The question of the rather arbitrary control of industry by the capitalist-manager, which now prevails, and of the possibility of this control being diminished or modified in the future, calls for some analysis of underlying forces. Evidently there is a conflict of principles here—the democratic or popular and the autocratic. The latter, now ascendant, has the advantages of concentration, secrecy and promptness—the same which give it superiority in war. On the other hand, the democratic principle should have the same merit in industry and commerce that it has in politics; namely that of enlisting the pride and ambition of the individual and so getting him to put himself into his work. Other things being equal, a free system is a more vital and energetic organism than one in which the initiative and choice come from a central authority.
And it is apparent that the working of the autocratic system in our economic life shows just the strength and weakness that would naturally be expected. The prompt undertaking and execution of vast schemes at a favorable moment, and the equally prompt recession when conditions alter; the investment of great resources in enterprises which yield no immediate return; the decision and secrecy important in overcoming competitors; the unhesitating sacrifice of workmen and their families when the market calls for a shut-down of production—such traits as these are of the utmost importance to commercial success, and belong to arbitrary control rather than to anything of a more popular sort. On the other hand, it would be easy to show at any length desired that such control is accompanied by a widespread disaffection of spirit on the part of the working classes, which, expressed in unwilling labor, strikes and agitation, is a commercial disadvantage, and a social problem so urgent as to unsettle the whole economic system.
The autocratic system has evidently a special advantage in a time of rapid and confused development, when conditions are little understood or regulated, and the state of things is one of somewhat blind and ruthless warfare; but it is quite possible that as the new industries become established and comparatively stable, there will be a commercial as well as a social demand for a system that shall invite and utilize more of the good-will and self-activity of the workman. “The system which comes nearest to calling out all the self-interests and using all the faculties and sharing all the benefits will outcompete any system that strikes a lower level of motive faculty and profit.”[120] And the penetrating thinker who wrote this sentence believed that the function of the autocratic “captain of industry” was essentially that of an explorer and conqueror of new domains destined to come later under the rule of a commonwealth. Indeed the rise, on purely commercial grounds, of a more humane and individualizing tendency, aiming in one way or another to propitiate the self-feeling of the workman and get him to identify himself with his work, is well ascertained. Among the familiar phases of this are the notable growth of coöperative production and exchange in Belgium, Russia and other European countries, the increasing respect for labor unions and the development by large concerns of devices for insurance, for pensions, for profit-sharing and for the material and social comfort of their employees. “As a better government has come up from the people than came down from the kings, so a better industry appears to be coming up from the people than came down from the capitalists.”[121]
In some form or other the democratic principle is sure to make its way into the economic system. Coöperation, labor unions, public regulation, public ownership and the informal control of opinion will no doubt all have a part; the general outcome being that the citizen becomes a more vital agent in the life of the whole.
Before discussing further the power of the capitalist-manager class, we ought to think out clearly just what we mean by social power, since nowhere are we more likely to go astray than in vagueness regarding such notions.
Evidently the essence of it is control over the human spirit, and the most direct phases of power are immediately spiritual, such as one mind exercises over another by virtue of what it is, without any means but the ordinary symbols of communication. This is live, human power, and those who have it in great degree are the prime movers of society, whether they gain any more formal or conventional sort or not. Such, for instance, are the poets, prophets, philosophers, inventors and men of science of all ages, the great political, military and religious organizers, and even the real captains of industry and commerce. All power involves in its origin mental or spiritual force of some sort; and so far as it attaches to passive attributes, like hereditary social position, offices, bank-accounts, and the like, it does so through the aid of conventions and habits which regard these things as repositories of spiritual force and allow them to exercise its function.
In its immediate spiritual phase power is at a maximum of vitality and a minimum of establishment. Only a few can recognize it. Its possessors, then, strive to establish and organize it, to give it social expression and efficacy, to gain position, reputation or wealth. Since power is not apparent to the common mind until it takes on these forms, they are, to superficial observation and in all the conventional business of life, the only valid evidence of it. And yet by the time these symbols appear, the spiritual basis has often passed away. Primary power goes for the most part unseen, much of it taking on no palpable form until late in life, much yielding only posthumous reputation, and much, and that perhaps the finest sort, having never any vulgar recognition whatever.
Regarding money-value we may say, in general, that it is one expression of the conventional or institutional phase of society, and exhibits all that mixture of grandeur and confusion with which nature usually presents herself to our understanding. I mean that its appraisal of men and things is partly expressive of great principles, and partly, so far as we can see, unjust, trivial or accidental. Some gains are vital or organic, springing from the very nature of life and justified as we come to understand that life; some are fanciful, springing from the tastes or whims of the rich, like the value of diamonds or first editions, and some parasitical, like those of the legally-protected swindler. In general the values of the market are those of the habitual world in all its grossness; spiritual values, except those that have become conventional, being little felt in it. These appeal to the future. The detailed working of market value has no ascertainable connection with moral worth, and we must not expect it to have. If a man’s work is moral, in the higher sense, it is in its nature an attack upon the habitual world which the latter is more likely to resent than reward. One can only take up that useful work that seems best suited to him, trying to be content if its value is small, and, if large, to feel that the power over money it gives him is rightly his only in so far as he uses it for the general good.
The more tangible kind of social power—so far as it is intrinsic to the man and not adventitious like inherited wealth—depends chiefly upon organizing capacity, which may be described as the ability to build and operate human machinery. It has its roots in tact and skill in dealing with men, in tenacity, and in a certain instinct for construction. One who possesses it sees a new person as social material, and is likely to know what can be made of him better than he knows himself.[122]
Of all kinds of leadership this has the readiest recognition and the highest market value; and naturally so, since it is essential to every sort of coöperative achievement. Its possessors understand the immediate control of the world, which they will exercise no matter what the apparent forms of organization may be. In all ages they have gained and held the grosser forms of power, whenever these were at all open to competition. Thus, during the early Middle Age, men of energy and management, more or less favored by situation, built up for themselves local authority and estate, or perhaps exploited the opportunities for still wider organization, like the founders of Burgundy and Brittany and the early kings of France; very much in the same manner as men of our own day build up commercial and industrial systems and become senators and railway presidents.