There are two important barriers to intelligent social progress. One is the lack of organized knowledge concerning social matters. The other is the restriction of this knowledge to a tiny fraction of the population.
Social science, still in its infancy, has ahead of it decades of advancement before it attains a position corresponding with that of the physical sciences. Even at that its progress must be slower, first because of the intricate nature of social phenomena, and second because of the herculean efforts that the vested interests make to destroy any form of social experiment that threatens their privileges.
Equally serious, as a limitation on the efficacy of social knowledge, is its restriction to a very small fraction of the community. Progress in the physical sciences is initiated in the laboratory, without any considerable participation by outsiders, but progress in social science depends on the attitude if not on the consent of the community, and therefore the socialization of social knowledge becomes one of the indispensable elements in social progress.
The handling of social problems has been confined, in the past, to a very small minority of each community. An aristocracy or plutocracy has taken charge of domestic and foreign affairs, and has made the decisions on which community well-being has depended. With the advent of "popular government" certain of these decisions have been turned over to the masses of the people or have been seized by them. The essential economic decisions, however, are still made by the owners of private wealth. If there is to be an organization of economic society that will function successfully and autonomously, the knowledge on which the decisions affecting economic policy are made must be public property. Until that step is taken the economic life of society will be directed by the chance desires of those who own the machinery of production.
Social students will accumulate knowledge and reach deductions, but that is not enough. The task is not completed until the results of their researches are common property.
Recent inventions and discoveries make the distribution of knowledge comparatively easy. Cheap paper, rapid printing, the newspaper, the magazine, the book, have all facilitated the scattering of information to those who could read, and in the western world this is more than nine-tenths of the adult population. For those who cannot read, the camera is an educational power. The machinery for public education—the schools, the press, the lecture-platform, has grown within a century to a point that renders possible the speedy distribution of knowledge to the most remote parts of the world. One of the greatest single steps in the reconstruction of the economic life of the world is the use of this machinery to distribute such information as is essential to a clear understanding of the economic problem and the normal course of its development.
Accept the foregoing analysis, and what lies immediately ahead of society?
1. The socialization and persistent distribution of extant knowledge.
2. A decision with regard to the next great social experiment.