The lesson of the World War should not be [pg 079] missed through failure to analyse it. When nations war with nations, the normal daily war of millions and millions of individuals to subjugate natural resources to human uses is interrupted, and the slow-gathered fruits of measureless toil are destroyed.
But peaceful war, war for the conquest of nature, involves the use of methods of technology and, what is even more important, technological philosophy, law and ethics.
What I want to emphasize in this little book, is the need of a thoroughgoing revision of our ideas; and the revision must be made by engineering minds in order that our ideas may be made to match facts. If we are ill, we consult a physician or a surgeon, not a charlatan. We must learn that, when there is trouble with the producing power of the world, we have to consult an engineer, an expert on power. Politicians, diplomats, and lawyers do not understand the problem. What I am advocating is that we must learn to ask those who know how to produce things, instead of asking those whose profession is to fight for the division of things produced by nature or by other human beings.
As a matter of fact our civilization has been for a long time disorganized to the point of disease. Lately through the whirl of changing conditions, due to the great release of power in the new-born giant technology, the disorganization has become acute. [pg 080] The sick seldom know the cure for themselves. If the cure is to be enduring, we have to go to the source, and this can be done only by men familiar, not only with effects but also with the causes.
Money is not the wealth of a nation, but production is wealth; so ordered production is the main object for humanity. But to have the maximum of production, it is necessary to have production put on a sound basis. No mere preaching of brotherly love, or class hatred, will produce one single brick for the building of the future temple of human victory—the temple of human civilization. Ordered production demands analysis of basic facts.
This era is essentially an industrial era. To produce we have to have: (1) raw material or soil; (2) instruments for production—tools and machines; and (3) the application of power.
The three requirements may be briefly characterized and appraised as follows:
(1) Raw material and soil are products of nature; humanity simply took them and had the use of them for nothing, because it is impossible to call a prayer of thanksgiving (if any) addressed to a “creator” as payment to gods or men. But raw material and soil, in the conditions in which nature produces them, are of very little immediate benefit to humanity, because unfilled soil produces very little food for humans, and raw material such as [pg 081] wood, coal, oil, iron, copper, etc., are completely useless to humanity until after human work is applied to them. It is necessary to cut a tree for the making of timber; it is necessary to excavate the minerals, and even then, only by applying further human work is it possible to make them available for any human use. So, it is obvious that even raw materials in the form in which nature has produced them, are mostly of no value and unavailable for use, unless reproduced through the process of “human creative production.” Therefore, we may well conclude that “raw material” must be divided into two very distinct classes: (a) raw material as produced by nature—nature's free gift—which in its original form and place has practically no use-value; and (b) raw material reproduced by man's mental and muscular activities, by his “time-binding” capacities. Raw materials of the second class have an enormous use-value; indeed they make the existence of humanity possible.
As to the second requirement for production, namely:
(2) Tools and machines, it is obvious that “tools and machines” are made of raw material by human work, mental and muscular.