But this co-operation is based upon the necessity of combining to oppose and crush, not upon the desire to avoid friction and bring about harmonious relations between men. Wherever either labor or capital organizes to protect itself from the oppression of the other and to dictate terms to it, that other in its turn organizes to protect itself and to crush the opposing power. Neither party to the struggle sees its dependence upon the other. Capital forgets that labor called it into existence, that without labor there had been no capital, and that should labor cease capital would soon disappear. Labor does not see that capital is its own product, drawn from the land and used to enable men to produce more wealth. And neither sees that the object of producing wealth is not wealth for its own sake, but that man may, through its use, develop himself to an ever higher state.
It is scarcely possible that men should see this under present economic conditions; how, then, can it be possible for men to understand their relations to one another or the advantages of harmony?
And, if economic conditions destroy man’s relations to man, how much more completely do they destroy man’s relation to the higher life, to Nature or God? Even in his bitterest struggles with his fellows, man recognizes that he and those who oppose him are alike victims of circumstances and must fight. The resentment which he feels is less toward individuals than to the circumstances which make them antagonists when they should be coworkers, and he does not see that the circumstances are of man’s own creating.
So long as he regards these conditions as natural, ordained by some power outside himself, he cannot be expected to feel drawn towards closer relations with that power. While he has to watch his chance in the battle of life, he can hardly see that to get in harmony with the laws of the Universe, to recognize his oneness with all life, is to leave struggle and unrest behind. If life is nothing but struggle, he wonders how any attitude can destroy or obviate struggling.
Viewed from his standpoint, he is right. If, as man progresses, the desire to live well strengthens and deepens, and if this desire can be gratified only by waging relentless war against men and conditions, then no study of the relations of man to man or of man to life can lead to anything but greater cunning and more destructive methods of opposition. As the individual finds no way to fulfill his desires without fighting his neighbor, so the nation learns of no way to advance except through crushing other nations. There can rarely be true internal peace for the individual and no true rest and healthy growth for the nation while unjust economic conditions are maintained.
Wherever an individual feels the pressure of economic conditions too keenly he loses what little poise he may have had. He becomes restless and sleepless and the whole tone of his mind and body is lowered. Where the distress from such pressure becomes general, there the nation loses tone; quarrels are readily picked with other nations, and war is resorted to as a means of reducing population and of destroying all forms of wealth, so that a new demand may be created and the economic pressure for a time be lessened. These conditions recur again and again at longer or shorter intervals, and always the same futile means of meeting them is adopted. Man so little understands life that he has not learned that harmony with the laws of the Universe underlies his economic relations as well as his physical relations. If he knew this, he would know that the distress and dissatisfaction common to all nations could come only from the violation of natural laws, and he would begin to search out those laws. Men for a long time held false ideas of the laws of the solar system, and exhausted ingenious devices and systems to explain its phenomena. Then they began to discover underlying laws which explain phenomena more satisfactorily: some of those laws were found, and our knowledge of the solar system to-day is based upon these sure fundamentals.
It is as possible to make sure of the laws governing our economic conditions as of those that govern the solar system. They must lie at the root of all things economic and must explain all phenomena that any condition of society, whether the most primitive or the most complex, can produce. Until these laws are discovered and applied the earth will “turn, troubled in sleep,” and men may not know peace.