage of primitive peoples, and which has been so largely lost in
the rush of machine production, will be used: (1) to make and to
maintain social contacts; (2) for creative activities; (3) for
recreation, and (4) for whatever other means are necessary to promote
the growth of the individual.
An effective society must be composed of effective individuals. In no
other way can a high social standard be maintained. The growth of the
individual, in a modern community depends, in large measure, on the way
in which he uses his leisure.
6. _Culture and Human Aspiration_
At various stages in the development of society there have emerged
cultures founded on some particular group of human aspirations. Thus the
forward-looking side of man's nature expressed itself.
After he had finished the daily tasks by means of which he earned a
subsistence, or, more usually, as a member of a leisure class that was
exempt from the necessity of labor, the man dominated by strong creative
impulses sought to embody, in some concrete form, the desires which he
felt springing up within him, and which could not be satisfied by
physical activity. He turned, therefore, to drawing, to painting, to
music, to speculation, to discussion.
The present age has not as yet developed its culture, and it seems now
as though capitalism, with its heritage of revolution, and its curse of
instability and hurry, would not persist long enough to establish a
well-defined culture. Hence, in the present society, multitudes feel
that certain finer things are excluded from their lives because the
ground is so littered with possessions, and because life is too harried
and too sordid to give them place.
These forces, the creative impulses of the artist and the builder, yearn
unspeakably for expression. Each human breast holds a void that is the
result of their suppression, and it is this, perhaps, more than anything
else, that accounts for the unrest and dissatisfaction that are so
characteristic of the present generation.
In the past only the favored few had a chance to express their most holy
aspirations. The development of modern industry, with its facility in
the production of livelihood, promises a time, and that at no very great
distance, when this opportunity may be common property, and men
everywhere may be able to participate in that unending search after
love, beauty, justice, truth--the highest of which humanity is capable.
All of these things lie outside the realm of economics, yet none of them
is possible for the masses of mankind until there is established a
system of economic life that will provide the necessaries upon which
physical health depends, together with an amount of leisure sufficient
to enable a generation to find itself.
This is the goal toward which men are working in their efforts to
organize economic life, as they strive to provide a fit dwelling-place
for the descendants of the world's seventeen hundred millions.
WHAT TO READ
No reader should accept the statements made in this book unless they
appeal to his reason and correspond with his experience, nor should he
reject them merely because they run counter to his prejudices or his
convictions. If the subject-matter of the book is as important as the
author believes that it is, the reader should not stop with these brief
chapters, but should search farther. The many recent articles, pamphlets
and books devoted to economic and social reconstruction give an
excellent chance for selection. Here are a few suggestions:
H. deB. Gibbins has written one of the best descriptive books on the
economic changes surrounding the industrial revolution. ("Industry in
England" London, Methuen, 1896.) See also his "Economic and Industrial
Progress of the Century" (London, Chambers, 1903).
Supplement this by reading another old book, "Recent Economic Changes,"
by D.A. Wells. (New York, Appleton, 1898.)
More up to date, and in the same field, are "The Great Society," (Graham
Wallas, New York, Macmillan, 1914, Chapter I); "Economic Consequences of
the Peace," J.M. Keynes, (New York, Harcourt, 1920, Chapter II); "The
Fruits of Victory," Norman Angell (Glasgow, Collins, 1921) Chapters I
and II.
The economic chaos resulting from the war has been described with
journalistic accuracy by Frank A. Vanderlip, American banker, in his
"What Happened to Europe?" (New York, Macmillan, 1919) and in "What Next
in Europe?" (New York, Harcourt, 1922). The European situation is dealt
with in great detail by the "Manchester Guardian Commercial." Beginning
with April 20, 1922, the "Commercial" has published a very complete
series of articles under the general editorship of J.M. Keynes. The
series is entitled "Reconstruction in Europe." "America and the Balance
Sheet of Europe" (J.F. Bass and H.G. Moulton, New York, Ronald Press,
1921) is a study by two experts that goes into great detail with regard
to budgets, public finances, exchange rates and the like. "Our Eleven
Billion Dollars" (Robert Mountsier, New York, Seltzer, 1922) gives the
same facts, brought up to date and popularized.
The science of economic organization is approached from three quite
different positions. First, there are writers who discuss ways of making
the economic mechanism efficient. ("Theory and Practice of Scientific
Management," Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1917; "The Administration of
Industrial Enterprises," Edward David Jones, New York, Longmans, 1920;
"Principles of Scientific Management," F.W. Taylor, New York, Harpers,
1911.) In the second place, there are writers like Thorstein Veblen
("The Engineers and the Price System," New York, Huebsch, 1921, and "The
Theory of Business Enterprise," New York, Scribners, 1904) and H.L.
Gantt ("Organization for Work," New York, Harcourt, 1919) who desire to
see vital changes made in the aims of the whole economic order. Third,
there are reformers and radicals who write of a re-made or
revolutionized economic order.
At the present time these radical writers fall into three general
groups: (1) The Syndicalists of France, (2) the Guild Socialists of
Britain, and (3) writers who describe actual economic experiments that
are going on in Russia, and to a lesser degree elsewhere. (Note that the
"One Big Union" movement of Canada and Australia and the "Industrial
Workers of the World" movement in the United States have produced much
controversial material but little constructive writing.)
French Syndicalism is well presented by E. Pataud and E. Pouget
("Syndicalism," Oxford, 1913); by Bertrand Russell ("Proposed Roads to
Freedom," New York, Holt, 1919) and by Georges Sorel ("Reflections on
Violence," New York, Huebsch, 1912).
The case for Guild Socialism is stated by A.R. Orage ("National Guilds,"
London, Bell, 1914), by G.R.S. Taylor ("The Guild State," Allen and
Unwin, 1919), and by G.D. H. Cole ("Self-Government in Industry,"
London, Bell, 1918, "Chaos and Order in Industry," London, Methuen,
1920, and "Guild Socialism Re-stated," London, Parsons, 1920).
Actual experiments in the control of economic life by the producers are
described by C.L. Goodrich ("The Frontier of Control," New York,
Harcourt, 1920), who seeks to answer the question: How much control over
industry do the rank and file of those who work in it and their
organizations in fact exercise? "The Collectivist State in the Making,"
(Emil Davies, London, Bell, 1914) and "Socialism in Theory and
Practice," (H.W. Laidler, New York, Macmillan, 1919), cover somewhat the
same ground. The Whitley Committee, in its "Report of an Enquiry into
Works Committees" (Great Britain, Labor Ministry) goes into detail on
this point. The experiments in Russia are nowhere adequately covered,
"The Soviets at Work" (Lenin) was a prediction and a hope rather than a
review of achievements. More recent books have been either violently
partisan or else so superficially descriptive that they conveyed no idea
of the actual state of the economic experiment. It is, of course, in
Russia, that the experiments in workers' control are being carried
forward on the largest and most complete scale.
There are many other books in English, books in German, French and
Russian, pamphlets, magazine articles by the thousands, and reports of
special investigations in various technical fields, all of which offer
ample opportunity for further study along the lines suggested in this
book.
INDEX
Acquisition, menace of, 156
Administration, basis of world, 119
Administrative and producing groups, 111
Administrative authority, concentration of, 81
Administration boards, function of, 122
America, resource monopoly of, 19
American imports, 125
American industry, phases of, 59
Association, scope of, 53
Authority, centralization of, 81
Bankers, as arbiters of industry, 102
Bankers, power of, 102
Barriers to progress, 147
Basic industries, and resources, 19
British foreign investments, 39
Brotherhood, new possibilities of, 20
Budget board, 131
Budget deficits, 30
Business and geographic lines, 62
Business federation, development of, 105
Business organization, nature of, 61
Business, world character of, 62
Capital, transfers of to producer groups, 131
Capitalism and nationalism, 63
Capitalism and profiteering, 65
Capitalism and the class struggle, 66
Capitalism, assumptions of, 139
Capitalism, centralization of, 63
Capitalism, establishment of, 36
Capitalism, failure of, 62
Capitalism, growth of, 66
Capitalism in the Western world, 36
Capitalism, initiative under, 63
Capitalism, limitations on, 62
Capitalism, modifications in, 140
Capitalism, plutocracy under, 65
Capitalism, world role of, 62
Capitalist experiment, 138
Catastrophe, menace of, 146
Centralization, in American industry, 59
Chance, part of in progress, 136
Change and chaos, 48
Chaos and change, 48
Class struggle, and capitalism, 66
Climate and civilization, 45
Civilization and climate, 45
Coal, as a factor in civilization, 78
Coal, production of, 17
Coal surplus, where found, 18
Commerce, growth of, 20
Commodity basis for money, 129
Communication, as a world problem, 127
Communication, development of, 16
Competition, and war, 34
Competition, justification of, 38
Competition, morality of, 140
Competition, place of, 139
Competition, profit incentive in, 39
Conflict and economic antagonism, 41
Conscious social improvement, 146
Consumption, education for, 161
Consumption, wisdom in, 159
Co-operation, in modern industry, 37
Co-operation, necessity for, 80
Co-operative world organization, 102
Copper production, world figures, 18
Credit, as a business factor, 103
Creation, stimulation of, 157
Creative forces, scope for, 163
Culture and human aspiration, 162
Debts of European nations, 29
Deficits, in European budgets, 30
Depression, present condition of, 13
Disputes, adjustment of, 132
Disputes board, 132
Distribution and the social revolution, 46
Distribution of world wealth, 42
Distribution of resources, 17
District and division compared, 93
District committees, 91
Divisional congress, organization of, 94
District economic units, 72
District organization, detail of, 90
Divisional and district organization compared, 93
District federations, functions of, 110
Divisional federations, listed, 111
Divisional organization, 72
Economic activity, worldizing of, 15
Economic affiliations, series of, 73
Economic authority, location of, 102
Economic aggression, future of, 125
Economic bureaucracy, 59
Economic causes of war, 34
Economic change, working basis for, 70
Economic changes, frequency of, 62
Economic chaos, source of, 33
Economic competition, extent of, 38
Economic co-operation, necessity for, 20
Economic depression, results of, 31
Economic determinism, effects of, 15
Economic disaster, menace of, 29
Economic disintegration, signs of, 31
Economic district organization, 90
Economic evolution illustrated, 66
Economic federalism, 59
Economic forms, 60
Economic foundations, 51
Economic foundations for world organization, 23
Economic groupings, listed, 57
Economic institutions, instability of, in Europe, 28
Economic interdependence, 18
Economic isolation no longer possible, 15
Economic justice, need for, 26
Economic leadership, 85
Economic life, chaos in, 67
Economic life, new basis for, 47
Economic machinery, ownership of, 84
Economic muddle, 28
Economic organization by divisions, 92
Economic organization, details of, 88
Economic organization, need for science in, 69
Economic needs, 14
Economic needs, enumerated, 44
Economic organization, by districts, 72
Economic organization, lines of, 58
Economic organization, nature of, 60
Economic organization, world units of, 72
Economic power, and the bankers, 103
Economic power, for the producers, 117
Economic problems, enumerated, 36
Economic problems, growing complexity of, 15
Economic problems, nature of, 36
Economic program, basis for, 22
Economic questions of world scope, 121
Economic reconstruction, principles of, 25
Economic rivalries and war, 41
Economic self-government illustrated, 88
Economic statesmanship, 23
Economic states rights, 59
Economic structure, nature of, 69
Economic structure, variation in, 69
Economic system, divisions of, 57
Economic units, character of, 70
Economic units, classes of, 71
Economic units, efficiency in, 69
Economic units, integrity of, 80
Economic units, local control of, 89
Economic units, nature of local units, 71
Economic units, needs of, 79
Economic units, productivity in, 80
Economic world outlook, 28
Education, function of, 141
Education, possibilities of, 142
Energy, rewarding of, 83
Engineers, present position of, 34
European bankruptcy, threat of, 28
European budget deficits, 30
European war debts, 29
Exchange and credit board, 128
Executive, functions of, 86
Executives, selection of, 86
Expansion, costs of, 64
Experience, costs of, 141
Experiment, social value of, 135
Experiment, uncertainty of, 140
Expert, selection of, 86
Exploitation, increase of, 41
Federalism, principle of, 53
Federation, in social organization, 104
Finance, derangement in, 29
Financial imperialism, costs of, 64
Financial imperialism illustrated, 39
Food Imports of Great Britain, 19
Financial stability, basis for, 29
Forethought, possibilities of, 142
Foreign exchange, demoralization of, 31
Foreign investment as a science, 39
Freedom, human desire for, 152
Freedom, struggles for, 152
Functional economic units, 57
Geographic divisions, organization of, 92
Geographic units, scope of, 72
Government control of industry, 37
Great Britain, food imports of, 19
Great Britain, foreign investments of, 39
Great revolution, phases of, 49
Hard times, history of, 31
Hiring and firing, new plan for, 89
Human aspiration and culture, 162
Human effort, results of, 46
Human nature, limitations on, 158
Human values, conservation of, 79
Hunger struggle, elimination of, 153
Ideal and the real, 74
Improvements and betterments, 25
Imperialism, costs of, 64
Imports of the United States, 125
Income distribution, 36
Indebtedness, since the war, 29
Industrial change, through discovery and invention, 16
Industrial efficiency, need of, 25
Industrial federation, groups of, 108
Industrial federations, problems of, 107
Industrial leaders, change in type, 67
Industrial organization, evolution of, 61
Industrial revolution, and production, 47
Industrial revolution, effects of, 47
Industrial revolution, spread of, 15
Industrial revolution, suddenness of, 47
Industrial system, characteristics of, 101
Industrial waste, 32
Industrial waste, responsibility for, 32
Industrialism, effects of, 16
Industries, interrelation of, 37
Industry, dependence on raw material, 16
Industry, divisional organization of, 92
Industry, government control of, 37
Initiative, loss of under capitalism, 63
Initiative, stimulation of, 83
Intelligent social direction, 145
Iron ore, production of, 17
Job-ownership, 36
Judiciary, basis for, 132
Knowledge, accumulations of, 143
Knowledge, additions to, 143
Knowledge through suffering, 144
Knowledge, through trial and error, 135
Labor federation, development of, 105
Labor units of value, 129
Laissez-faire, abandonment of, 146
Leadership, changes in type of, 67
Leadership, classes of, 86
Leadership in economic affairs, 85
Leadership, methods of selection, 87
Leadership, selection of executives, 86
Leadership, through heredity, 87
Leadership, through self-selection, 87
Leadership, through social choice, 88
League Covenant, principles of, 23
League of nations failure, 23
Leisure, function of, 162
Liberty, through producers' organization, 159
Life, continuity of, 14
Limitations on capitalism, 62
Livelihood, guarantee of, 45
Livelihood struggle, 43
Loans, under a producers society, 131
Local autonomy, necessity for, 60
Local economic problems, 36
Local economic units described, 71
Local economic units, details of, 88
Local federations, character of, 109
Local federations, problems of, 109
Local initiative under capitalism, 63
Machine ownership and self-government, 85
Manufacturing, divisions of, 58
Mass life, effects of, 139
Mass meetings, for public issues, 92
Maximum advantage, law of, 75
Maximum efficiency, need of, 78
Maximum returns, essentials for, 79
Meliorism, interest in, 74
Militarism, in Europe, 35
Minimum outlay, law of, 77
Modern business methods illustrated, 39
Modern warfare, costs of, 64
Money as a commodity, 129
Money, function of, 128
Money, future of, 128
Money, labor as a basis for, 129
Money, present uses of, 129
Monopoly profit, law of, 33
National boundaries and business, 62
Nationalism and capitalism, 63
Nationalism, and existing problems, 121
Nationalism, and world progress, 63
Nationalism, costs of, 64
Nationalism, failure of, 64
Nationalism, narrowness of, 64
Natural resources, classified, 45
Necessities, provision of, 161
Next steps, 149
Next war, preparations for, 35
Organic function, 54
Organic nature of society, 53
Organization, difficulties in, 152
Organization, need for, 151
Organization of world federation, 113
Organization, world need of, 101
Owners, organization of, 61
Ownership of economic machinery, 84
Paper money, issues of, 29
Parliament, for the world, 113
Physical hardship, elimination of, 154
Plutocracy, growth of, 65
Policy, decision of by self-direction, 85
Political federation, experience with, 104
Political life, organization of, 73
Politics, elimination of, 112
Possession, emphasis on, 156
Poverty, losses through, 14
Power, centralization in industrial groups, 112
Present-day economic problems, 36
Primitive society, economic issues in, 15
Primitive struggle, freedom from, 153
Producer groups, organization of, 73
Producers, future of, 117
Producers, power to, 117
Producers' federations, by districts, 110
Producers' federations, groups of, 108
Producers' world federation, character of, 111
Producer groups, control of industry by, 104
Production, necessity for, 44
Production of raw materials, 17
Productivity, necessity for maintaining, 80
Producing and administrative groups, 111
Production versus profit, 33
Profit and competition, 39
Profit versus welfare, 68
Profiteers, and capitalism, 65
Progress, barriers to, 147
Progress of self-government, 97
Progress through experiment, 137
Raw materials, limitations on, 17
Raw materials, struggle for, 39
Reconstruction, economic basis for, 49
Reconstruction, principles of, 25
Resource control, as a world problem, 122
Resources and raw materials board, 124
Resources, relation of to basic industries, 19
Results and initiative, 84
Sabotage, 33
Science and society, 51
Sectionalism, failure of, 100
Self-government in local economic affairs, 88
Self-motivation, need of, 80
Self-government, progress of, 97
Selection of leaders, 87
Separatism, passing of, 20
Servility, elimination of, 155
Shop committees, organization of, 88
Social administration, difficulties of, 74
Social book-keeping, function of, 103
Social change and intelligence, 145
Social disaster, as a means to knowledge, 144
Social drive, basis of, 82
Social experiment, basis for, 145
Social federation and social activity, 57
Social groups, federation of, 57
Social functions, specialization of, 56
Social improvement, 146
Social inertia as a problem, 82
Social knowledge, accumulations of, 143
Social knowledge, limitations on, 52
Social machinery and body machinery, 54
Social organization, of the owners, 61
Social organization through federation, 104
Social organization, through producers, 117
Social philosophy, restatement of, 146
Social problems, handling of, 148
Social relations, growing complexity of, 56
Social revolution and distribution, 46
Social science, future of, 148
Social science, needs of, 146
Social science, principles of, 51
Social structure, nature of, 61, 69
Society, as an organism, 53
Society, science of, 52
Sources of economic waste, 32
Soviet Russia, and world peace, 34
Specialists, place of in world administration, 123
Specialization in society, 55
Standard Oil Company, 59
Statesmanship, economic foundations of, 23
Success qualities, 150
Suffering as a basis for progress, 144
Surplus, effect on human effort, 77
Transport, place of in industry, 127
Trial and error in society, 135
Underground organization of business, 67
Value, new standards of, 130
War, economic causes of, 34
War debts, 29
War, elimination of, 154
World finance, chaos in, 29
War, forms of, 154
War, increased cost of, 64
War, new preparations for, 35
War, object of, 155
War promises, failure of, 13
War-menace, and chaos in industry, 34
Waste in industry, 32
Wealth concentration, effects of, 43
Wealth distribution, 36
Wealth, distribution of, 42
Wealth of nations, 42
World administration, 119
World administration, basis of, 119
World administration, detail of, 133
World administration, field of, 120
World authority, lack of, 106
World commerce, growth of, 20
World common interests, 26
World conflict, sources of, 27
World disillusionment, 13
World economic organization, detail of, 88
World economic organization, diagram of, 97
World economic questions, 121
World economic solidarity, 22
World economics and the League, 23
World economics, chaos in, 28
World federation, detail of organization, 113
World industrial congress, organization of, 96
World industrial units, 72
World industry, organization of, 95
World isolation, passing of, 20
World need of organization, 101
World organization, beginnings in, 24
World organization, principles of, 25
World parliament, organization of, 113
World organization, problem of, 24
World parliament, possibilities of, 120
World politics and the League, 23
World problems, enumerated, 122
World problems, method of approach, 121
World producers' federation, character of, 111
World producers' federation, form of, 107
World producers' federation, scope of, 112
World producers' federation, structure of, 113
World reconstruction, basis for, 49
World resources, distribution of, 17
World thinking and organization, 26
World thinking, basis for, 100
World thinking, economic basis of, 22
World wealth, distribution of, 42
Worldizing economic activity, 15
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