The Next Step: A Plan for Economic World Federation

by Scott Nearing

1. What do I get out of it?

2. Who is to be the boss?

The intelligent man or woman cannot be expected to exert himself freely for the building of a palace at Versailles, on whose grounds he can never set foot, or for the maintenance of a Palm Beach that he sees only on the screen. The economic necessities are too immediate and the economic urge is too strong.

Before the individual will expend his maximum energy upon the economic process, he must see tangible results such as bread, shoes, schools, and holidays. One of the strongest arguments that the present economic system advances in favor of its continuance is the showing of large tangible returns in the form of economic goods. To be sure these results have not been secured by everyone, but there is neighbor Pitt who started as a stable boy, and who now owns the largest garage in the city; there is neighbor Wallace who began life as a grocery clerk and to-day is master of many acres of coal and timber. Besides, yonder store is filled with the good things of life, ready for anyone who has the money to buy them. Many persons, under the present system, make enough to buy all of them and others beside. So the argument runs, and those who advance it can give a wealth of instances to prove the point.

The huge rewards of the present system even though they have gone to the very few, have been turned over to those who could survive in the struggle. Everyone knows that the winners in a lottery are few and the losers many, yet each buys a ticket because he hopes and expects to be one of the winners.

Society, as reconstructed, must be less of a gambling venture and more of an established certainty, with the material rewards going to those who are responsible for producing them. And each person who thus shares in the economic rewards of society must see the connection between the energy expended and the share received. Only while such a connection apparently exists will economic effort be expended by the normal individual.

6. The Ownership of the Economic Machinery

The individual cannot be expected to exert himself where there is no apparent connection between the effort expended and the return for his effort. Neither can he be expected to exert himself in the interest of economic machinery that belongs to someone else. His interest can be maintained only by the hope of a return for the effort that he expends, and by a sense of control over the job on which he works. Among the various experiments that society has tried, in an effort to attain these ends, none has been more successful than self-government.

The application of the principle of self-government to the economic world involves the control of economic machinery and economic policy in each unit by those who compose the unit. The members of each economic group must be supreme in their own field, except in so far as their decisions affect the welfare of other units. In such cases the decision must rest with that larger economic group to which the involved economic units belong. Thus the aim of economic self-government is to keep the responsibility centered upon those who would normally be the most concerned in getting results.

All matters of policy will therefore be decided by those individuals or groups that are directly involved. Where possible such decisions should be reached in open meetings corresponding to the tribal council or the town meeting. Such meetings may always be held in local economic units, such as collieries, departments of factories and the like. Where it proves impossible to get the members of an economic group all into one meeting place, their affairs must necessarily be transacted by representatives, chosen as directly as possible.