Civilization and Beyond: Learning from History Part 23

Sold in the market to the highest bidder, war captives and their descendants became chattel slaves. As civilizations were expanded by conquest and matured by struggle, they developed some type of forced labor to balance the increased parasitism of the masters and the growing numbers who were called upon to produce "services" rather than material goods.

Certain areas of civilized economies were taken over by the public authorities. Planning and building of cities and their ports, of highways, including bridges, of viaducts, aqueducts, of drainages for the cities, of public buildings. The construction of defenses, including city walls, were partly or wholly public enterprises. Temples and tombs for the mighty were often in the same category.

Maintenance of large elaborate households by political leaders, and in later periods of empire building, by the successful merchants and technicians, led to the employment of many servants, including subordinate members and relatives of the elite.

Much necessary labor was performed by members of each household. The resulting economy was therefore fragmented at the household level with virtually all of the energy supplied by human beings and domestic animals.

As each civilization developed its pattern of forced labor, including the labor of war captives, it launched the deadly compet.i.tion between freemen and slaves which almost inevitably ended in favor of the slaves, who were housed and fed by the masters and who could operate at overhead costs lower than those involved in the hiring of wage or salaried workers.

Land ownership tended to center in the political-military leaders, the temples and, as each civilization matured, in the hands of its bourgeoisie.

Integrating such economies proved to be a difficult, arduous task, well beyond the powers of the average political, military or hereditary leader. In a very real sense, the problems of management were extremely personal and correspondingly concentrated in the hands of skillful acquisitors. Nowhere was the impact of the 1750-1970 revolution more far reaching than in the area of management.

Economic activities, in the course of the great revolution, had less and less connection with the homestead, and except for a tiny minority of the personnel, had no connection with the family of the owner-operator.

The seat of the family--the home--continued to exist, but on a far more restricted basis. Arts and crafts moved from the household into the workshop, where they expanded both in extent and in complexity. Domestic tasks were a.s.sociated with hand labor and simple tools. The great revolution filled the workshop with the ancestors of present day machinery, but with a prodigious difference. In the early step from home workshop to factory, hand tools in plenty were being used in the workshops. As "modernization" progressed, hand tools were replaced by specialized machines.

The implements of specialization--the machine building tools and the machine tools themselves--were housed in forests of a.s.sociated workshops. The mechanics of specialization sprawled over acres and square miles of factory floor s.p.a.ce. Nowhere were the results of the great revolution more in evidence than in the vast difference between the workshop attached to the house of the early industrialist and the forest of chimneys and stacks, and the acres and square miles of floors.p.a.ce in present-day industrial establishments, with their personnel numbered in thousands and the capital invested in plant and equipment running into the millions or billions of dollars.

Two centuries of the great revolution have given present-day industrial society a capital plant the like of which has never existed on the planet in any historical period. After two hundred years of meteoric development, it exists today on a planet-wide scale and at a level of all-pervasive dominance undreamed of even up to the middle of the last century.

Modern industry "plants"--steel plants, cement plants, open pit mines, textile plants, machine tool plants, auto plants, rubber factories, oil refineries--not only occupy extensive acreage per plant, but the same interests and corporate managements operate dozens of plants in widely separated geographical areas and produce a great variety of goods and services. An experienced observer feels entirely at home in any industrial center, on any continent. In Detroit, in Dusseldorf, in Osaka, in Shanghai, in Bombay, the architecture of the plants is essentially the same, the machines in the widely separated plants bear a striking resemblance to one another, and the problems of management are similar.

Unit plants and their coordinated managements in the aggregate compose the present-day world economy. They are the essence of its being. They occupy the skyline and dominate the economic life of modern industrial society. They are the units which make up the sum-total of modern industry which, in its turn, is the bony structure around which have grown the sinews and muscle of present-day planetary economy.

Modern state structure goes back through the half dozen centuries during which it has been developing. Its ancestors may be met with in the history of previous civilizations.

Modern industrial structure on the other hand is something essentially new under the sun--newly imagined, designed, constructed, productive. It has no ancestry before 1750 because its essential building unit--the modern machine--did not exist previous to that date.

In the last chapter we dealt with the growth of states into empires and the aggregation of empires into civilizations with the possibility that the existing states could be welded into a world federation. One of the chief obstacles to such a development is the centuries of conflict during which modern nations have been built up and the strong bonds of nationalism have been established as a means of holding divergent groups of people in line by particular oligarchies operating in particular civilizations.

On the economic level such difficulties are minimal. The process of coordination and consolidation was far advanced before the end of the last century. The practice of integration--joining productive units in functional sequences--was also accepted and followed, with little regard for political or cultural considerations. The result has been an economic integration which has developed inside the chief industrial nations and across national boundaries.

Despite political obstacles, economic integration has proceeded with giant strides, especially during the past hundred years. Under a well developed world political federation the world economy could be integrated and used to provide the necessaries, conveniences and minimal comforts for the entire human family. There are nationalistic obstacles to political federation. Economic integration is an obvious must and a logical outcome of the industrial integration that has gone on so swiftly during the great revolution of 1750-1970.

When we talk about integrating the world economy we are dealing with a problem which no previous civilization has faced because no previous civilization had machines or the social and cultural inst.i.tutions which have grouped themselves around the ultra-modern machine phenomena.

World economy in 1975 includes three essential elements: the planet earth and its resources; the inst.i.tutional structure of modern society; and human beings with their diverse concepts and skills which provide its motive force. These three factors, land, capital equipment, and human energy, are the three-fold apparatus upon which 3.7 billion human beings depend for the goods and services which sustain them from day to day and year to year.

At an earlier period this economic apparatus centered around the land and its cultivation (agriculture). Since the onset of the great revolution the goods and services have come increasingly from a factory-office centered occupational apparatus. When we consider the integration of the world economy, it is this industrialized, modern economy that we have chiefly in mind. No previous civilization faced such a problem. There are no real precedents upon which we can rely. We must go forward, if we do go forward, experimenting with problems which face the human family for the first time.

The integration of planetary economy in 1975 is a total, or unitary, problem. It is not a problem of one continent, of one nation or empire, of one racial or cultural group. It is a problem which the human family faces as a human family, occupying our planet Earth. It is our capital equipment. It is the success with which we apply our know-how to the earth, using our capital equipment and our skills, producing the goods and services upon which our physical existence depends. We rise or fall, sink or swim in terms of our own capacities, our own abilities to adapt ourselves to historical circ.u.mstances which will determine the conditions of life on the earth. Indeed, our decisions and consequent actions may determine our own extinction or survival.

Planetary economy will aim to provide the means of livelihood for its const.i.tuents along six lines: to conserve the human heritage of natural resources, using them sparingly and, where possible, adding to them; to produce and distribute those goods and services which are needed to maintain health and provide for social decency; to produce and distribute goods and services honestly, efficiently and economically; to a.s.sure simple necessaries for all, including dependents, defectives and delinquents; to give high priority to local self-sufficiency; to maintain enough central economic authority to guarantee adequate goods and services to successive generations of the planetary population.

An effective world government, therefore, must adopt and administer an economic program designed to: (a) Utilize and conserve natural resources, making them available, on a just basis, for the use of successive generations; (b) End involuntary poverty and insecurity and the exploitation of man by man and of one social group by another social group; (c) Make necessary public services generally available on equal terms, to all mankind; and (d) Guarantee equal opportunity to earth-dwellers based on the greatest good to the greatest number.

Feeding, clothing, housing and educating an agricultural village was a prime consideration at an early stage in social history. Providing the necessaries and amenities of life in a commercial-industrial city occupied the attention of city fathers as a consequence of the shift from agriculture to trade and commerce as the principle source of livelihood. Caring for the physical, physiological and cultural needs of populations in the United States, Britain, j.a.pan and other growing commercial-industrial nations presented difficult challenges. The organization, expansion, defense and improvement of the American, British, j.a.panese and any other contemporary empire, posed even larger and more complex problems which have nagged mankind during recent generations. Recently, the planet-wide revolution of 1750-1970 has brought the entire human family with 3,700 million members isolated in 140 different nations, face to face with political, economic and social problems on a planet-wide scale. These problems are planet-wide in their dimensions. Measures designed for their solution must be equally planet-wide.

Villages, cities, regions and nations have learned, often the hard way, how to think, plan and act in terms of their own interests, or, more concretely, in the interest of their owners, masters and exploiters. It is with politics and economics of this planet-wide level that we of the present generation are particularly concerned.

Dwellers in western Europe and North America have to deal with the politics and economics of monopoly capitalism. Its central offices are generally located in particular countries--Britain, Holland, France, Germany, where big business enterprises had their beginnings and from which representatives of oil, steel, textile, motor and banking enterprises spilled over into the territory of their compet.i.tors as well as into the "third world" of erstwhile colonies and other dependencies.

Monopoly capitalism has made no real effort to organize a functioning world economy. On the contrary, it has established, maintained and consolidated centers of economic interests and activities at the national level. In theory and in practice the bourgeois-dominated planet is divided into economic and political states and spheres of influence, each equipped with the separatist inst.i.tutions of political sovereignty.

Politically the task of setting up a competent world government has not been seriously taken in hand. The same may be said for the organization of a planned, organized, supervised planetary economy. So far as we know, such world economic inst.i.tutions and practices cannot exist in the chaos of one hundred forty sovereign states, each exercising authority over its economy, each with its own program for growth and expansion, and putting its claims for wealth and power above peace, order, justice, and mercy for the entire human family.

General economic practice throughout the 1450-1970 experiments with nation building, empire building, compet.i.tive struggle and sporadic efforts at world conquest, occupation and exploitation have crossed national boundary lines as a matter of necessity. It could not be otherwise, because no nation has been able to reach the cultural level of civilization on a basis of economic self-containment. Primitive agriculture can maintain a high degree of self sufficiency. City populations abandon self-sufficiency and adopt the principles of expansion, occupation and utilization of foreign territory and exploitation of resources and manpower, at home and abroad.

As western civilization has matured, power struggles at the top, conquest, occupation and exploitation have come more and more to the fore until, in the era of monopoly capitalism, they dominate the field.

In this period of human history nothing less than the just sharing of available goods and services will implement the principle of "to each according to his need".

Monopoly capitalism, throughout its entire history, has tended to function internationally, moving across frontiers in search of raw materials, markets, and fields of profitable investment. Inter-group trade has been carried on between and through "foreign" markets, cities and states. Not only has the flag followed the investor, but the investor has used governmental agencies, including the military, to protect economic interests, promote them and expand them. Early in their history, western nations subsidized private organizations like the Dutch East India Company and the British Hudson Bay Company and authorized them to exercise quasi-public authority. International banking and insurance paralleled international trade.

Western civilization, from its earliest beginnings in foreign business relations and ideological adventures like the Crusades, has spilled across national frontiers in its search for adventure, for experience, for information, for pelf and power. A part of the expansionist drive was "strictly business" in character. Another part--international conferences, public and private; tourism; the export of artifacts and of information, were promoted by mixed motives, from missionary zeal for the propagation of The Faith to international business for profit, public and private.

One of the most spectacular aspects of European expansion during modern times has been the growth of production and trade; the rapid increase in "foreign" investment; and governmental efforts to tie together geographically and ethnically remote places and peoples into neat bundles tagged Spanish Empire, British Empire, French Empire, Russian Empire. Nineteenth and early twentieth century history centered around such international experiments and included inter-state build-ups like the European Common Market and the Organization of American States.

War losses and emergency spending incident to warfare led to large scale financial a.s.sistance from one government to another. Such transactions are not confined to recent times, but during the war years from 1914 to 1945 they reached fantastic proportions. The United States foreign aid program alone, following the war of 1939-45, involved grants and loans of $125,060 million dollars from July 1, 1945 to December 31, 1970 (_Statistical Abstract_ 1971 p. 958). Similar grants and loans were made by other countries to their allies and a.s.sociates. These examples ill.u.s.trate the build-up of an extensive international relationship that has been an integral aspect of the 1750-1970 world revolution.

Throughout this experience two parallel forces have been at work. One was the effort to establish a stable, renewable and self-renewing social environment. The other was the effort to adapt and remake man (human nature) to fit into the rapidly changing social environment and to expand and deepen relations with nature.

Sociology, the science and art of staying together in more or less permanent social groups, thus becomes the theory and practice of a.s.sociation. Politics and economics are specialized aspects of a.s.sociation. Political relations, economic relations and other aspects of a.s.sociation make up the overall field of the human community or human society.

Groups of human beings are brought together and held together by various means, among which communication is outstanding. At every level, from the local to the general or universal, and in every aspect of politics, economics and other forms of a.s.sociation, human beings communicate.

One function of planetary a.s.sociation involves the establishment and maintenance of a network of planetary communication. Locally, nationally, regionally, and internationally the channels or means of communication have been extensively developed.

Devices designed to reproduce and elaborate oral and written communication blanket the planet so extensively that the individual and family privacy enjoyed by human beings before the middle of the last century has literally ceased to exist. In its place is a communications network that operates twenty-four hours in the day and seven days in the week. By a move of the hand and a flick of a switch everybody can be in touch with anybody and anybody with everybody almost everywhere.

Channels of communication, trade and travel keep members of the human race constantly in touch with one another. Except for the solitary, living alone in the wilderness (urban or rural) there is no hiding place. Mechanisms supplementing man's five senses, see, feel, hear and report everything.

Facility in communication provides a wealth of information. Using available means of human communication, a central planetary authority can inform, alert and arouse the entire human family with its 3,700 million members. Socially minded, it could announce and initiate the measures necessary to maintain peace and order through conformity to a common program of social action. Coordinating, integrating and administering the channels of communication at the planetary level will be a primary responsibility of any planet-wide economic program.

Planetary government will be responsible for establishing, maintaining and improving a network of communication and education designed to ensure both uniformity and diversity in the human population. The revolution in science and technology has been particularly noteworthy in the field of communication, extending from the family to the entire human race; from the home telephone, the morning newspaper, the phonograph, radio and television to regular mail delivery, the printing press, the camera, lithography, the typewriter, tele-communication, the computer, public address systems and the various devices for overhearing and recording that produce more or less permanent records of casual vocal expressions.

Planet-wide communication in the 1970's provides an example of the transformation from economic localism to economic worldism during recent times. By its very nature, communication tends to involve all four corners of the planet. In that sense, communication tends to become unique. It is not a real exception, however. Through communication channels, knowledge concerning every aspect of man's economy, from agriculture to commerce and finance, crosses frontiers almost automatically, strengthening, deepening and integrating planet-wide economy.

A planet-wide economy will not be designed, planned and coordinated as a result of either military conquest or political expansion and predation.

Rather, it will be a public enterprise of the entire human family, operated by a world government in the public interest for the social service and well-being of mankind.

The worldwide revolution of 1750-1970 provides the economic basis for a planet-wide society--for One World. The real danger--that any local or regional war may grow into another general war in which nuclear weapons are used--provides reason aplenty to put the whole before the part and, in the pursuit of general human welfare, to federate the political life of the human family, following the many steps toward worldism already taken by various aspects of its economy.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CONSERVING OUR NATURAL ENVIRONMENT