(3) 1,600,000,000 sun man-powers.
Such classification needs a reflection: man is intrinsically an increasing exponential power and always produces two use-values—the potential and the kinetic. All living men have in some degree this type of power; they are able to direct and use basic powers.
So we see that this world is really populated to-day by three different populations, all of them dynamic and active: to wit, 1,600,000,000 living men; 10,000,000,000 living man-powers of the dead; 1,600,000,000 sun man-powers.
Thus it is obvious beyond any argument, that this additional producing but not consuming population, has been produced mainly by the work of all our past generations. It is said “mainly” because, if we were the first generation, we would be just aboriginal savages having nothing and progressing very slowly. The reason why we progress very rapidly, in this stage of civilization, is explained very clearly by the mathematical law of a geometrical progression, with an ever increasing number of terms, the magnitude of the terms increasing more rapidly all the time.[11]
This fact is the reason why the old unscientific and artificial social system requires and must undergo profound transformation. Human progress, in many directions, is so far advanced that social institutions can not much longer continue to lag so far behind. Static ethics, static jurisprudence, static economics, and the rest must become dynamic; if they do not continue to progress peacefully in accordance with the law of the progress of science, they will be forced by violent readjustments, recurring with ever increasing frequency.
Here we have a problem of very high importance and enormous magnitude. To serve 1,600,000,000 living men, we have 11,600,000,000 dead man-powers and all the sun man-powers—seven servants to each living man, woman and child [pg 129] included. It looks like the millennium. It would be so if we but used all this power in a constructive way, eliminating waste and controversy and all those factors which hamper production and progress. The present economic system does not realize even the beginning of the magnitude of this truth and the tremendous results which are to be achieved through the adjustment of it. The problem will be solved by Human Engineering, for this will establish the right understanding of values and will show how to manage world problems scientifically; it will give a scientific foundation to Political Economy and transform so-called “scientific shop management” into genuine “scientific world management.”[12]
There is a chasm between “Capital” and “Labor,” but nature does not know “Capital” or “Labor” at all. Nature knows only matter, energy, “space,” “time,” potential and kinetic use-values, forces in all their direct and indirect expression, the energies of living men, living powers of dead men, and the bound-up powers of Time and the ancient Sun. Nature made man an increasing exponential function of time, a time-binder, a power able to transform and direct basic powers. Sometimes we hypocritically like to delude ourselves, if our delusions are agreeable—and profitable. We call human work “manual labor” and we pretend that we need the laborer for [pg 130] his muscular service, but when we thus speak, we are thoughtless, stupid, or insincere. What we look for in the worker is his control of his muscles; mechanical work is or can be replaced almost entirely by machinery. What we will never be able to replace by machinery is a Man, because man belongs to the level of a dimension above machinery. Engine-power, sun man-power, and capital—mainly the work of the dead—are inanimate; they become productive only when quickened by the time-binding energies of living men and women. Then only are the results proportional to the ever growing magnitude of exponential power. In nature's economy the time-binders are the intelligent forces. There is none else known to us, and from the engineer's point of view, Edison and the simplest laborer, Smith or Jones, are basically the same; their powers or capacities are exponential, and, though differing in degree, are the same in kind. This may seem optimistic but all engineers are optimists. They deal only with fact and truth. If they make mistakes, if their bridges break down, then, no matter how clever their sophistry, they are adjudged criminal. Like severity must be made the rule and practice toward all those who control the institutions and great affairs of human society. Periodical break-downs must be prevented. The engineers of human society must be held responsible, as the bridge engineer is held to-day.
Things are often simpler than they appear at the first glance. There may be fire and plenty of coal in a stove, yet no heat; the fire does not burn well; an engineer will remove the natural causes of obstruction of the natural process; even such a simple thing as the removal of ashes may solve the problem. It seems simple enough. The truth is often clear and simple, if only it be not obscured and complicated by sophistry.
“Capitalistic” reasoning and “Socialistic” reasoning—Nature does not know such things. Nature has only one “reasoning” in all its functions. Our falsifying of nature's laws makes the controversy. Socialism exists as an ism because Capitalism exists as an ism; the clash is only an expression of the eternal law of action and reaction.
We are living in a world of wealth, a world enriched by many generations of dead men's toil; between the lust of the one to keep and the lust of others to get, there is little to choose; such contentions of lust against lust are sub-human—animalistic; such ethics is zoological ethics—the righteousness of tooth and claw; below the human dimensions of life, utterly unworthy of the creative energy—the time-binding capacity—of humanity. Socialism feels keenly and sees dimly that human affairs are not conducted in conformity with natural laws. Capitalism neither sees it nor keenly feels it. Neither [pg 132] the one nor the other stops to investigate natural laws—nature's laws—laws of human nature—scientifically. They both of them use the same speculative methods in their arguments, and there can be no issue. Against one old-fashioned, speculative argument, there is always a speculative answer. They both speak about the truth, but their methods can not find the truth nor their language express it. They speak of “justice,” “right” and so forth, not knowing that their conceptions of those terms are based on a wrong understanding of values. There is one and but one remedy, and that remedy consists in applying scientific method to the study of the subject. Sound reasoning, once introduced, will overrun humanity as the fields turn green in the spring; it will eliminate the waste of energy in controversies; it will attract all forces toward construction and the exploitation of nature for the common weal.