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Political Schemes In Industry
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Political Schemes In Industry
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Published in:
- One Big Union Monthly, October, 1920
- The Northwest Technocrat, July 1965, No. 220
- History and Purpose of Technocracy pamphlet.
During the last five years the world has been flooded with two classes of propaganda, one advanced by the capitalistic powers in an effort to maintain the present, or rather to reclaim a previous status quo, and on the other side, one even more intense advanced by radical parties and labor unions in an effort to do away with the present system altogether. The first specie of propaganda necessitates no comment, as the world is in a state of flux, and that which concerns itself with maintaining what already is, is dealing with a dead carcass. So, that which is of primary importance, is that propaganda which is for the purpose of burying the carcass of present systems, and substituting a living mechanism.
There are many programmes of a supposedly radical nature running from the Plum plan to communization. These are infinite in their variations, but their variations are mostly as to how the change shall come about. Their appeal is made to a rather indefinite character, namely, ``the worker.'' Their appeal is made on the grounds of robbery, corruption, and the unethical practices of the present system. Their appeal is made for a change in control to place the worker as the dominant factor and right these ethical wrongs. The kernel of the more radical schemes is the expropriation of the present owners of industry and property. Therefore, all this propaganda busies itself with methods of intriguing the worker as an individual into methods of expropriation and idealistic conceptions of a workers' state.
``Workers of the world unite!'' has come to have as great a political slogan value as ``Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!'' had during the French revolution. It is a fine phrase, but the question is ``Unite for what?'' The unity so far achieved bears no relationship to work. Not that the slogan should not be used; it has its value in an advertising nation. Wilson's ``He kept us out of war'' gained for him sufficient adherents to re-elect him, and to enable him to put us into war. Slogans of the past have either been exhortations or expressions of liberality with spiritual ideas, while slogans of more recent date have gained power for their originators by their proclamation of great material generosity. ``All power to the Soviets!'' and ``Land to the peasants!'' undoubtedly are the greatest gifts that have ever been made, but like all gifts they carry with them no obligation either in use or abuse. ``Labor creates all wealth.'' That human effort produces all is only too obvious. ``To the worker belongs the product of his toil.'' Once again the expression of an ethical right!
Who is ``the worker'' to whom all this propaganda is addressed? In industry today, whether in a steel plant or a hospital (for we are going to call all essential work industries, direct or indirect) the divisions of functional service are four in number. These are (1) manual: consisting of unskilled and skilled labor, mechanic and expert mechanic; (2) clerical: consisting of clerks, accountants, auditors, who in the future should be industrial statisticians; (3) supervisory: consisting of foremen, superintendents and managers, who in the future should be functional supervisors, and not job bosses; and (4) technical: consisting of draughtsmen, inspectors and technicians. This is paralleled in a hospital by elevator operators, ambulance drivers, record clerks, nurses and internes, superintendents, laboratory workers, bacteriologists and consulting experts. In an industrial state the concept of ``the worker'' must include aH of these divisions. Treating the worker apart from his industrial function is appealing to a political entity. We all cease to be workers when we are off the job. Today ``all those who work for wages'' is the definition of ``worker''; whereas industrially it should be ``all those essential to production.'' The advertising man and salesman work for wages, but they perform no function in the producing or distributing of any material. Any scheme proposed as a solution for the present unrest which does not contain within its plan for the operation of industry specifications for increasing the producing power and eliminating all extraneous occupations is a political scheme and doomed to but a brief existence. Any scheme which contemplates the maintenance of present foreign trade is nothing short of political imperialism under another name.
To the economist and theorist the abolition of capitalism is the crucial point. Dealing only with financial wealth and its distribution these people seek their remedy only by making distribution equitable. But the very mechanism of material production and distribution has been built by the capitalistic regime, and its waste of materials and energy surpasses the sum total of its production so that, no matter who comes into possession of the present industrial system, the result will differ little from the operation of today.
Shylock says ``You take my life when you do take the means whereby I live.'' Take from the capitalist his means, or in other words his system, and the capitalist will undoubtedly be relieved of his life as such. But those who take over his means, or system, fall heir to the same methods and inefficiencies, and inevitably to much the same life as they had lived before.
NO CHANGE OR REVOLUTION HOWEVER GREAT FROM THE POLITICAL POINT OF VIEW CAN FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE THE STANDARD OF LIVING UNLESS IT CARRIES WITH IT A CHANGE IN THE BASIC TECHNIQUE.
The guild system of the workers of Great Britain proposes that industry shall be operated by a number of industrial guilds, each guild to be composed of the trade unions engaged in one industry and to be responsible for its product, the health of its workers, and the maintenance of its material equipment. During operation the workers in a guild are paid a national basic, or minimum wage. Their goods are sold in the open market to individuals or other guilds. Cost and maintenance are subtracted from the proceeds, and the surplus is distributed pro rata among the workers in the guild. Although the guildsman call the guilds industrial, a perspective of one of them shows that they are rather a heterogeneous collection of several industries and associated trades. For instance they have garment, fur, shoe and artificial flower factories in one guild called the clothing guild. Another guild is comprised of what is known in Great Britain as the engineering trades, including ship building, locomotive building, machine building of all kinds and all repair machinists. The conception of a guildsman is of a guild parliament sitting in England, wherein representatives of all free governing dominions of the British Empire are represented, maintaining the present position of Great Britain as the world's industrial middleman. Canada and Australia are treated as subjective industrial entities, to be directed by the industrial policies of the guilds of Great Britain. Of course India and other colonies, not being self governing, would have no representation. The producers would be represented by the industrial guild to which they belong, the consumers by a political state parliament which is the supreme national executive body. It will be seen that while the guilds will appropriate the means of production and distribution from their present owners, they are still imperialistic in that they would attempt to maintain the political organization of the British Empire, thereby retarding the industrial development of other countries, and causing the exploitation of other workers. Within the guild itself, while admitting that employment could be made more regular, and housing and sanitary conditions could be much improved, the basis of production remains a capitalistic one in that they are producing for sale in the open market, subject to price fluctuation. Though the surplus profit returns to the workers, the productivity varies so enormously in different industries that in spite of a basic wage, incomes would vary tremendously, creating a new capitalist class. They would use the same monetary system and the same banking system, the same internal fiscal policy of the state, in that taxes would be levied on the guilds by parliament, and the guilds would act as tax collectors to their individual members. They can employ their technicians and managers, etc. on any agreement which the individual guild cares to make. Any process or invention is submitted to the guild and purchased by them if found desirable. Thus the guild is not a complete complement of industrial workers and is not obligated to accept any improvement.
The British textile guild would go on importing raw cotton and manufacturing it into goods and in turn exporting it abroad. The same treatment would be accorded silk and wool. Today, Great Britain has 46 percent of the world's cotton producing spindles, whereas her consuming capacity is less than 18 percent. She is entirely dependent for the large percentage of her cotton upon United States. Great Britain is some three thousand five hundred miles from our cotton growing region, and the industrial question naturally arises ``Are the other industrial countries going to continue to pay tribute to either the British worker or the British capitalist to manufacture their cotton goods for them?''
The production factors in the fabrication of raw cotton into finished goods are relatively similar in United States and Great Britain. As both the transportation of cotton and its manufacture are dependent upon power, and as Great Britain is dependent upon coal as her source of power, it is evident that, as power from coal costs three and one-half times more in Great Britain than it does here, industrially it costs more to produce cotton cloth in Great Britain than it does here. This is not financial cost, but what the engineer calls production cost. Let us see what the respective coal production costs amount to in the two countries.
In Great Britain there are 1,200,000 coal miners producing only 226 tons per man per year. In United States we have approximately 760,000 coal miners producing 794 tons per man per year. It is self-evident that, barring a period of transition to a new order, Great Britain cannot afford to support 1,200,000 men for mining coal for the purpose of maintaining foreign trade. Neither could any other country pay their upkeep. The coal mines of both Great Britain and this country are demanding attention. In both countries similar schemes have come to light. Neither nationalization, coal guild, nor communization deal with ton-hour production per man, nor do they take into consideration the present methods of using coal, which utilizes only one-sixteenth of its value. To technically utilize coal necessitates not only a change in the methods of coal mining, but also affects all transportation and present power plants. It would mean the creation of new industries, and the elimination, wholly or in part, of old ones. This is illustrated very aptly in the United States where 34 percent of the freight load of our railroads is coal. The elimination of all coal transportation is not only scientifically possible, but technically inevitable. Here arises the prospect of a well-to-do railroad guild and a prosperous coal guild being confronted with the fact that the rest of industry will not tolerate a lowering of its standard of living by maintaining a railroad guild one hundred percent overmanned, and a coal guild five hundred percent overmanned.
Today, the peasants of France are preventing France from entering a new period of industrial progression. The peasants of Russia provide for themselves, but do little more than that. These are examples of groups of workers who persist in a method of production which, although they prefer it, is nevertheless the result of that deadliest of industrial diseases, stagnation. The medieval guilds and the pueblo communes all achieved craftsmanship, equitable distribution of food, clothing and shelter, and equitable working participation, and died because they persisted in holding the proprietary rights of function inviolate. From time immemorial, when any group has achieved craftsmanship and tolerable living conditions, the group has always attempted, by enforcing numerous regulations, to prohibit any change or improvement in the functional sequence to which they have become accustomed in their trade. They have sought by all means in their power to make functional ownership as great a vested interest as entailed property. They have striven to pass their craft on from father to son, even practicing this today in India and China, where the same method is being taught to apprentices as was taught four hundred years ago. Private property is dangerous because it prohibits complete utilization of material resources. Functional ownership is even more dangerous in-as-much as it prohibits any improvement either in the use of material resources or human effort.
Political history records that men are voted into positions, but it does not record men ever voting themselves out of positions. Any group of men which forms itself into a body to control the processes of an industry does not vote in a new process whereby they would automatically be voting the major part of the group out of that industry. The coal miners of Great Britain, although they are insisting upon nationalization, and although it is admitted that under the present regime they cannot achieve any fundamental change in the methods of coal mining and coal use, still are demanding something which, under the present system or a future one, would amount to nothing more than a slightly higher standard of living for themselves as individuals. It is inconceivable that miners organized into a militant body would democratically vote into existence another system of coal mining and coal use whereby nine-tenths of their present organization would have to be given employment in other industries.
Today, the world over, all programmes for a new order content themselves with the advocating of a mere shift of control. All of them preserve the present industrial entities. All of them propose to maintain the present lines of trade. The majority of labor organizations are not capable of operating industry. There are a few that are capable of operating it as well as the capitalist, but that is not sufficient. There are none that can operate and coordinate the present producing mechanism with the needed accompaniment of a change of technique. A reply is often made to the statement of this condition, to wit, ``The workers will acquire the knowledge and the organization after they come into 'power'.'' In Russia, where 92 percent of the population are peasants, and where there is only a young industrial development, a dislocation of industry, while serious in itself, does not bring starvation to any large percentage of the people. In United States, to attempt to acquire an operating knowledge of an industry and an organization after the change would be preparing for a birth while the autopsy was already being carried on. The interdependence of industry with industry is such that the absence of a producing organization capable of directing and operating industry would bring about nothing short of chaos and dissolution. We have no such organizations not even the proper nucleus of one, and yet the propaganda for change goes on. The organizations of the present enlist either those who profess a belief or the worker as an individual. There exists no industrial organization wherein members function in a similar capacity to that in which they work. This is best illustrated by the man who, when asked at a meeting what group he represented, said that he was a socialist, and from whom was finally dragged the information that he was a stevedore, and represented the stevedores as such. A Steinmetz may join any one of a number of labor organizations as an individual, but there is no organization of workers which he could join in his industrial capacity of research technologist of the equipment division of the power industry.
The glass blowers, some years ago, possessed a very strong union and were very highly paid. They attempted to maintain their union and the old form of glass blowing in the face of a new industrial process. The process won, and the process will always win eventually. Today, it throws men out of jobs, but in the future every improved process will raise the standard of living and increase mens' leisure. Today, there is not a single industry which cannot be revolutionized by processes already proven. Technical science has traveled so far ahead of the industrial order that, if only that which is already known were applied, its effects would be farther reaching and more fundamental than any political change could dream of accomplishing.