Towards the Great Peace - Ralph Adams Cram
Assuming that this is so, two questions arise: what is to take the place
of imperial industry, and how is this substitution to be brought about?
I think the answer to the first is: a social and industrial system based
on small, self-contained, largely self-sufficing units, where supply
follows demand, where production is primarily for use not profit, and
where in all industrial operations some system will obtain which is more
or less that of the guilds of the Middle Ages. I should like to go into
this a little more in detail before trying to answer the second
question.
The normal social unit is a group of families predominantly of the same
race, territorially compact, of substantially the same ideals as
expressed in religion and the philosophy of life, and sufficiently
numerous to provide from within itself the major part of those things
which are necessary to physical, intellectual and spiritual well-being.
It should consist of a central nucleus of houses, each with its garden,
the churches, schools and public buildings that are requisite, the
manufactories and workshops that supply the needs of the community, the
shops for sale of those things not produced at home, and all necessary
places of amusement. Around this residential centre should be sufficient
agricultural land to furnish all the farm products that will be consumed
by the community itself. The nucleus of habitation and industry,
together with the surrounding farms, make up the social unit, which is
to the fullest possible degree, self-contained, self-sufficient and
self-governing.
Certain propositions are fundamental, and they are as follows: Every
family should own enough land to support itself at need. The farms
included in the unit must produce enough to meet the needs of the
population. Industry must be so organized that it will normally serve
the resident population along every feasible line. Only such things as
cannot be produced at home on account of climatic or soil limitations
should be imported from outside. All necessary professional services
should be obtainable within the community itself. All financial
transactions such as loans, credits, banking and insurance should be
domestic. Surplus products, whether agricultural, industrial or
professional, should be considered as by-products, and in no case should
the producing agency acquire such magnitude that home-consumption
becomes a side issue and production for profit take the place of
production for use.
All this is absolutely opposed to our present system, but our present
system is wasteful, artificial, illogical, unsocial, and therefore
vicious. I have said enough as to the falsities, the dangers and the
failures of bulk-production through the operations of capitalism, the
factory system and advertising, but its concomitant, the segregation of
industries, is equally objectionable. To ship hogs 1,500 miles to be
slaughtered and packed in food form, and then ship this manufactured
product back to the source from which the raw material came; to feed a
great city with grain, potatoes and fruits coming from 1,000 to 3,000
miles away, and vegetables from a distance of several hundred miles,
while the farms within a radius of fifty miles are abandoned and barren;
to make all the shoes for the nation in one small area, to spin the wool
and cotton and weave the cloth in two or three others; to make the
greater part of the furniture in one state, the automobiles in a second
and the breakfast food in a third, is so preposterous a proposition that
it belongs in Gulliver's Travels, not in the annals of a supposedly
intelligent people. The only benefit is that which for a time accrued to
the railways, which carted raw materials and finished products back and
forth over thousands of miles of their lines, the costs of shipment and
reshipment being naturally added to the price to the consumer. The
penalties for this uneconomic procedure were borne by society at large,
not only in the increased costs but through the abnormal communities,
each with its tens of thousands of operatives all engaged in the same
work and generally drawn from foreign races (with the active
co-operation of the steamship lines), and the permanent dislocation of
the labour supply, together with the complete disruption of the social
synthesis.
With production for profit and segregation of industries has come an
almost infinitesimal division and specialization of labour. Under a
right industrial system this would be reduced, not magnified. The
dignity of labour and the joy of creation demand that in so far as
possible each man should carry through one entire operation. This is of
course now, and always has been under any highly developed civilization,
impossible in practice, except along certain lines of art and
craftsmanship. The evils of the existing system can in a measure be done
away with the moment production for use is the recognized law, for it is
only in bulk-production that this intensive specialization can be made
to pay. Bulk-production there will always be until, and if, the world is
reorganized on the basis of an infinite number of self-contained social
units, but in the ideal community--and I am dealing now with ideals--it
would not exist.
Allied with this is the whole question of the factory method and the use
and misuse of machinery. It seems to me that the true principle is that
machinery and the factory are admissible only when so employed they
actually do produce, in bulk operations, a better product, and with less
labour, than is possible through hand work. Weaving, forging and all
work where human action must be more or less mechanical, offer a fair
field for the machine and the factory, but wherever the human element
can enter, where personality and the skilled craft of the hand are given
play, the machine and the factory are inadmissible. The great city,
creation of "big business," segregation of industries, advertising,
salesmanship and a hundred other concomitants of modernism, have built
up an abnormal and avaricious demand for bulk-production along lines
where the handicraft should function. It becomes necessary--let us
say--to provide a million dollars worth of furniture for a ten million
dollar hotel (itself to be superseded and scrapped in perhaps ten years)
and naturally only the most intensive and efficient factory system can
meet this demand. Rightly, however, the furniture of a community should
be produced by the local cabinet makers, and so it should be in many
other industries now entirely taken over by the factory system.
For the future then we must consciously work for the building upward
from primary units, so completely reversing our present practice of
creating the big thing and fighting hopelessly to preserve such small
and few doles of liberty and personality as may be permitted to filter
downward from above. This is the only true democracy, and the thing we
call by the name is not this, largely because we have bent our best
energies to the building up of vast and imperial aggregates which have
inevitably assumed a complete unity in themselves and become dominating,
tyrannical and ruthless forces that have operated regardless of the
sound laws and wholesome principles of a right society. Neither the
vital democracy of principle nor the artificial democracy of practice
can exist in conjunction with imperialism, whether this is established
in government, in industry, in trade, in society or in education.
If we can assume, then, the gradual development of a new society in
which these principles will be carried out, a society that is made up of
social units of human scale, self-contained, self-supporting and
self-governed, where production is primarily for use not profit, and
where bulk-production is practically non-existent, the sub-division of
labour reduced to the lowest practicable point, machinery employed to a
much less extent than now, and the factory system abolished, what
organic form will labour take on in place of that which now obtains? It
is possible to forecast this only in the most general terms, for life
itself must operate to determine the lines of development and dictate
the consequent forms. If we can acquire a better standard of comparative
values, and with a clearer and more fearless vision estimate the rights
and wrongs of the contemporary system, rejecting the ill thing and
jealously preserving, or passionately regaining, the good, we shall be
able to establish certain broad, fundamental and governing principles,
and doing this we can await in confidence the evolution of the organic
forms that will be the working agencies of the new society.
I have tried to indicate some of the basic principles of a new society.
The operating forms, so far as industry is concerned, will, I think,
follow in essential respects the craft-guilds of the Middle Ages. They
will not be an archaeological restoration, as some of the English
protagonists of this great revolution seem to anticipate, they will be
variously adapted to the peculiar conditions of a new century, but the
basic principles will be preserved. Whatever happens, I am sure it will
not be either a continuation of the present system of capitalism and
profit-hunting, or nationalization of industries, or state socialism in
any form, or anything remotely resembling Bolshevism, syndicalism or a
"dictatorship of the proletariat." Here, as in government, education and
social relations, the power and the authority of the state must decline,
government itself withdrawing more and more from interference with the
operation of life, and liberty find its way back to the individual and
to the social and economic groups. We live now under a more tyrannical
and inquisitorial regime, in spite of (partly perhaps because of) its
democratic forms and dogmas, than is common in historical records.
Nationalization or state socialism would mean so great a magnifying of
this condition that existence would soon become both grotesque and
intolerable. We must realize, and soon, that man may lose even the last
semblance of liberty, as well under a nominal democracy as under a
nominal despotism or theocracy.
The guild system was the solution of the industrial problem offered and
enforced by Christianity working through secular life; it presupposed
the small social and industrial unit and becomes meaningless if
conceived in the gigantic and comprehensive scale of modern
institutions. "National guilds" is a contradiction in terms: it takes on
the same element of error that inheres in the idea of "one big union."
In certain respects the Christian guild resembled the modern trade
union, but it differed from it in more ways, and it seems to be true
that wherever this difference exists the guild was right and the union
is wrong. Community of fellowship and action amongst men of each craft
trade or calling is essential under any social system, good or bad, and
it would be inseparable from the better society that must sometime grow
up on the basis of the unit of human scale, for these autonomous groups,
in order to furnish substantially all that their component parts could
require, would have to be of considerable size as compared with the
little farming villages of New England, though in contrast with the
great cities of modernism they would be small indeed. In these new
"walled towns" there would be enough men engaged in agriculture, in the
necessary industrial occupations, in trade and in the professions to
form many guilds of workable size, and normally these guilds would
neither contain members of two or more professions or occupations, nor
those from outside the community itself. The guild cannot function under
intensive methods of production or where production is primarily for
profit, or where the factory system prevails, or where capitalism is the
established system, or under combinations, trusts or other devices for
the establishing and maintenance of great aggregates tending always
towards monopoly. However much we may admire the guild system and desire
its restoration, we may as well recognize this fact at once. The
imperial scale must go and the human scale be restored before the guild
can come back in any general sense.
I am assuming that this will happen, either through conscious action on
the part of the people or as the result of catastrophe that always
overtakes those who remain wedded to the illusions of falsity. On this
assumption what are these enduring principles that will control the
guild system of industry in the new State, however may be its form?
The answer is to be found in the old guilds, altars, shrines, vestments
and sacred vessels were given in incredible quantities for the
furnishing and embellishment of the chapel or church; funds also for the
maintenance of priestly offices especially dedicated to the guild.
Closely allied with the religious spirit was that of good-fellowship and
merrymaking. Every sort of feast and game and pageant was a part of the
guild system, as it was indeed of life generally at this time when men
did not have to depend upon hired professional purveyors of amusement
for their edification. What they wanted they did themselves, and this
community in worship and community in merrymaking did more even than the
merging of common material interests, to knit the whole body together
into a living organism.
In how far the old system can be revived and put into operation is a
question. Certainly it cannot be adopted as a fad and imposed on an
unwilling society as a clever archaeological restoration. It will have
to grow naturally out of life itself and along lines at present hardly
predicable. There are many evidences that just this spontaneous
generation is taking place. The guild system is being preached widely in
England where the defects of the present scheme are more obvious and the
resulting labour situation--or rather social situation--is more fraught
with danger than elsewhere, and already the restoration seems to have
made considerable headway. I am convinced, however, that the vital
aspects of the case are primarily due to the interior working of a new
spirit born of disillusionment and the undying fire in man that flames
always towards regeneration; what the ardent preaching of the
enthusiastic protagonists of the crusade best accomplishes is the
creation in the minds of those not directly associated with the movement
of a readiness to give sympathy and support to the actual accomplishment
when it manifests itself. Recently I have come in contact here in
America with several cases where the workmen themselves have broken away
from the old ways and have actually established what are to all intents
and purposes craft-guilds, without in the least realizing that they were
doing this.
I think the process is bound to continue, for the old order has broken
down and is so thoroughly discredited it can hardly be restored. If time
is granted us, great things must follow, but it is increasingly doubtful
if this necessary element of time can be counted on. Daily the situation
grows more menacing. Capital, which so long exploited labour to its own
fabulous profit, is not disposed to sit quiet while the fruits of its
labours and all prospects of future emoluments are being dissipated, and
it is hard at work striving to effect a "return to normalcy." In this it
is being unconsciously aided by the bulk of union labour which,
encouraged by the paramount position it achieved during the war,
influenced by an avarice it may well have learned from its former
masters, as narrow in its vision as they, and increasingly subservient
to a leadership which is frequently cynical and unscrupulous and always
of an order of character and intelligence which is tending to lower and
lower levels, is alienating sympathy and bringing unionism into
disrepute. In the United States the tendency is steadily towards a very
dangerous reactionism, with a corresponding strengthening of the radical
element which aims at revolution, and that impossible thing, a
proletarian dictatorship. It is this latter which is rampant and at
present unchecked in Europe, and this also is a constant menace to the
success of those sane and righteous movements which take their lead from
the guild system of the Middle Ages. A third danger, but one which is
constantly on the decline at present, partly because of the general
disrepute of governments and partly because of the enormous accessions
of power now accruing both to reactionism and radical revolutionism, or
"Bolshevism," is state socialism or nationalization, which leaves
untouched all the fatal elements in industrialism while it changes only
the agents of administration. The complete collapse of able and
constructive and righteous leadership, which is one of the startling
phenomena of modernism, has left uncontrolled the enormous energy that
has been released during the last three generations, and this is working
blindly but effectively towards a cataclysm so precipitate and
comprehensive that it is impossible not to fear that it may determine
long before the sober and informed elements in society have accomplished
very much in the recovery and establishment of sound and righteous
principles and methods.
Of course we can compass whichever result we will. We may shut our eyes
to the omens and let matters drift to disaster, or we may take thought
and council and avert the penalty that threatens us; the event is in our
own hands. It is as criminal to foresee and predict only catastrophe as
it is to compass this through lethargy, selfishness and illusion. We are
bound to believe that righteousness will prevail, even in our own time,
and believing this, what, in general terms will be the construction of
the new system that must take the place of industrialism?
I have already indicated what seem to me the fundamental ideas as: the
small social unit that is self-sustaining; production primarily for use,
cooeperation in place of competition; a revived guild system with the
abolition of capitalism, exploitation and intensive specialization as we
now know these dominant factors in modern civilization. In the
application of these principles there are certain innovations that will,
I think, take place, and these may be listed somewhat as follows:
Land holding will become universal and the true proletariat or landless
class will disappear. It may be that the holding of land will become a
prerequisite to active citizenship. Industrial production being for use
not profit, the great city becomes a thing of the past, and life is
rendered simpler through the elimination of a thousand useless and
vicious luxuries; those employed in mechanical industries will be
incalculably fewer than now, while those that remain will give only a
portion of their time to industrial production, the remainder being
available for productive work on their own gardens and farms. The
handicrafts will be restored to their proper place and dignity, taking
over into creative labour large numbers of those who otherwise would be
sacrificed to the factory system. Where bulk production, as in weaving
and the preparation and manufacturing of metals, is economical and
unavoidable and carried on by factory methods, these manufactories will
probably be taken over by the several communities (not by the state as a
whole) and administered as public institutions for the benefit of the
community and under conditions and regulations which ensure justice and
well-being to the employees. All those in any community engaged in a
given occupation, as for example, building, will form one guild made up
of masters, journeymen and apprentices, with the same principles and
much the same methods as prevailed under the ancient guild system.
Fluctuating scales of prices determined by fluctuating conditions of
competition, supply and demand, and power of coercion, will give place
to "the fair price" fixed by concerted community action and revised from
time to time in order to preserve a right balance with the general scale
of cost of raw materials and cost of living. A maximum of returns in the
shape of profits or dividends will be fixed by law. The community itself
will undertake the furnishing of credits, loans and necessary capital
for the establishing of a new business, charging a small rate of
interest and maintaining a reserve fund to meet these operations.
Private banking, insurance and the loaning of money on collateral will
cease to exist.
I dare say this will all sound chimerical and irrational in the extreme;
I do not see it in that light. Its avowed object is the supersession of
"big business" in all its phases by something that comes down to human
scale. It aims to reduce labour and divide it more evenly by making the
great mass of non-producers--those engaged in distribution,
salesmanship, advertising, propaganda, and the furnishing of things
unnecessary to the bodily, intellectual and spiritual needs of
man--actual producers and self-supporting to a very large extent. It
aims at restoring to work some sense of the joy in creation through
active mind and hand. It aims at the elimination of the parasitic
element in society and of that dangerous factor which subsists on wealth
it acquires without earning, and by sheer force of its own opulence
dominates and degrades society. It does not strike at private ownership,
but rather exalts, extends and defends this, but it _does_ cut into all
the theories and practices of communism and socialism by establishing
the principle and practice of fellowship and cooeperation. Is this
"chimerical and irrational"?
Meanwhile the "walled towns" do not exist and may not for generations.
"Big business" is indisposed to abrogate itself. Trade unionism is
fighting for its life and thereafter for world conquest, while the
enmity between capital and labour increases, with no evidence that a
restored guild system is even approximately ready to take its place.
Strikes and lockouts grow more and more numerous, and wider and more
menacing in their scope. The day of the "general strike" has only been
delayed at the eleventh hour in several countries, and a general strike,
if it can hold for a sufficient period, means, where-ever it occurs and
whenever it succeeds, the end of civilization and the loosing of the
floods of anarchy. There is hardly time for us patiently to await the
slow process of individual and corporate enlightenment or the
spontaneous development of the autonomous communities which, if they
were sufficient in number, would solve the problem through eliminating
the danger. What then, in the premises, can we do?
There are of course certain concrete things which might help, as for
instance the further extension and honest trying out of the "Kansas
plan" for regulating industrial relations; the forming of "consumers
leagues," and all possible support and furtherance of cooeperative
efforts of every sort. There are further possibilities (perhaps hardly
probabilities) of controlling stock issues and stock holdings so that
dividends do not have to be paid on grossly inflated capitalization, and
fixing the maximum of dividends payable to non-active stockholders.
Equally desirable but equally improbable, is the raising of the level of
leadership in the labour unions so that these valuable institutions may
no longer stultify themselves and wreck their own cause by their unjust
and anti-social regulations as to apprentices, control of maximum output
and its standard of quality, division of labour with ironclad
inhibitions against one man doing another's work and against one man
doing what six men can do less well, and as to the obligation to strike
on order when no local or personal grievance exists. Most useful of all
would be a voluntary renunciation, on the part of the purchasing public,
of nine-tenths of the futile luxuries they now insanely demand, coupled
with the production by themselves of some of the commodities which are
easily producable; in other words, establishing some measure of
self-support and so releasing many men and women from the curse of
existence under factory conditions and giving them an opportunity of
living a normal life under self-supporting circumstances. This, coupled
with a fostering of the "back to the farm" movement, and the development
of conditions which would make this process more practicable and the
life more attractive, would do much, though in small ways, towards
producing a more wholesome and less threatening state of affairs.
Back of the whole problem, however, lies a fallacy in our conception of
existence that must be eliminated before even the most constructive
panaceas can possibly work. I mean the whole doctrine of natural rights
which has become the citadel of capitalism in all its most offensive
aspects, and of labour in its most insolent assumptions. The "rights" of
property, the "right" to strike, the "right" to collective bargaining,
the "right" to shut down an essential industry or to "walk out" and then
picket the place so that it may not be reopened, the "right" to vote and
hold office and do any fool thing you please so long as it is within the
law, these are applications of what I mean when I speak of a gross
fallacy that has come into being and has stultified our intelligence
while bringing near the wrecking of our whole system.