The Next Step: A Plan for Economic World Federation Part 4

The tidal wave of the industrial revolution has not stopped with the economic world. No phase of life has been exempt from the power of its magic. The school, the church, the family, the home, the state, have all felt its transforming might. The aggregate of these changes is the profound social revolution that has been for some time, and that is at present tearing the fabric of the old society to tatters, while beneath its surface-chaos is forming the nucleus of a new social order.

9. _A New Order_

The results of profound changes such as those that are now occurring, must be chaos except in so far as the ingenuity and organizing capacity of man re-establishes order. The people in the world are in very much the position of a valley population suffering from a disastrous flood.

Their houses and fruit-trees--the product of generations of labor--have been swept away. The valley is filled with debris. As the water recedes, the wreckage must first be picked up, then the whole population must fall to with a will and rebuild the community--put up houses, re-plant trees, re-make gardens, repair roads.

The social revolution has not swept everything away, but it has modified the form of social inst.i.tutions, and some of them, such as the old time farm home, the individual workshop and the agricultural village have been obliterated in many localities. How shall the new society be rebuilt? Only as the old was built--by the expenditure of human effort and under the guidance of the best wisdom that the community can muster.

There are a number of points of view from which the present-day economic chaos may be regarded. The humanitarian feels pity for the suffering and hardship imposed upon mult.i.tudes of the world's population. The conservative laments the alterations which are being made in the established order. The liberal regrets that the changes are occurring so rapidly that construction cannot keep pace with destruction. The radical sees, in these fundamental changes, the dawn of his millennium. The scientist and the engineer upon whose shoulders will rest the burden of rebuilding the new society, tighten their belts and turn to the mightiest task that men have ever faced.

The economic muddle in which the world now finds itself is one of many transition periods in the history of civilization,--a phase of the great revolution. Like any period of chaos, it is the seed-ground of the new order--the demolition which precedes construction.

Some day men may be wise enough and sufficiently well organized and equipped to demolish and construct at the same time. As yet no such stage has been reached. During the intervals of chaos which separate two periods of forward movement (the dark ages of the world, as they are sometimes called) the ma.s.ses agonize and suffer, groping blindly and crying out for guidance. Such is the period in which the world now finds itself.

Out of this chaos, men must bring order; and to do this they must discover the foundations upon which the new order can be successfully built. This is the work of the engineers, the constructors of the new society.[3]

10. _The Basis of World Reconstruction_

Asiatics, Europeans, Africans, Americans, Australians--all people who follow the movement of events realize that the crisis confronting the capitalist world is a serious one. Informed men like J.M. Keynes and Frank Vanderlip believe that the situation is perilous. While many persons see that something is wrong, and while some see what is wrong, there is a great diversity of opinion as to the remedies that should be adopted. What most of the writers fail to see, or at least to realize, is that economic organization is the basis--the only possible basis--for the reconstruction of the world.

The time has pa.s.sed when political readjustments will meet the world situation. The events accompanying the industrial revolution have hammered the world into a closely knit economic whole, and until this fact is understood, and made the basis of world thought and world building, there can be no permanent solution of the world's problems.

The present chaos in world relations cannot be met and settled by war, legislation, diplomacy or any similar means. All of the steps in these fields imply some adjustment of political relationships, and it is the economic inst.i.tutions rather than the political inst.i.tutions of the world that are in need of constructive effort.

If a town is suffering from a break in the water-main, there are two things that may be done! The old pipe may be patched or a new pipe may be put in its place. It is sometimes possible for the engineers to patch the old main temporarily, while they are getting in a new one. The same situation confronts the people of the world. Their economic life is disorganized and chaotic. Shall it be reorganized along old lines, slightly modified in the light of experience, or shall it be built on fundamentally different lines?

[Footnote 3: "Engineering is the science of controlling the forces and of utilizing the materials of nature for the benefit of man, and the art of organizing and directing human activities in connection therewith."

(Resolution of the Engineering and Allied Technical Societies in creating the Federated American Engineering Societies. "Waste in Industry" 1921, p. IV).]

III. ECONOMIC FOUNDATIONS

1. _The Social Structure_

When a town or a city decides to repair a water system or to replace an old system by a new one, the plans are made and the work is carried on in accordance with the soundest principles known to the engineering profession. There are communities which neglect their water systems, and which suffer accordingly. But for the most part, the water supply is looked upon as so vital a factor in the common life that no pains are spared to have it reflect the last word in sanitation and efficiency.

The same reasoning must apply to the economic machinery upon which a community depends for the supply of its necessaries and comforts.

Economic life touches every home. No human being who eats food, wears clothes, lives in a house, rides on street cars or reads papers and books can escape its all pervasive influence. Therefore when changes are made in an established system of economic life, or when a new economic system is subst.i.tuted for an old one, it behooves the people concerned to see that the work of reorganization is done in accordance with the soundest known principles of social science.

The principles of social science, like the principles of engineering, are matters of profound concern to those who are compelled to depend for health and livelihood on the outcome of a social experiment. The social scientist studies society as the natural scientist studies nature, by examining the social forms, the social forces, the ways of handling or of administering these forces, and the means of making social improvements. The social scientist, like the scientist working in any other field, is concerned with making those additions to knowledge which will prove of the greatest ultimate advantage to the human race.

The principles of social activity are not yet so well known as those of astronomy, physics, mechanics or biology, but they operate none the less surely. Until these principles are understood, and until men plan their activities in relation to them, there will be no possibility of a rationally organized and wisely managed society. The physicist who planned a pump on the supposition that water is always liquid in form would get no farther than the social scientist who advocated social changes on the theory that the only motive that animated mankind was the economic one.

Mankind is not wholly ignorant of the principles underlying social structure and social activities. Philosophers and statesmen worked over them in the ancient world. Within the past two centuries a flood of books and pamphlets has appeared dealing with social organization. To be sure, most of these publications have been of a political nature, but the effort was made none the less to understand society and its workings. The investigations, a.n.a.lyses, comparisons and conclusions are formulating themselves gradually into certain well-defined social laws, which men recognize as essential factors in social thinking.

Some of the more important among these social laws or principles which have been determined by the painful processes of trial and error are those relating to the manner in which the structure of society is built up. Society is not a collection of people, in the sense that a basket of eggs is a collection of eggs. Quite the contrary, society is a structure formed through the a.s.sociation of individuals and of groups having some common interests and some co-operative functions or activities. A family, for example, consists of a number of persons, usually connected by blood ties, living together in a common dwelling. A chamber of commerce consists of individuals, firms and corporations, doing business in one locality, and all concerned with the maintenance of certain property rights. The British Miners Federation is composed of local and of district organizations, which are built up around collieries, towns, and coal deposits. The local union is composed of individual mine workers. The district organization is composed of a number of locals in the same field. The federation is composed of these lesser organizations. No matter which one of the many forms of human a.s.sociation is examined, the same thing will be found true. Each social group is composed either of individuals or of lesser social groups which have certain common interests and certain co-operative activities, and which band themselves together in response to their interests and in pursuance of these activities. It is this organic structure of society to which Hobson applies the phrase "the federal units which society presents." ("Work and Wealth." J.A. Hobson. Macmillan. 1914. p. vi.)

Among primitive peoples who have simple forms of social organization, each individual is connected with some a.s.sociation like the clan or tribe which is state, church and family, all in one. The stories of the Jewish patriarchs are good ill.u.s.trations of this stage in social evolution. In advanced and complex societies, however, each individual belongs to a number of groups--to a town, a factory, a school, a home, a political party, a fraternal order, a church. In complex societies these groups are united to form the whole social structure. The individual belongs to society, therefore, because he belongs to one or more of the groups composing society, and his membership in society is dependent upon his membership in a social group.

Without making too much of the comparison between a living organism, like the human body, and a society, the similarities between the two are striking. The human body consists of various systems, such as the circulatory system, the nervous system, the digestive system. Each of these systems is composed of many parts, having separate functions to perform. The circulatory system, for example, consists of the heart, veins, arteries, capillaries, the blood, etc. These various parts of each system are in their turn made up of different kinds of tissue. The heart is a complicated organ consisting of muscle tissue, nerve fibers, blood vessels, etc. Muscles, nerves and blood vessels are in their turn composed of living cells, each of which contains the mechanism of a life cycle. Among the unit cells, the various tissues, organs and systems of the body, there is a working harmony. The whole complex machine functions in unison. If one of the organs fails to do its work,--if the heart fails to pump blood or if the lungs fail to inhale oxygen,--the whole body ceases to function or "dies."

Throughout the series, from the single cell to the entire organism, the human body is built up compositely. This method of composite structure holds equally true in the composition of modern society.

A modern society or community consists of various systems, such as the educational system, the economic system, the political system. Each of these systems is, in its turn, composed of inst.i.tutions. Thus, for example, the educational system consists of the common schools, the high schools, the normal and professional schools and universities, the special schools, and so on. Each city school system is a going concern with its pupils, teachers, officials, school buildings, textbooks, courses of study. Each school building, each cla.s.s room, each group of pupils, is a social unit, composed either of individuals or of groups.

Like the single cell of the human body, the individual pupil is a living organism, and it is out of a mult.i.tude of such organisms variously grouped that school systems are built.

The social machinery, like the machinery of the body, must work smoothly, otherwise misery will be the inevitable result. If the educational or the economic life of a community breaks down, the whole community suffers, as does the body through the failure of an important organ. If the stoppage is significant enough, as for example, a stoppage of the economic machinery like that experienced by central Europe since 1919, the social organism "dies,"--that is, it is resolved into its const.i.tuent elements, some of which may disappear.

Those who object to the comparison between society and a living organism like the body, find more satisfaction in likening the social machine to an automobile, with its self-starter, its ignition system, its lighting system, its steering gear, its driving mechanism. Each of the systems is in turn composed of parts. Each part is made of wood, iron, copper, rubber, and these materials are, in turn, composed of molecules and atoms in certain combination. The automobile is not self-acting, like the body or like society, but the failure of one of its essential parts like the ignition system, means the failure of the whole machine.

Society, like the human being, or like the engine, is a highly complex mechanism, and like them it cannot function successfully unless its various parts function in harmony. The major problem before a society is therefore the working out of a system of inter-relations between its parts, that will make harmonious functioning possible and easy. Just as the mechanical engineer who builds the automobile puts into it the results of his wisdom in an effort to make it effective, so the social engineer devotes himself to the problem of making society function in the way that will yield the largest results to the individuals composing it.

2. _Specialization, a.s.sociation, Co-operation_

Every social group except the horde, which is an aggregation of unspecialized and non-co-operating individuals, is constructed on the principle of:

1. Specialization

2. a.s.sociation

3. Co-operation

The social group--the family, the school, the factory--takes upon itself the performance of a particular social function--it specializes itself.

Each group a.s.sociates itself with other groups--families with families, schools with schools, factories with mines and stores. Finally, these a.s.sociated groups work together or co-operate, exchanging the products which their specializations have created, and uniting their efforts in the furtherance of their common interests. These developments take time, and some communities are more highly specialized than others, but all societies which enter intimately into the life of the modern world are thus const.i.tuted.

The more advanced the society, the more numerous and the more complex are the relations between its component parts. The agricultural inhabitants of the Ganges Delta have evolved a far more complex society than that of the aborigines of Australia, but the civilization at the mouth of the Ganges is simplicity itself compared with that of Britain, Belgium or j.a.pan. In the Ganges Delta each family group has a homestead.

Outside of the homestead, the community life is almost wholly unspecialized. Even where the homesteads are cl.u.s.tered together there are no stores, no recreation centres, and few churches or schools except in the larger towns or in the market towns, of which there are a very few, since only about one per cent of the people live in towns or cities. Practically the entire population is occupied with the work of the homestead, and the work of each homestead is very like the work of every other homestead. ("The Economic Life of a Bengal District." J.C.

Jack. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1916. pp. 1 to 40.)

How different is the French, German or Italian village, with its various crafts, trades, professions, industries, recreation centres, schools, churches and the like. Every such European community of three or four thousand persons is in itself a complex society, while the industrial city of fifty thousand people is a hive of related social activity.

The more highly specialized the group, the more complex, intricate and precise are its workings.

This principle of social federation through specialization, a.s.sociation and co-operation is nowhere better ill.u.s.trated than in the case of the present economic system. In each centre of population, in each town or city, in each state, in each nation, in the world at large,--the economic system is divided into various elemental economic groups or units, falling under six main headings:

1. The extractive units, which are concerned with the taking of wealth from nature's storehouse--the farm, the mine, the lumber camp.

2. The fabricating units, which are busy changing the products of farm, mine and lumber-camp into semi-finished or finished forms--the mill, the smelter, the factory.

3. The transportation units, which carry goods or people or messages from place to place--railroads, ships, trucks, telephones.

4. The merchandising units, which a.s.semble the goods turned out by the fabricators and distribute them to the users, wholesalers, jobbers, retailers.