Let us then start from the ordinary workers’ standpoint. It is fair, it is commonsense, it is characteristically practical. We can say to them with absolute fairness that what Labour is asking the country to do is to take a jump into the unknown, and for the existing industrial system with which we are familiar, and which is always capable of improvement—for that is an uncontrovertible fact proved by our past industrial history—to substitute a new industrial system of which we have no experience, of the practical operation and effects of which nothing whatever is ascertainable, a venture which is subject to risks so grave and possibilities so disastrous as to endanger the whole industrial and commercial prosperity of this country. We can then offer the workers an alternative scheme which, while reforming the fundamental defects that at present exist in our industrial system, will not alter its basic principles. Unless the psychology of the worker undergoes some cataclysmic change, what he will say is: “Take your scheme of reform, if it deals fairly with unemployment, my human status in industry and my share of the product, it will serve as a beginning.”
CHAPTER XXI
THE HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS TO BE RECTIFIED IN INDUSTRY
Capital and the Administrative Staff—Capital and the Manual Workers—The Manual Workers inter se—The Administrative Staff and the Manual Workers—Industry and the Consuming Community—Industry and the Nation.
Before we can construct any scheme of reform of our industrial system we must have a clear idea of what is industry. In the prosaic language of economics it is a purposive production of commodities and services, the immediate object of those engaged in it being to provide, through the result of their work, the material means of satisfying their wants and desires.
Viewed in broad outline, industry will be seen to involve three fundamental processes:
(i) The combination in due proportion of the five things requisite for all production, viz., capital, enterprise, organization, labour—both hand and brain—and natural forces and resources.
(ii) The realisation of the product—industrial work is nowadays useless unless and until the product is marketed. The amount realized depends mainly on the public demand for the product, and invariably the cheaper the selling price, the greater is the demand.
(iii) The division of the realized surplus amongst those associated in production.
Further, it will also be observed that industry necessarily involves six fundamental human relationships, the importance of which has been much neglected in the past.