The decisions having been made with regard to matters of policy, the next and equally important question arises: "Who shall be entrusted with the duty of seeing that policies once decided upon are carried out? Who shall be entrusted with leadership in economic affairs?"
Those who are entrusted with the carrying out of economic policy in a producers' society may be divided, roughly, into two classes: the executive and the expert. The executive is the director of general policy. The expert is the specialist, selected to do a particular piece of work. For example, the representatives of District 2, United Mine Workers of America decide that, as a matter of general policy, they will advocate the nationalization of the coal mines, and they instruct their president and their executive board accordingly. The executives of District 2 are therefore charged with the duty of organizing a propaganda, which, to be effective, must consist of a well-ordered summary of facts about the coal mining industry, put in a form that can be easily understood by the average man, and distributed in such a manner that it will reach the people responsible for coal mine nationalization. Here, then, are three distinct tasks: (1) an investigation of the facts; (2) a plan for nationalization; and (3) an advertising campaign. The first two of these tasks, to be well done, must be placed in the hands of engineers, statisticians and mine experts. The third will fall to the lot of an advertising or publicity man. The president of District 2 is an executive, charged with the duty of seeing that a program of mine nationalization is carried forward. The engineers, statisticians and advertising men that he secures to do the work in their respective fields are experts. These distinctions have been well established in the world of government and of business, and they are rapidly finding their way into the world of labor.
There can be no great difference of opinion about the expert. He is a technically trained man, and as a chemist, an electrician, or as an auditor of accounts he has a special field in which he is supposed to be a master craftsman. The selection of such an expert, therefore, is a question of finding men with the knowledge and experience necessary for the doing of a certain piece of work.
The situation is far more complicated when it comes to the selection, of the executive. He is the keystone of the social arch—the binding force that holds the various parts of the group apart and together. Upon his decisions may depend the success or the failure of an entire enterprise, because, tie him with red tape as you will, he still has a margin of free choice in which he registers his success or failure as an executive.
The executive is put in office to do the will of a constituency and to carry out a certain policy. But what is the will of the constituency, and which one of a half dozen lines of action will most completely and effectively carry out the policy in question? The executive must find an answer to those questions, and he must find it hour after hour and day after day.
Society has striven for ages to devise a successful method of picking executives, and of keeping a watchful eye on them after they assume the reins of government. There are three general ways in which the selection may be made:
1. Through heredity—the leadership descending from one generation to the next in the line of blood relationship.
This is the method practiced in all countries that have kings, aristocrats, plutocrats or others who automatically inherit power from their ancestors.