The Mud Of The Last Ditch

Stella Block

1996

Published in:

Technocracy Digest, 2nd quarter 1996, No. 320

The Mud Of The Last Ditch

Howard Scott stated, in the Hotel Pierre address (1932), that the time would come when ``the liberal'' (the last resort of the incompetent and stupid), the debt merchant, and the communist, fighting together in defense of a system of advantage......will have little or no solace save the mud of the last ditch wherein they now struggle so valiantly.''

We are now witnessing this strange phenomenon -- exemplified by the current (grotesque) ``presidential campaign.'' The line of demarcation between the two parties has been blurred to near extinction. It is also exemplified by the screaming headlines of the ``downsizing of business'' by layoffs of personnel to secure the profits of corporations. Popular periodicals such as NEWSWEEK and BUSINESS WEEK have used this as their ``cover stories.'' Thousands of white collar workers are no longer catching the early commuter trains into the big cities, while the salaries of CEOs climb into the millions, and the stock market is climbing into the ``wild blue yonder.'' Even the staid NEW YORK TIMES has devoted a series of articles to the ``Downsizing of America'' describing in detail the pain and suffering of the victims of the ``downsizing.'' Why?

In 1933 Howard Scott wrote ``Technology Smashes the Price System'' which was published in a 1933 issue of HARPER'S MAGAZINE The stockmarket crash of 1929 was the massive ``heart attack'' of the Price System. It has been kept alive only by all manner of artificial means: By the order of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, millions of acres of cotton were plowed under; millions of little pigs were killed; mounds of oranges were sprayed with crude oil to make them inedible -- all to maintain scarcity for the benefit of profits for business. World War II was a made-to-order life-line -- production of war materiel for all the Allies, and then some. Hundreds of thousand tons of war material -- tanks, trucks, weapons, etc., etc., were dumped into the Pacific Ocean just to get rid of them. This ordnance was made of non-renewable resources -- then shipped out and dumped. Then came the ``Korean Police Action,'' followed by the Vietnam War -- both very lucrative actions for ``business.'' The wanton, obscene waste of natural resources in all these actions has never been headlined as is the current effects of the ``downsizing of America.'' To keep the record straight, corporations are not the only institutions that are ``downsizing:'' Government, in the tug-of-war between the two political parties, are eliminating whole departments in an effort to ``balance the budget'' and ``cut the Federal bureaucracy.''

What is really going on? At no time in history has the human race faced such a dilemma as it is facing today! Not even the wild animals of prehistoric times of man's beginnings ever posed such a threat to human existence. Man's discovery of the use of fire helped him in his fight for survival against creatures bigger and stronger than he. It took many thousands of years from the discovery of fire, to the use of extraneous energy (Watt's steam engine, 1775) in his struggle against hunger, but it did happen. The development of technology began slowly at first, but it has accelerated to the point where man has become completely dependent on the continuous operation of extraneous energy and technological operation for his survival as a species.

It is a tragic irony of historical proportions that, on this Continent particularly, we have developed our technology to the point where we can provide for every citizen the wherewithal to live comfortably without the age-old fear of starvation and deprivation -- but we face extinction because we cannot let go of old concepts and habits.

-- Stella Block
Continental Headquarters, Technocracy Inc.