Ever since I can remember the world, there have been peace societies; I look back in history and discover that ever since there have been wars, there have been prophets declaiming against them in the name of humanity and God. As I write, there is a great world conference on disarmament in session in Washington, and all good Americans hope that war is to be ended and permanent peace made safe. All that I can do at this juncture is to point out the fundamental and all-controlling fact of present-day economics: that for the ruling class of any country to agree to disarmament and the abolition of war, is for that class to sign its own death warrant and cut its own throat. American capitalism can survive on this earth only by strangling and destroying Japanese capitalism and British capitalism, and doing it before long. The far-sighted capitalists on both sides know that, and are making their preparations accordingly.
What the members of the peace societies and the diplomats of the disarmament conferences do is to cut off the branches of the tree of war. They leave the roots untouched, and then, when the tree continues to thrive, they are astounded. I conclude this chapter with a concrete illustration, cut from my morning newspaper. We went to war against German militarism, and to make the world safe for democracy—meaning thereby capitalist commercialism. We commanded the German people to "beat their swords into plough-shares"; that is, to set their Krupp factories to making tools of peace; and they did so. We saddled them with an enormous indemnity, making them our serfs for a generation or two, and compelling them to hasten out into the world markets, to sell their goods and raise gold to pay us. And now, how does their behavior strike us? Do we praise their industry, and fidelity to their obligations? Here are the headlines of a news despatch, published by the Los Angeles Times on December 10, 1921, at the top of the front page, right hand column, the most conspicuous position in the paper. Read it, and understand the sources of modern war!
NEW ATTACK BY BERLIN
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DUMPING GOODS BY WHOLESALE
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Cheap German Trash Puts Thousands of Americans Out of Employment
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Glove Plants Shut Down and Potash Industry Killed by Teuton Intrigue
CHAPTER LXI
THE POSSIBILITIES OF PRODUCTION
(Shows how much wealth we could produce if we tried, and how we proved it when we had to.)
One of the commonest arguments in defense of the present business system runs as follows: The amount of money which is paid to labor is greatly in excess of the amount which is paid to capital. Suppose that tomorrow you were to abolish all dividends and profits, and divide the money up among the wage workers, how much would each one get? The sum is figured for some big industry, and it is shown that each worker would get one or two hundred dollars additional per year. Obviously, this would not bring the millennium; it would hardly be worth while to take the risk of reducing production in order to gain so small a result.
But now we are in position to realize the fallacy of such an argument. The tax which capital levies upon labor is not the amount which capital takes for itself, but the amount which it prevents labor from producing. The real injury of the profit system is not that it pays so large a reward to a ruling class; it is the "iron ring" which it fastens about industry, barring the workers from access to the machinery of production except when the product can be sold for a profit. Labor pays an enormous reward to the business man for his management of industry, but it would pay labor to reward the business man even more highly, if only he would take his goods in kind, and would permit labor, after this tax is paid, to go on making those things which labor itself so desperately needs.
But, you see, the business man does not take his goods in kind. The owner of a great automobile factory may make for himself one automobile or a score of automobiles, but he quickly comes to a limit where he has no use for any more, and what he wants is to sell automobiles and "make money." He does not permit his workers to make automobiles for themselves, or for any one else. He reserves the product of the factory for himself, and when he can no longer sell automobiles at a profit, he shuts the workers out and automobile-making comes to an end in that community. Thus it appears that the "iron ring" which strangles the income of labor, strangles equally the income of capital. It paralyzes the whole social body, and so limits production that we can form no conception of what prosperity might and ought to be.
Consider the situation before the war. We were all of us at work under the competitive system, and with the exception of a few parasites, everybody was occupied pretty close to the limit of his energy. If any one had said that it would be possible for our community to pitch in and double or treble our output, you would have laughed at him. But suddenly we found ourselves at war, and in need of a great increase in output, and we resolved one and all to achieve this end. We did not waste any time in theoretical discussions about the rights of private capital, or the dangers of bureaucracy and the destruction of initiative. Our government stepped in and took control; it took the railroads and systematized them, it took the big factories and told them exactly what to make, it took the raw materials and allotted them, where they were needed, it fixed the prices of labor, and ordered millions of men to this or that place, to this or that occupation. It even seized the foodstuffs and directed what people should eat. In a thousand ways it suppressed competition and replaced it by order and system. And what was the result?