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A Christian Society

Leslie Bounds

1946

Published in:

• The Technocrat, April 1946, No. 113

Scanned in and lightly proofread by trent.

Despite the title, this is not an article on religion. Nor is it an attack on any religious belief or creed. Rather, it is an attempt to show how, illogical it is to attempt to establish what we are pleased to call `A Christian Society' in an economy where the rule is not the `Golden Rule,' but `Every fellow for himself and the devil take the hindmost.' For that is the type of society in which we live today. Of course, some will deny the accuracy of that statement and claim that all we need is some moral reconversion and all will be well. Well, we are not going to argue about it, but anyone who will take the trouble to examine the nature of our social economy will see that it is impossible to practice what we call `Christian principles' when it is becoming harder every day to chisel a bare existence.

One of the outstanding exponents of Christian social reconstruction is the Archbishop of Canterbury, who once horrified the British Chancellor of the Exchequer by suggesting that a budget surplus should be given to the unemployed rather than used to reduce taxes. At one time Archbishop Temple set forth six propositions for a Christian society. Technocracy has no quarrel with any of them; in fact, we are heartily in accord with them, and are using every effort to assure their realization for all Americans. However, these lofty ideals will never be realized as long as we cling to the obsolete social order which is America's Price System. They can, on the other hand, quickly become an integral part of the lives of all Americans once we install the scientific social design of the American Technate--the design which Technocracy indicates as the next most probable state of society on the North American Continent.

Let us consider the propositions offered by the Archbishop and analyze them in the light of the improbability of their realization under our present social structure. The first one states:

Every child should find itself a member of a family housed with decency and dignify.

In the light of existing housing conditions throughout America, this proposition sounds almost ludicrous. With millions of our children housed in crowded tenements in slum areas, in trailers, shacks, abandoned chicken coops, army barracks and many other makeshifts that offer nothing more than bare shelter, to talk of decency and dignity is to make a mockery of those terms. President Truman has recently outlined a housing program covering a two-year period, during which 2,700,000 new homes for veterans are to be built. Anyone who has been having trouble getting a little lumber for needed repairs might wonder where the materials are coming from for such an ambitious program, but anyway it is a good idea. A system of subsidies will guarantee the necessary profit which, of course, is the required incentive for private enterprise to go ahead. It seems extremely doubtful that Congress will permit any price ceilings on old buildings so everybody in the real estate business ought to be very happy over the whole thing. Our veterans will be permitted to go into debt in order to finance these new homes and that will be good for the banking fraternity.

Now let us take a look at the figures submitted by Wilson Wyatt, housing administrator. Married veterans who will need homes by December, says Mr. Wyatt, total 2,900,000. Others who will marry and need homes by the end of this year number 560,000, making a total of 3,460,000. Deduct from this total 945,000 vacancies caused by dissolution of families and the net additional homes needed by the end of 1946 is 2,515,000. The total needed by the end of 1947 will be 3,195,000. In other words. the President's program will just about offset the demand of new families being established. Not a word is said about those millions of Americans now living in sub-standard homes. Are these to be forgotten? Is our Christian society going to condemn these millions to a lifetime of squalor and poverty? What about this 'decency and dignity' Archbishop Temple mentions?

Apparently the Archbishop concedes, by implication, the lack of a Christian society at the present time because certainly no one could say the unfortunate children of families living under such conditions are housed with `decency and dignity.' That happy condition must await the arrival of a new social design in America, when price and profit no longer decide whether we live in `decency and dignity' or in poverty and squalor. America as the resources and the engineering capacity to house adequately every American family in `decency and dignity.' How long are the wives and mothers of this nation going to endure conditions which compel even one family to live in any other way?

Every child should have an opportunity or education up to maturity.

Here. again, our present society fails to measure up to specifications. True, we have far greater opportunities for education than we ever had before but we still fall far short of this suggested requirement for a Christian society. As we have pointed out on previous occasions, education today is limited, like everything else, by the purchasing power available, either of the community or of the individual. It cannot, by the very nature of Price System methods operation, be free to every citizen. Building materials for schools cost money; teachers must be paid salaries; books must be purchased; and all of these items must be provided for out of the public purse. Students desiring to go on to college and university must provide their own financing or the parents must foot the bills. Too frequently it happens that a boy or girl must leave school and go to work in order to aid the family financially. In short, we do not yet have the kind of society in which we can guarantee our children opportunity for education up to maturity. Here, again, we fail in Archbishop Temple's conception of a Christian society.

Yet there is no reason why we should continue to fail because the `makings' of that type of society are at our disposal right now. We have only to conform to the demands of a technological society and install a social design compatible with our present scientific and technological development. Sooner or later we will have to install that design in order to avert social chaos, so why the delay?

In the social design of Technocracy you will find the specifications for the complete education of every citizen up to maturity. The first 25 years will be devoted to education and training for some functional capacity in one of the industrial or service sequences. The energy cost of operating this educational sequence would be part of the Continental overhead and would cost the individual nothing. It would be rendered as a national service just as the fire and police protection one would receive, or the public health service--not because of any Christian principles but because illiterates cannot operate successfully the highly complex structure of modern civilization in America. And so we would see once again the realization of what we call Christian principles, not because of any religious beliefs or ideologies, but because that happens to be the only way modern civilization in America can be operated successfully.

Every citizen should have sufficient income to make a home and bring up his children properly.

We could write a series of articles enlarging on this theme. For the present, however, we must content ourselves with pointing out that mass chasing power in America steadily declines as our technological installations increase. That is just another way of saying that the more machines we use, the fewer men are necessary to produce the things we need. Wages and salaries are paid for man-hours of human labor and the trend in America is toward fewer man-hours in industry. Only a comparatively small percentage of the population receives sufficient purchasing power, to `make a home and bring up their children properly.'

And how much can we purchase with our steadily declining income? With every passing month we find our purchasing power dwindling. Wages may remain the same or even increase but is how much we can buy with our money that determines our standard of living. And the cost of living is steadily rising. Food, clothing and shelter all are going up. It is not so bad when wages can be raised accordingly but this only means added costs of production and increased prices. The costs of production can be lowered by the installation of more automatic machinery but this, in turn, means increased unemployment.

There is another large group in our national economy that suffers increasingly from the rising cost of living. This group is made up of those living on pensions, salaries fixed by law, investments and so on. Pensions, at best mere pittances, have not been increased; salaries fixed by law usually need constitutional amendments to change and, while some have been adjusted, the increases have not been sufficient to make much difference. Incomes from investments have, for the most part, declined due to lowering interest rates and high corporate taxes. Many of the stockholders of large corporations are `little people' who own, on the average, only a few shares each. High taxes and increased wages have been used as an excuse to reduce dividends in many cases, causing considerable hardship among small stockholders. In short, the late President Roosevelt's statement that one-third of our nation is ill-housed, ill-fed and ill-clothed still holds good, and if Archbishop Temple's Christian society is to be realized it will have to be outside the limitations of America's Price System.

In a functional society, possessed of natural resources and automatic machinery such as we have in America, the abundance of physical wealth resulting from mass production methods of operation can be so great that a differentiation of income actually becomes a handicap. Under such conditions the best way of distributing income is equally to every citizen within the operating area that society. When this is done every man, woman and child in America will have more than it is convenient to use. At last the Archbishop's third specification for a Christian society will be realized: every citizen will have sufficient income to make a home and bring up his children properly. Poverty will no longer exist in America.

Every citizen should be guaranteed freedom of worship, speech, assembly and association.

This is the only one of the Archbishop suggestions that we even approach in our present society. Yet freedom of speech is rather an empty phrase when, in many instances, a rigidly controlled press prevents what we might have to say from being heard. Let us realize that here, again, we see the interference controls of the Price System in active operation. An outstanding example of how this control is exercised is shown in the subject of Technocracy itself. How often do you read, in your large metropolitan papers, of any activity of this Organization? Even a mass public meeting in Hollywood Bowl does not rate more than a line or two, if that much. The reason, of course, is that Technocracy is not a pleasant subject in the exclusive circles of business and finance and it just isn't mentioned. The newspapers, of course, play ball with these groups because it is from those sources that they derive most of their revenue and they can't afford to antagonize them.

And in most of our colleges and universities can a professor discuss or present, in any way, the subject of Technocracy? With few exceptions, he cannot. If he did, he would quickly find himself out in the cold, cruel world, without a job. The, college authorities cannot afford to offend the banking interests, who, perhaps, have loaned them money and hold notes or mortgages. They, too, must play ball.

We use the example of Technocracy only to illustrate our point. The press in a Price System must look out for its own interests and the kind of news or editorial policy which best serves that interest is the kind of news we get. Quite frequently it is distorted and colored to serve the interests of a pressure group. That group may be a political party, a labor union, a religious denomination, an industry or business, or any of a hundred or more individual or group interests. Very seldom does a newspaper take up a fight in the best interests of all Americans. It cannot afford to do so.

An excellent instance is being shown to us today in the increasing propaganda designed to create distrust and hatred for Soviet Russia. Well, now that World War II is over, we are in a mess from an economic standpoint. Another war will provide markets for our heavy industries and the problem will be solved. As Technocracy has frequently pointed out, the Price System, at the point to which it has now arrived, can survive only through the medium of vast government spending and what better means of forcing that spending than another war? And that `nasty' word `communism' makes Soviet Russia a natural for the artists of propaganda and lies.

But in the American Technate, when our newspapers will probably be operated by the communications sequence, with no interests to be served other that those of the American people themselves, we will see a very different picture. Facts can then be presented without the ever-present danger, in a Price System, of stepping on someone's toes. There will be only be editorial policy: the presentation of factual information.

Archbishop Temple's fifth suggestion for what he considers a Christian society is one toward which labor unions made considerable progress in the past few years. This suggestion is that:

Every worker should have a voice in the conduct of the business or industry in which he works.

But here again let us note the wide difference in `having a voice in business and industry' today and having a voice in the operation of your own industrial or service sequence in a Technate. In asking for a voice in industry today are we in any way concerned with anything beyond what we ourselves make in a financial way out of that industry or business? Are we concerned with the quality of the product or the effectiveness of the service?

In a Price System, we must remember always that quick turnover of merchandise is necessary in order to assure a good return on the original investment. But in the social operation of a Technate the reverse is true. Here it is to the best interests of the worker. who, incidentally, would be personally responsible for doing everything possible to assure the greatest degree of efficiency in his particular operation, to turn out the best product science and engineering skill can devise. The less turnover of merchandise, the less human labor would be necessary, but without loss of purchasing power as is the case now when human labor is not needed.

And so once again we see the conflict between our present social system and what we call Christianity. In many cases today, the worker does have a voice in management, but it is a very weak and ineffective voice and can never have any effect in providing the best product or service which it is possible to produce. In the scientific operation of the Technate, however, he will be expected to do everything in his power to raise the standards of production in the sequence in which he works.

The sixth and last of Archbishop Temple's suggestions which we will analyze can be quickly disposed of. It is right in line with possibilities seen by almost every scientist and engineer.

Every citizen should have sufficient leisure-two days' rest in seven and an annual holiday with pay.

Why stop at two days' rest? Engineers will tell you that it is possible, with our present automatic machinery, to cut necessary human labor to about four hours a day and four days a week for most workers. But what would happen in a Price System if we attempted anything like that? If we increased wages to twice what they are now we would still average only about $35 a week each. In other words, most of us would still have a very low standard of living. Private enterprise could not possibly divide the work among the entire working population; pay enough for a high standard of living and still come out on top with a profit. And yet we know that 16 hours a week is all the human labor necessary to operate our various industries and services. Obviously in order to take advantage of that possibility we must install a `new kind of social system differing from any existing today' The design of that system is what we call Technocracy--a Government of Function-- in which politics, finance and business have no part, and in which all our industries and services will be streamlined into functional sequences for the purpose of producing the physical goods we use and for providing all necessary utilities and services. The distributive system will be designed in such a way that every citizen will receive an abundance of goods and services without price or profit. Few of us will need to work more than four hours a day, four days a week for 165 days a year. Would that leave you sufficient rest and vacation for you?

So here, if you agree with Archbishop Temple's ideas, is your Christian society. After 2000 year of talking about it, we can now achieve it. Install the functional design of Technocracy and your Christian society comes into existence automatically... You won't get it by merely wishing of hoping for it, or by any program aimed at moral reconversion. You can get it only by first understanding the conditions which make it necessary to our continued existence; then by joining the Organization which has the blueprint for that kind of society and working diligently to achieve it. Join Technocracy now!