The local producers' federation would therefore differ little from the existing local groups, such as towns and cities, save that its constituent elements would be occupational groups rather than geographic divisions, and that it would be functioning in the economic as well as in the political field.

The second series of federations might be called the producers' district federations. They would include all district industrial groups within a given economic field. Such a district federation would correspond, roughly, to the present state as it exists in Mexico or Australia, or to the provinces in Canada.

The district federation would function in three ways. First, there would be the issues arising between the industrial organizations that composed the district federation; second, there would be the issues arising between local federations within the district, and third, there would be those common matters, like health, education, highways and so on.

The third series of federations would be the divisional producers federations, which would correspond, roughly, to such aggregations of states as the Commonwealth of Australia or the United States of America. The boundaries of such a federation would follow the boundaries of the principal land areas and the chief population centers. North America, South America, South Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, Northern Europe, Northern Asia, Eastern Asia, Southern Asia and Australia would furnish a working basis for separating the world into such geographical divisions. Each of these divisional federations would function along the same general lines as the local and district groups.

The fourth, in the series of federations, would be the world producers' federation, which would be an organization composed of all of the major industrial groups. These groups, each of which would be organized on a world-wide basis, would unite in the world producers' federation in order to further those interests that were of consequence to two or more of them, as well as those common interests that were of concern to all alike. The world producers' federation would be built on the same principle as the local producers' federation, but unlike this latter federation, the world federation has no prototype existing at the present time.

The world producers' federation would be a world authority, linking up those interests of world consequence that are now waving about like cobwebs in the wind.

Throughout its entire course this outline has been designed in such a way as to separate sharply the producing units and the administrative groups (federations). The local, district, divisional and world industrial units are the back-bone of the public machinery in a producers' society. For the purposes of facilitating the work of administration, these producers' groups are brought together, at various points, in local, district, divisional and in a world producers' federation, all of which federations derive their power directly from the industrial producers' groups. The world producers' federation therefore has no direct relations with the local producers' federation, any more than the government of a county, in a modern state, has with the central federal authority. The authority of the world producers' federation, like that of the local, district and divisional producers' federations, is derived from its constituent industrial member groups, and is confined to the questions that are of immediate concern to a number of them, or that are the common concern of all.

This arrangement will make difficult the production of a state of present type which has drifted far away from some of the most pressing necessities of the common life, and into the hands of politicians,—a situation that permits tyranny on the one hand, and that makes any adequate check on the activities of these political rings difficult or impossible. This danger would be considerably reduced by delegating administrative power to the federations, holding each within its prescribed range, and keeping the real power in the hands of the local, district, divisional and world industrial groups.

The decision of the world producers' federation would therefore be binding on the industrial groups, and not upon the local, district and divisional producers' federations, except in so far as the industrial groups compelled these federations to follow the policy of the world producers' federation.

It is probable that an exception would have to be made in the case of issues arising between two divisional producers' federations. The burden of settling such an issue should rest, however, on the industrial groups rather than on the world producers' federation.

This withholding of authority from the federations in general, and from the world producers' federation in particular may be open to criticism, but it has several strong points in its favor. Through its control of resources, transport and the like, the world producers' federation will wield an immense power. Its constituent members, having aided in its decisions of policy, may follow a similar course of action in the divisional and the district producers' federations. Again, the alternative to the organization of a series of disconnected federations is a centralized bureaucracy of such magnitude, and holding such vast power, that it would be both unwieldy and dangerous, beside violating that very essential rule of local authority in local affairs.

The separation of the federations would compel each of them to specialize on particular problems of administrative routine. Questions that were to be carried to wider authorities would be carried by and through the various constituent industrial groups.

The structural organization of the world producers' federation would be similar to that of the United States of America or that of the Russian Federated Soviet Republic. The constituent groups would be economic and occupational rather than political or geographic, but the principle of federated autonomous groups would be the same. Each of the major industrial groups that belonged to the world producers' federation would have sovereign power over those matters which affected that group alone. The federation, on the other hand, would have jurisdiction over matters affecting two or more of the world industrial groups, as well as over those matters which were of common concern to all of the member groups.

7. The Form of Organization

The general lines of organization for the world producers' federation would be somewhat as follows:

1. The workers in each of the major industrial groups would vote in June of each year for the members of a world parliament which would be the central authority in the world producers' federation.

2. The world parliament would consist of from 800 to 1000 delegates, elected in each of the major industrial groups by the producers in that group.

a. Each industrial group would be entitled to at least 50 members in the world parliament, and to one additional member for each 50,000 workers over two and one half millions. But no group would be entitled to more than 150 members in the world parliament.

b. The members of the world parliament would be elected by popular vote in each of the major industrial groups, the franchise being extended to all producers, including those who had been producers and were rendered incapable of activity through age or infirmity.

c. Each industrial division would be entitled to at least five members of the parliamentary delegation from that particular industrial group, but the details of representation from each of the major industrial groups would be left in the hands of the group.

3. The world parliament would be elected in June and would meet in July of each year. Since the world congresses of each of the major industrial groups would meet in the preceding January, they would have six months to thresh out their individual problems, before they were called upon to consider the general problems confronting all of the groups.

4. The world parliament would select, from its own membership, an executive committee equal in size to ten per cent of the total membership of the parliament.

a. On this executive committee each of the world industrial groups would be entitled to at least five members.

b. The executive committee would be the steering committee of the world parliament, and when the world parliament was not in session, the executive committee would be the responsible body.

c. The executive committee would meet once in four months, or oftener at its discretion.

5. The executive committee would select, from its membership, a number of administrative boards, at the same time naming the chairman of each board. Each of these administrative boards would be charged with the responsibility of handling a unit problem, such as the control of resources, the control of transport, and the like.

6. The chairmen of the various administrative boards would constitute the executive heads of the world producers' federation. They might be called the world producers' federation board of managers. This board of managers would be responsible to the world parliament executive committee.

a. If, at any time, the board of managers failed to secure a vote of confidence from the world parliament executive committee, on any matter involving a question of general policy, the board of managers would be automatically dissolved, and the executive committee would proceed at once to select a new board that would replace the old one.

b. If the executive committee failed to select a board of managers that could secure a vote of confidence, the world parliament would be automatically summoned to meet one month from the day on which this failure to elect occurred.

c. As soon as it convened, the world parliament would proceed, as a first order of business, to the election of an executive committee which would function.

d. If the parliament failed to elect an executive committee capable of functioning, the parliament would be automatically dissolved, a special election would be held within ten days, a new parliament would be selected, and would assemble thirty days from the date of this special election.

e. By these means, the whole machinery of the world producers' federation would be rendered immediately responsive at all times to the sentiment of its constituency, and the board of managers would be compelled to function in line with the policy of the executive committee and of the world parliament, or turn the work over to another group.

PLAN FOR WORLD ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION

The world Board of Managers consists of executive chairman of administrative boards with one member from each industry. / / / / / - Administrative Administrative Administrative Board Board Board - / Boards of / experts and / specialists with / chairmen selected by the / world executive committee. - Committee meets World Executive Committee consists of quarterly. No ten per cent of World Parliament industry less than five members. - Meets in July World Parliament consists of representatives July. No selected directly by the producers in each of industry less the major industrial groups than fifty members. / / / / / / The producers in Machine Man- Transport Agricultural each of the major ufacturing Industries Industries industrial groups Industries are the qualified electors of the industry.

7. The world parliament would exercise, directly, or by delegated authority, all legislative, executive and judicial functions that pertained to its activities. It would therefore create the departments or subdivisions necessary to the carrying out of these various functions. The members of the world parliament would be elected for one year, subject to recall at any time by the constituency that elected them. The parliament would decide on the qualifications of its own members.

This proposed plan for the organization of a world producers' federation will be made clearer by a diagram. (p. 116.)

8. All Power to the Producers!

The plan for a world producers' federation is designed with the object of placing all power in the hands of the producers. The society of the present day vests power—particularly economic power—in the hands of the owners of economic resources and machinery. Their public institution is the capitalist state, and their rule is perpetuated by the manipulation of its machinery.

Under this order of society, the chief emphasis is placed on owning rather than on working. The largest material rewards and the greatest amount of social prestige go to the owners. The present society sanctifies ownership, and raises the owner to a position of moral superiority.

The same system which dignifies ownership can scarcely recognize work as of supreme social consequence. The worker is therefore placed in a position inferior to that of the owner. His economic rewards are less, his place on the social ladder is lower, and his children are taught in the schools the necessity of getting out of his class into the society of those who are able to live without working.

It is hardly necessary to remark that in a community dependent for its existence upon labor, the teaching of such a philosophy points the way to class conflict and ultimately to social disintegration. If the community is dependent upon production for its existence, there must be sufficient incentive to continue production, otherwise the community dies.

The disastrous consequences that must of necessity follow on the economic order as it is constituted at the present time are already in evidence,—strikingly so in the case of the European breakdown. The owning class society is coming to an end—falling of its own weight. The time has come when the producers must take the control of the world into their own hands or suffer disaster.

Man's sense of justice tells him that the product should belong to him who is responsible for creating it, and his experience teaches him that human beings take a greater interest in that which is theirs than they take in the property of another. The results of production should go to the producers; the machinery of production and the materials entering into production should belong to those responsible for the carrying on of the productive process. How shall these things be? Only when the producers themselves decide to make them come true.

All power to the producers!

This sentence carries with it the key to the society of the future.



VI. WORLD ADMINISTRATION

1. The Basis for World Administration

When the producers of the world are organized along the lines of their economic activities, and are federated in local, district and divisional federations, and in a world producers' federation, the structural side of the producers society will be complete. Such a structure is built for use, not for appearance, and its effectiveness depends upon the way in which it works. The handling or administration of the producers society is therefore the determining factor in its success. A world producers' society may fail as miserably as any other form of social organization unless it is deliberately utilized to attain the ends for which it was created.

The establishment of a world parliament consisting of representatives from the major industrial groups would create an authority more powerful than that of any existing state because, in the first place, it would be more extensive than any existing state. But even supposing that one of the great nations—Britain or the United States—was to conquer the world and attempt to administer it, the world producers' federation would be far more effective than such a victor, because its rule would be founded on the will and on the consent of the governed and not on the imperial foundation of organized might. The world producers' federation could therefore look for a support from its constituency that no empire could hope to demand from its conquered subjects.

The centralization involved in maintaining the authority of an imperial ruling class in a large and complex state is so great that it invariably results in friction and disaffection. The self-governing state, less efficiently co-ordinated and centralized, still has a far better chance for survival. Its energy-generating centres are so much more numerous and more localized than those of the class governed empire that they necessarily reach a larger share of the population. The roots of the self-governing social group may go no deeper than the roots of the group under a bureaucratic government, but there are more of them, and they go to more places. The foundations are sounder because they are broader.

In addition to these functional advantages of self-government, it possesses an immense asset in the sense of proprietorship that leads the citizens of a self-governing community to stand by the community organization because they feel that they have built it and that it is their own. A self-governing community therefore carries within itself the means of its own perpetuation in the enthusiasm and devotion of its population to an institution in which they feel a sense of workmanship and of the pride of possession.

A world parliament, organized on the basis of self-governing industrial groups, would be unique in two respects. First, in that it was of world extent, and second in that it was built upon the industrial affiliations of its citizenship. If such an organization were handled in a way to hold the allegiance of its constituent members, its decisions on matters of world importance would carry an immense authority.

2. The Field of World Administration

There, in fact, would be the test of world government efficacy—in its ability to leave the handling of local problems to local groups, and to concentrate its energies on the administration of those problems which have assumed a distinctively world scope. Such capacity to understand the difference between the business of local groups and the business of the world organization would be the touchstone of world statesmanship, the criterion by which the master political minds of the age could be tested. The short-sighted, narrow-visioned leader of world affairs would seek to gain and to hold power for himself and for his immediate local interests. The presence of many such men in positions of power would soon split the world government into a series of factions, each one seeking to destroy the others and to take away their authority. Such a competitive stage would represent little advance over the present nationalism.

A world government has no virtue in itself, and may as easily degenerate into a scramble for office as may any other phase of group relationship. Its success would only be possible where its power was strictly limited to the control of those matters that had reached a plane of world importance. Even then success would be impossible unless those responsible for making essential decisions saw the world problems as wholes rather than as localized and separable problems.

Grave issues hang on the method in which the world problems are approached and handled. Success is not assured by any means. Still, the dangers and disadvantages of a plan do not condemn it unless they outweigh the apparent advantages.

The people of the western world face a number of serious problems that cannot be solved by the existing nations. Some step must be taken to cope with the new situation that has followed on the heels of the industrial revolution, and in so far as the actual practices of life have evolved to a world plane, and in so far as they concern the workers in more than one industry, it must be apparent that nothing less than some world authority will suffice to cope with the issues that they present.

A number of economic questions, such as the control of resources and of transport, have already passed beyond the boundary of the individual nation, and have reached a stage of world importance where they can be handled only on a world basis. In the normal course of social evolution, other questions will, in like manner, emerge into a place of world consequence. As rapidly as such developments occur, the administration of the world issues must be delegated to the world parliament and to its appointees and subordinate bodies.

3. Five World Problems

There are a number of problems that have passed beyond the control of any single nation, and that should therefore be made the subject of world administration. Among them are: (1) the control of resources and raw materials, (2) transport (3) exchange, credit and investment, (4) the world economic budget, and (5) adjudication of world disputes. Under a world producers' federation, the administration of these five problems would be in the hands of five administrative boards selected by the executive committee of the world parliament.

Each administrative board would select and organize a staff of experts and specialists in its own field, and would present the outline of its proposed activities to the world parliament very much as the department of a modern government presents its budget to the parliament of its state. This presentation would take place through the executive committee of the world parliament, and it would be necessary to secure the endorsement of that committee before the plan could go before the parliament.

When the plan was approved, the administrative board would begin to function as a part of the machinery of the world producers' federation. Thereafter it would serve as a part of the world administrative mechanism, the working organization of which would remain intact, even should there be a change of policy, in exactly the same way that the department of state or of agriculture, in any modern government, remains intact through the various changes of party in power.

The specialists and experts who made up the staffs of the administrative boards would secure their appointments as the result of civil service examinations, and would continue in their positions until some question arose as to their efficiency. Each administrative board would be organized into a series of departments corresponding with the unit problems coming before the boards, with one specialist or department head charged with the direction of each of these departments. In the raw materials and resources board, for example, there might be one department for each of the more important resources such as coal, iron, copper, cotton, wool, timber, and the like. In the same way, the work of the transport board might be divided into departments covering shipping on the high seas, inland water transport between divisions, inter-divisional land transport, aerial navigation not wholly within one division, and so forth. In each instance, the task of providing an adequate supply of the commodity or an efficient service, would fall to the department or departments involved, while the administrative board itself would sit as a court of last resort, and as a board of strategy for the field in which it was functioning.

The administrative board would thus be a group primarily of experts, charged with the specific task of handling some problem of world moment, and responsible to the board of managers of the world producers' federation for the success of its activities.

4. Work of the Administrative Boards

A separate administrative board would be established to handle each of the important administrative problems confronting the world producers' federation. At the outset there would be such problems as resources, transport, credit and exchange, budget, and the adjudication of disputes affecting more than one division or more than one of the major industrial groups.

It is neither possible nor desirable to draw up a working program for any one of these boards. Such details must be met and solved when the task of administrative work begins. At this point it is only necessary to suggest some of the more important fields in which the boards would operate, and to bring forward typical instances of their functioning.

5. The Resources and Raw Materials Board

The survival of a modern industrial centre like the Manchester District of England or the Lille-Roubaix district of France depends upon the supplies of raw material which it is able to secure from and through other industrial groups. These supplies are in turn dependent upon the available deposits of raw materials, the power, and the fertility of the soil. Raw materials and resources are thus the foundation upon which all productive enterprise is based, and it would be one of the first duties of a producers' society to handle this issue successfully.

Some idea of the extent to which a modern industrial community is dependent for its survival upon imported raw materials may be gained from an examination of the trade figures for Great Britain. In 1920 the total value of British imports was 1,936 millions of pounds sterling. Of this amount, 767 millions (more than a third) were for food, drink and tobacco, while another third (711 millions) were for raw materials. Under these two general headings were included such items as grain and flour 232 millions, meat 142 millions, cotton and cotton waste 257 millions and wool and wool rags 94 millions of pounds sterling. The two main items of food and raw materials, covered more than three quarters of all British imports. (Statesman's Year Book.)

But Britain is a relatively small and very much isolated community, lacking some of the essential resources. It is therefore quite natural that her trade figures should show such a result. The same thing is of course true of Japan, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Italy, France, and in fact most of the important industrial countries. This is taken as a matter of course. Oddly enough, however, it is likewise true of the United States, which is as near to industrial self-sufficiency as any of the leading industrial nations.

Among the 5,278 millions of dollars worth of commodities imported by the United States in 1920, there were 40 million pounds of aluminum, 143 million pounds of rice, 345 million pounds of cocoa and cacao, 1,297 million pounds of coffee, 510 million pounds of hides, 152 million pounds of fresh meat, 603 million pounds of India rubber, 260 million pounds of wool, 510 million pounds of paper stock, 1,460 million pounds of paper, 8,074 million pounds of sugar, 4,459 million gallons of crude oil, 130 million skins, and so on. Here are extensive imports of hides, oil, paper, sugar, coffee, wool and rubber—seven of the most important items of modern commerce. Well supplied as it is with varieties of climate and resources, the United States is nevertheless compelled to import large amounts of some of the most essential raw materials. Like the nations of Europe, it is forced to depend, for these and other industrial essentials, upon portions of the economic world that lie outside the national boundaries.

An examination of these and similar figures tells the story of the industrial future—a story of limited, localized resources upon which the expanding industries will be compelled to make ever increasing demands. Since all of these demands cannot be met there must ensue a ferocious struggle among the nations to secure and hold the resource key to economic advantage. The beginnings of that struggle have already been witnessed in the contest between France and Germany for the coal and iron deposits of Western Europe. Its next stage will include a struggle between Great Britain and the United States for the possession of the world's reserves of oil. Such a struggle, with its appalling toll of suffering and chaos can be obviated in only one way, by an apportionment, among the users, of the chief raw materials, through an agency in whose direction all of those concerned have a share. This result could be accomplished by the resources and raw materials board of the world producers' federation.

The activities of the resources and raw materials board will include:

1. A survey of all available resources and raw materials.

2. A survey of the present consumption of these raw materials.

3. A survey of the present production and of the possible production of these materials.

4. A production budget, assigning to each of the producing areas the amounts of materials that they are responsible for producing.

5. A consumption budget, assigning to the various using areas their quotas of the materials produced.

6. Provision for the increase in production necessary to meet the demands of the consumers of raw materials.

7. Final decisions as to which resources should be used, and for what purposes.

This board would have under its immediate control the destiny of the whole producing world. It would not own the resources any more than the postal department of a government owns the post offices and the mail trucks, but in one case, as in the other, the power to decide on the service to be rendered would rest with the administrative officers.

The need for some central control over the world's resources, and of some clearing house for raw materials seems quite obvious. The world producers' federation faces no more important or pressing issue. In this field alone, through its elimination of sources of conflict and its regularizing of raw material supplies, the world producers' federation could undoubtedly justify its existence.

6. The Transport and Communication Board

The transport and communication board would have jurisdiction over all of those activities involving the transfer of goods, of people and of messages, not wholly within one division. Such a plan has been worked out in part in the United States of America, where commerce between the states (interstate commerce) is under the control of the Federal Government, while commerce wholly within one state is under the control of that state. The same principle, applied to a producers' society, would leave local transport in local hands, while all matters concerning world transport would be under the control of the world producers' federation.

The present economic system depends on the shipment of goods from one point to another. Raw materials are sent from the place of their origin to the fabricating establishment that consumes them. In some cases, these distances are small, but when Cuba sends iron ore to the United States, or when Brazil ships coffee to Europe, or when England sends coal to Italy, the distances are considerable and the means of efficient transport are correspondingly important. The same thing holds true of the marketing of finished products. Many of the goods turned out by the present-day industry—particularly machinery—are very bulky and heavy. Each of the manufacturing nations sells its goods, not only within its own borders, but at the ends of the earth. The transport of goods thus becomes supremely important.

The transport of goods and of people is only one aspect of the work coming under the direction of the transport and communication board. In addition, there would be:

1. The postal system, which is already on a world basis.

2. The express system, which is really only a branch of the postal system, and which is also on a world basis at the present time.

3. Telephone, telegraph and wireless machinery, which are in their very nature wider than the boundaries of one nation, and which are to-day among the chief means of holding the people of the world close together.

The mechanism of transport constitutes a vast net-work of inter-relations that have been carried farther toward a world basis than any other phase of the world's economic life. The nature of ocean transport, of the postal service, of the express service and of the telephone and telegraph made this inevitable. The inventions and discoveries of the past century have worldized transport without the necessity of any intervention from a producer's society.

While the work of the transport and communication board would be of vital consequence, it would be relatively simple, in that it would involve little innovation, but rather the unification and co-ordination of existing agencies.

7. The Exchange, Credit and Investment Board

Many economic writers have characterized the processes of exchange as "non-productive" activities, nevertheless, under the present economic order they lie closer to the seat of power than any other single group of activities. The rise of the banker to his present commanding position is due, primarily, to his control over money, and to his power to issue or to withhold credit. A producers' society may lay far less emphasis on money and its derivatives than does the present system, yet the money function will remain and the money forces will doubtless play some part for a very long period in the new economic order.

Money will owe its position of importance, under a producers' society, to the need for a medium of exchange, and until men discover a means more effective than money for the facilitating of exchange, money will continue to play an economic role.

The inhabitant of a modern industrial community buys many things each day. For the newspaper he spends a penny or two; for the street-car ride, five or ten cents; for fruit, groceries, and other food products, a number of small sums. These transactions, in a country of fifty millions of people, aggregate tens of millions for each day.

There are three possible ways in which such transactions may be carried on: (1) each party may give the other some commodity or service—a bunch of carrots for a street-car ride, a sack of flour for a hat, (2) Money may be employed. (3) A system of book-keeping may be devised, and each purchaser may use a credit card, or some similar device. Barter is impossible. Money is the usual means of facilitating exchange. Bookkeeping, on a scale requisite for all petty transactions would be an immensely intricate mechanism.

The chances are that at the outset, a producers' society will be compelled to follow the practices of present-day economic life, and to distinguish between the two chief uses of money: money as a means of making change and money as a basis for credit.

This distinction has been pretty well established in all parts of the world. The business man buys his morning paper and his lunch with the change that he carries in his pocket. He buys his automobile or his factory building with a check (credit). Money as a means of making change will continue under a producers' society until some more satisfactory means of handling minor transactions is discovered. Money as a basis for credit will be superseded by a system of social book-keeping.

The money used at the present time is based on an amount of some commodity, such as gold. A producers' society will undoubtedly substitute for this commodity base some unit of productive effort—an hour's labor or a day's labor in a given industry. Such an idealized labor production period could be used as a basis for all value computations.

There are a number of requirements for such a value measure:—(1) It must be reasonably stable; (2) it must be generally recognized and accepted; (3) it must be the medium in which all values in all parts of the economic world are calculated.

With a standardized labor unit of value once determined, there would be several methods of procedure. One would be to issue a certificate for each unit of labor performed. The pay-check would then serve as money. Another method would be for the world parliament to issue metal and paper money, using the labor unit instead of gold as the basis of value. In the former case, there would be a labor check, or piece of money in the community for each unit of labor performed. In the latter case, only so much money would be issued as was required for the ordinary purposes of making change. The latter method is the one now in use. The former would represent a distinct step in advance, in that there would be a certificate of purchasing power in the community for each unit of goods and services that was produced. There would be still a third method of handling the problem, by having the world producers' federation issue paper currency stamped with the statement "this is a mark" or "this is a franc," and making it receivable for all legal and public obligations. If the amount of this "fiat" money were carefully regulated, it would probably serve all of the purposes for which money is needed. Whatever its character, it is essential that all money and credit should be publicly issued and under public control.

The first problem confronting the exchange and credit board would be to establish some such generally acceptable standard of value. The chaos now existing in exchange rates is but a foretaste of the difficulties that confront a world which is attempting to carry on economic transactions with scores of different moneys and of differing financial systems.

The exchange and credit board would have three other important fields of activity:

1. The computation of the values produced by the various industrial groups.

This result would be accomplished by establishing a clearing house for reports on production in all industries and in all parts of the world.

2. The financing or exchange of materials between the various producing groups.

This activity is now carried on by the commercial banker, who handles trade acceptances, bills of exchange, and the like. It need be no more than a system of book-keeping, with the balances entered as loans from the industries that produce a surplus to those that are using more than they produce. Such a situation would of necessity be temporary, since the aim of the central authority would be to balance values in such a way that there would be an equilibrium all around, with no surpluses and no deficits. Such an ideal condition would never be reached, but it could be approximated.

3. Transfers of capital, or loans negotiated between various industrial groups, and covering more than one division.

These loans would take the form of adverse balances in the general clearing between producing groups, and would cover the advances for improvements and betterments, that one producing group would make to another, or that the world producers' federation would make to one of the producing groups.

The exchange and credit board would, in reality, be the book-keeping department for the world producers' federation, whose exchange transactions would be planned and handled through this department.

8. The Budget Board

Two principal functions would be performed by the budget board. On the one hand it would be charged with budgeting or planning the transactions involved in the world organization of economic life. This function would include the estimates of the requirements of the major economic groups during a given year, and the estimate of the sources from which these requirements were to be met. On the other hand, it would be responsible for preparing the budget of the world producers' federation, and of deciding upon the course that must be adopted in order to meet these necessary outlays. Thus the board would correspond, in a sense, to the finance committee of a modern parliament or to the department of finance in a modern cabinet.

9. The Adjudication of Disputes Board

The organization of the world producers' federation places before it certain judicial functions. The federation would be called upon to adjudicate:

1. Disputes between any of the industrial groups involving more than one division.

2. Disputes between one of these industrial groups and the world producers' federation.

3. Disputes between various departments of the world producers' federation and its subdivisions.

These functions would devolve upon the adjudication of disputes board, which would constitute a court or committee of review, charged with the duty of hearing issues in dispute before they went to the board of managers, the executive committee and the world parliament for final decision. The adjudication of disputes board would not be, in any sense, a court of last resort. Rather it would be a court of original jurisdiction, sifting out the issues as they arose, and presenting its findings to a higher body. Most of its decisions would, as a matter of routine, be final, but on any issue of importance, the right of final decision would rest in the world parliament, unless that right were assumed by the people through a dissolution of the parliament.

The present governmental system, with its checks and balances—legislative, executive and judiciary—has proved far from satisfactory, since it results either in a deadlock between the various authorities, or else some one of them, as for example, the courts in the United States, assume the final authority. In neither case is it possible for the average man to get to the bottom of the difficulty.

With all the functions of government centering in the world parliament, 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.