Liberation from this widespread physical hardship can be achieved by producing enough of the necessaries of life to feed, clothe and house all of the people of the world, and by supplementing an adequate production by a system of distribution that will eliminate hunger and cold. Machine industry has made such an achievement possible. It only remains for a world economic organization to co-ordinate the resources, the productive machinery and the labor, and to distribute the commodities produced to those who need them.
The conflict with nature is but one aspect of the primitive struggle in which men are engaged. In addition, there is the struggle of man against man; not to aid, to emulate, to excel, but to rob, cripple and destroy.
The existing economic system is built upon the assumed desirability of a struggle whose outward manifestations are: (1) competition between economic groups; (2) the class war between owners and workers, and (3) wars between the nations. Throughout the business world one establishment seeks to build up its organization by wiping out its competitors; one class seeks to win supremacy at the expense of a rival class, and one nation seeks to found its greatness on the prostrate remains of those opposing nations that it has been able to overthrow. These three phases of competition are accompanied by three forms of war—the economic war, the class war and international wars.
All three forms of war have an economic background. The economic war is the contest for resources, trade, markets, monopolies and investment opportunities. The class war between the exploiter and the exploited, grows out of the economic relations existing between the owner and the worker. International wars are fought for economic advantage—for resources, trade, markets.
The object of all war is the destruction of a rival by resorting to those measures calculated to bring the desired result. Since all is fair in war, the end (destruction) justifies the means, no matter what it may be.
What need is there to speak to this generation of the devastation caused by these wars? of the killing, the maiming, the famine, the disease, the disorganization and chaos?
The western world has not yet recovered from the latest international war, while the economic war and the class war are being fought on the six continents and the seven seas. The cost of wars in blood, treasure, happiness and usefulness is an intolerable one. The chains with which Mars loads the human race weigh men down to the earth.
The organization of a world producers' society would go far toward freeing men from the ravages of war. The necessity for economic competition being removed, and exploitation being done away with, the basis of international war and of the class war would be swept away. Thus the same economic world organization that enabled man to free himself from the more brutal phases of the struggle with nature would likewise enable him to eliminate the principal causes of war.
The organization of a producers' society would do more than abolish the cruder aspects of the present economic struggle. It would lay the foundation for a new culture founded on the dignity and the worth of labor.