This proposed plan for the organization of a world producers' federation will be made clearer by a diagram. (p. [116].)
8. All Power to the Producers!
The plan for a world producers' federation is designed with the object of placing all power in the hands of the producers. The society of the present day vests power—particularly economic power—in the hands of the owners of economic resources and machinery. Their public institution is the capitalist state, and their rule is perpetuated by the manipulation of its machinery.
Under this order of society, the chief emphasis is placed on owning rather than on working. The largest material rewards and the greatest amount of social prestige go to the owners. The present society sanctifies ownership, and raises the owner to a position of moral superiority.
The same system which dignifies ownership can scarcely recognize work as of supreme social consequence. The worker is therefore placed in a position inferior to that of the owner. His economic rewards are less, his place on the social ladder is lower, and his children are taught in the schools the necessity of getting out of his class into the society of those who are able to live without working.
It is hardly necessary to remark that in a community dependent for its existence upon labor, the teaching of such a philosophy points the way to class conflict and ultimately to social disintegration. If the community is dependent upon production for its existence, there must be sufficient incentive to continue production, otherwise the community dies.
The disastrous consequences that must of necessity follow on the economic order as it is constituted at the present time are already in evidence,—strikingly so in the case of the European breakdown. The owning class society is coming to an end—falling of its own weight. The time has come when the producers must take the control of the world into their own hands or suffer disaster.
Man's sense of justice tells him that the product should belong to him who is responsible for creating it, and his experience teaches him that human beings take a greater interest in that which is theirs than they take in the property of another. The results of production should go to the producers; the machinery of production and the materials entering into production should belong to those responsible for the carrying on of the productive process. How shall these things be? Only when the producers themselves decide to make them come true.
All power to the producers!
This sentence carries with it the key to the society of the future.