The Book of Life Part 38

CHAPTER LXXIII

INTELLECTUAL PRODUCTION

(Discusses scientific, artistic and religious activities, as a superstructure built upon the foundation of the standard wage.)

Karl Kautsky, intellectual leader of the German Social-democracy, gives in his book, "The Social Revolution," a useful formula as to the organization of the future society. This formula is: "Communism in material production, Anarchism in intellectual production." It will repay us to study this statement, and see exactly what it means.

Material production depends directly upon things; and as there is only a limited quant.i.ty of things in the world, if any one person has more than his share, he deprives some other person to that extent. So there have to be strict laws concerning the distribution of material products. But with intellectual things exactly the opposite is the case. There is no limit in quant.i.ty, and any one person can have all he wants without interfering with anybody else. Everybody in the world can perform a play by Shakespeare, or play a sonata by Beethoven, and everybody can enjoy it as much as he pleases without keeping other people from enjoying it all they please. Also, material production can be standardized; we can have great factories to turn out millions of boxes of matches, each match like every other match, and the more alike they are the better.

But in intellectual affairs we want everyone to be different, or at least we want everyone to be free to be different, and if some one can become much better than the others, this is the most important kind of production in the world, for he may make over our whole intellectual and moral life.

For the production of material things our new society has great factories owned in common, and run by majority vote of the workers, and we place the products of that factory at the disposal of all members of society upon equal terms. That is our "Communism in material production." On the other hand, in our intellectual production we leave everybody free to live his own life, and to a.s.sociate himself with others of like aims, and we place as few restrictions as possible upon their activities. This is the method of free a.s.sociation, or "Anarchism in intellectual production."

Our problem would be simple if material and intellectual production never had to mingle. But, as it happens, every kind of intellectual production requires a certain amount of material, and every kind of material production involves an intellectual element. Therefore, our two methods have to be combined, and we have a complex problem which we have to solve in a variety of different ways, and upon which we must experiment with open minds and scientific temper.

First, let us take the intellectual elements involved in the production of purely material things, such as matches and shoes and soap. Let us take invention. Naturally, we do not want to go on making matches and shoes and soap in the same old way forever. On the contrary, we want to stimulate all the workers in these industries to use their wits and improve the processes in every possible way. The whole of society has an interest in this, and the soap workers have an especial interest. Our soap industry has an invention department, with a group of experts appointed by the executive committee of the national council of soap workers. All soap workers are taxed, say five cents a day, for the support of this activity. Likewise the state contributes a generous sum out of its income toward the work of soap research. In addition to this, the soap industry offers prizes and scholarships for suggestions as to the improvement of every detail of the work, and at meetings of every local of soap workers somebody makes new suggestions as to methods of stimulating their intellectual life--not merely as regards soap, but as regards citizenship, and art and literature, and human life in general.

Our soap workers, you must understand, are no longer wage-slaves, brutalized by toil and poverty; they are free citizens of a free society. Our soap workers' local in every city has its own theatre and concert hall and lecture bureau, and publishes its own magazine.

Every industry has its immediate intellectual problems, its trade journals in which these are discussed, and its research boards in which they are worked out. The ambitions of the young workers in that industry are concentrated upon getting into this intellectual part of their trade. Examinations are held and tests are made to discover the most competent men, and written suggestions are considered by boards of control. It is, of course, of great importance to every worker that the channels of promotion should be kept open, and that the man who really has inventive talent shall get, not merely distinction and promotion, but financial reward, so that he may have time and materials to continue his experiments.

This research department, you perceive, is a sort of superstructure, built upon the foundation of our standard wage; and this same simile applies to numerous other forms of intellectual production. For example, our community paper mills turn out paper, and our community printers are prepared to turn out millions of books. How shall we determine what is to be the intellectual content of these material books? There are many different methods. First, there is the method of individualism. A man has something to say, and he writes a book; he works in the soap factory, and saves a part of his standard wage, and when he has money enough he orders the community printers to print his book, and the community booksellers to handle it for him, and the community postoffice to deliver it for him. Again, a group of men organize themselves into an a.s.sociation, or club, or scientific society, and publish books. The Authors' League takes up the work of publishing the writings of its members, and the Poetry Society does the same.

This is the method of Anarchism, or free a.s.sociation. But there is no reason why we should not have along side it the method of Socialism; there is no reason why we should not have state publishing houses, just as we have state universities and state libraries. The state should certainly publish standard works of all sorts, bibles and dictionaries and directories, and cheap editions of the cla.s.sics. In this new world our school boards are not chosen by business men for purposes of graft, they are chosen by the people to educate our children; so it seems to us perfectly natural that the National Educational a.s.sociation should conduct a publication department, and order the printing of the school books which the children use.

In the same way, anyone is free to write a play, or to put on a play, and invite people to come and see it. But, like the individual farmers and the individual mothers of families, the play-producer in our society is in compet.i.tion with great community enterprises, which set a high standard and make compet.i.tion difficult. The same thing applies to the opera, and to concerts, and to all the arts and sciences. You can start a private hospital if you wish, but you will be in compet.i.tion with public inst.i.tutions, and you can only succeed if you are a man of genius--that is, if you have something to teach, too new and startling for the public boards of control to recognize. You try your new method, and it works, and that becomes a criticism of the public boards of control, and before long the people by their votes turn out the old board of control and put you in.

That is politics, you say; but we in our new world do not use the word politics as one of contempt. We really believe that public sentiment is in the long run the best authority, and the appeal to public sentiment is at once a social privilege and a social service. What we strive to do is to clear the channels of appeal, and avoid favoritism and stagnation.

To that end we maintain, in every art and every science and every department of human thought, endless numbers of centers of free, independent, co-operative activity, so that every man who has an inspiration, or a new idea, can find some group to support him or can form a new group of his own.

This is our "Anarchism in intellectual production," and it is the method under which in capitalist society men organize all their clubs and societies and churches. Devout members of the Roman Catholic Church will be startled to be told that theirs is an Anarchist organization; but nevertheless, such is the case. The Catholic Church owns a great deal of property, and speculates in real estate, and to that extent it is a capitalist inst.i.tution. It holds a great many people by fear, and to that extent it is a feudal inst.i.tution. But in so far as members of the church believe in it and love it and contribute of their free will to its support, they are organizing by the method which all Anarchists recommend and desire to apply to the whole of society. Anarchist clubs and Christian churches are both free a.s.sociations for the advocacy of certain ideas, the only difference being in the ideas they advocate.

In our new world such organizations have been multiplied many fold, and form a vast superstructure of intellectual activity, built upon the foundation of the standard wage. In this new world all the people are free. They are free, not merely from oppression, but from the fear of oppression; they have leisure and plenty, and they take part naturally and simply in the intellectual life. The old, of course, have not got over the dullness which a lifetime of drudgery impressed upon them, but the young are growing up in a world without cla.s.ses, and in which it seems natural that everyone should be educated and everyone should have ideas. They earn their standard wage, and devote their spare time to some form of intellectual or artistic endeavor, and spend their spare money in paying writers and artists and musicians and actors to stimulate and entertain them.

These latter are the ways of distinction in our new society; these are the paths to power. The only rich men in our world are the men who produce intellectual goods; the great artists, orators, musicians, actors and writers, who are free to serve or not to serve, as they see fit, and can therefore hold up the public for any price they care to charge. Just now there is eager discussion going on in our world as to whether it is proper for an opera singer, or a moving picture star, or a novelist, to make a million dollars. Our newspapers are full of discussions of the question whether anyone can make a million dollars honestly, and whether men of genius should exploit their public. Some point out that our most eminent opera singer spends his millions in endowing a conservatory of art; but others maintain that it would be better if he lowered his prices of admission, and let the public use its money in its own way. The extremists are busy founding what they call the Ten-cent Society, whose members agree to boycott all singers and actors who charge more than ten cents admission, and all moving picture stars who receive more than a hundred thousand dollars a year for their service. These "Ten-centers" do not object to paying the money, but they object to the commercializing of art, and declare especially that the moral effect of riches is such that no rich person should ever, under any circ.u.mstances, be allowed to influence the youth of the nation. In this some of the greatest writers join them, and renounce their copyrights, and agree to accept a laureateship from some union of workers, who pay them a generous stipend for the joy and honor of being a.s.sociated with their names. The greatest poet of our time began life as a newsboy, and so the National Newsvenders' Society has adopted him, and taken his name, and pays him ten thousand dollars a year for the privilege of publishing his works.

CHAPTER LXXIV

MANKIND REMADE

(Discusses human nature and its weaknesses, and what happens to these in the new world.)

We have briefly sketched the economic arrangements of the co-operative commonwealth. Let us now consider what are the effects of these arrangements upon the princ.i.p.al social diseases of capitalism.

The first and most dreadful of capitalism's diseases is war, and the economic changes here outlined have placed war, along with piracy and slavery, among the half-forgotten nightmares of history. We have broken the "iron ring," and are no longer dependent upon foreign concessions and foreign markets for the preservation of our social system and the aggrandizement of a ruling cla.s.s. We can stay quietly at home and do our own work, and as we produce nearly everything we need, we no longer have to threaten our neighbors. Our neighbors know this, and therefore they do not arm against us, and we have no pretext to arm against them. We take toward all other civilized nations the att.i.tude which we have taken toward Canada for the past hundred years.

We have a small and highly trained army, a few regiments of which are located at strategic points over the country. This army we regard and use as we do our fire department. When there is widespread damage by fire or flood or storm or earthquake, we rush the army to the spot to attend to the work of rescue and rebuilding. Also, we have a small navy in international service; for, of course, we are no longer an independent and self-centered nation; we have come to realize that we are part of the world community, and have taken our place as one state in the International Socialist Federation. We send our delegates to the world parliament, and we place our resources at the disposal of the world government. However, it now takes but a small army and navy to preserve order in the world. We govern the backward nations, but the economic arrangements of the world are such that we are no longer driven to exploit and oppress them. We send them teachers instead of soldiers, and as there are really very few people in the world who fight for the love of fighting, we have little difficulty in preserving peace. We pay the backward peoples a fair price for their products which we need. Our world government takes no money out of these countries, but spends it for the benefit of those who live in the countries, to teach them and train their young generations for self-government.

Next, what are the effects of our new arrangements upon political corruption and graft? The social revolution has broken the prestige of wealth. Money will buy things, but it no longer buys power, the right to rule other men; it no longer buys men's admiration. Everybody now has money, and n.o.body is any longer afraid of starvation. It is no longer the fashion to save money--any more than it is the fashion to carry revolvers in drawing-rooms or to wear chain mail in place of underclothing. So our political life is cleansed of the money influence.

People now get power by persuading their fellows, not by buying them or threatening them. The world is no longer full of men ravenous for jobs, and ready to sell their soul for a "position." So it is no longer possible to build up a "machine" based on desire for office.

The changes have resulted in an enormous intensification of our political activities. We have endless meetings and debates; we have so many propaganda societies that we cannot keep track of them. And some of these societies, like the Catholic Church, have a large membership, and large sums of money at their disposal. But a few experiments at carrying elections by a "campaign-chest" have convinced everybody that to have the facts on your side is the only permanent way to political power. Our new society is jealous of attempts to establish any sort of ruling cla.s.s, and the surest way to discredit yourself is to advocate any form of barrier against freedom of discussion, or the right of the people's will to prevail.

Next, what is the status of crime? We have too recently escaped from capitalism to have been able to civilize entirely our slum population, and we still have occasional crimes of violence, especially crimes of pa.s.sion. But we have almost entirely eliminated those cla.s.ses of crime which had to do with property, and we have discovered that this was ninety-five per cent of all crime. We have eliminated them by the simple device of making them no longer profitable. Anybody can go into our community factories, and under clean and attractive working conditions, and without any loss of prestige or social position, can earn the means of satisfying his reasonable wants by three hours work a day. Almost everybody finds this easier than stealing or cheating.

But more important yet, as a factor in abolishing crime, is the abolition of cla.s.s domination and the prestige of wealth. We no longer have in our community a ruling cla.s.s which lives without working, and which offers to the weak-minded and viciously inclined the perpetual example of luxury. We no longer set much store on jewels and fine raiment; we do not make costly things, except for public purposes, where all may enjoy them; and n.o.body stores great quant.i.ties of money, because everyone has a guarantee of security from the state. So we are gradually putting our policemen and jailers and judges and lawyers to constructive work.

Next, what about disease? The diseases of poverty are entirely done away with. We are now able to apply the knowledge of science to the whole community, and so we no longer have to do with tuberculosis and typhoid, or with rickets and anaemia in children, or with heavy infant mortality.

We have sterilized our unfit, the degenerates and the defectives, and so do not have to reckon with millions of children from these wretched stocks. We now give to the question of public health that prominence which in the old days we used to give to war and the suppression of crime and social protest. Our public health officers now replace our generals and admirals, and we really obey their orders.

Next, as to prost.i.tution. Just as in the case of crime, we are still too close to capitalism not to have among us the victims of social depravity, both men and women. We still have a great deal of vice which springs from untrained animal impulse, and we have some cultivated and highly sophisticated p.o.r.nography. But we have entirely done away with commercial vice, and we have done it by cutting the root which nourished it. Women in our communities are really free; and by that we do not mean the empty political freedom which existed in the days of wage slavery--we mean that women are permanently delivered from economic inferiority, by the recognition on the part of the state of the money value of their special kind of work, the bearing and training of children. This kind of work not merely receives the standard wage, it also receives the best surgical and nursing treatment free. Housework and home-making are legally recognized services; and the woman before marriage and after her children have been nursed is free to go into the community factories and earn for herself the standard wage, with no loss of social position. Consequently, no woman sells her s.e.x, and no man buys it.

This does not mean, of course, that we have solved the s.e.x problem in our new society. There are two great social problems with which we have to deal, the first of these being the s.e.x problem, and the second the race problem. Our scientists are occupied with eugenics, and we are finding out how to guide our young people in marriage, so that our race may be built up, and the ravages of capitalism remedied as quickly as possible. Also we are trying to find out the laws of happiness and health in love. We are founding societies for the purpose of protecting love, and, as hinted in the Book of Love, we have a determined social struggle between two groups of women--the mother-women and the mistress-women--those who take love gravely, as a means of improving the race, and those who take it as a decoration, a form of play. Our men are embarra.s.sed by having to choose between these groups, and occupy themselves with trying to keep the struggle from turning into civil war.

Second, the race problem. Our economic changes have, of course, done away with some of the bitterest phases of this strife. White workingmen in the North no longer mob and murder negro workingmen for taking their jobs, and in the South our land values tax prevents the landlord from exploiting either white or negro labor. But our white race is still irresistibly bent upon preserving its integrity of blood, and the more far-seeing among the negroes have come to realize that there can never be any real happiness for them in a society where they are denied the higher social privileges. There is a movement for the development of a genuine Negro Republic in Africa, and for ma.s.s emigration. Also there is a proposition, soon to be settled at an election, for the dividing of the United States into three districts upon racial lines. First, there are to be, in the Far South, three or four states which are inhabited and governed solely by negroes, and to which white men may come only as temporary visitors; a large group of states in the North which are white states, and to which negroes may come only as visitors; and finally, a middle group of states, in which both whites and black are allowed to live, as at present, but with the proviso that no one may live there who takes part in any form of racial strife or agitation. This program gives to race-conscious negroes their own land, their own civilization, their own chance of self-realization; it gives to race-conscious white men the same opportunity; and it leaves to those who are not troubled by the problem, a country where black and white may dwell in quiet good fellowship.

Finally, what has been the effect of our economic changes upon the purely personal vices which gave us so much trouble and unhappiness in the old days? What, for example, has been the effect upon vanity? You should see our new crop of children in our high schools! There are no longer any social cla.s.ses among them; the rich ones do not arrive in private automobiles, to make the poor ones envious, and they do not isolate themselves in little sn.o.bbish cliques. They arrive in community automobiles, and all wear uniforms--one of the simple devices by which we repress the impulse of the young toward display of personal egotism.

They are all full of health and happy play, and their heads are busily occupied with interesting ideas. Our girls are trained to thinking, instead of to personal adornment; they are developing their minds, instead of catching a rich husband by s.e.xual charms. So we have been able, in a single generation of training, to make a real and appreciable difference in the amount of vanity and self-consciousness to be found among our young people.

And the same thing applies to a score of other undesirable qualities, which, under the system of compet.i.tive commercialism, were overstimulated in human beings. In those old days everyone was seeking his own survival, and certain qualities which had survival value became the princ.i.p.al characteristics of our race. Those qualities were greed and persistence in acquisitiveness, cunning and subtlety, also bragging and self-a.s.sertiveness. In that old world people destroyed their fellows in order to make their own safety and power; they wasted goods in order to be esteemed, to preserve what they called their "social position."

But now we have cut the roots of all these vile weeds. We have so adjusted the business relationships of men that we do not have to have hysterical religious revivals in order to keep the human factors alive in their hearts. We have established it as a money fact, which everyone quickly realizes, that it pays better to co-operate; there is more profit and less bother in being of service to others. So we have prepared a soil in which virtues grow instead of vices, and we find that people become decent and kindly and helpful without exhortation, and with no more moral effort than the average man can comfortably make.

Of course, we have still personal vices to combat, and new virtues to discover and to propagate; but this has to do with the future, whereas we are here confining ourselves to those things which have been demonstrated in our new society.