The Next Step: A Plan for Economic World Federation Part 15

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 ma.s.ses 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 acc.u.mulate 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 a.n.a.lysis, 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 a.s.sistance.

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 a.s.sume the responsibility for erecting the superstructure of the new society. They will make costly blunders, some of which may be antic.i.p.ated. 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 a.s.sets:

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 a.n.a.lysis, 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 alt.i.tudes, 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 ma.s.ses 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 ma.s.s of sentiment surging toward freedom,--a seething, smouldering pressure, continually seeking an outlet.

Economic emanc.i.p.ation 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 cl.u.s.ters 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 a.s.sumed desirability of a struggle whose outward manifestations are: (1) compet.i.tion between economic groups; (2) the cla.s.s 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 compet.i.tors; one cla.s.s seeks to win supremacy at the expense of a rival cla.s.s, 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 compet.i.tion are accompanied by three forms of war--the economic war, the cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 compet.i.tion being removed, and exploitation being done away with, the basis of international war and of the cla.s.s 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 princ.i.p.al causes of war.

3. _Freedom from Servility_