Most true! But that is half of the truth. If you had told the other half your article could not have been written, for it would have been answered beforehand from a to z. The other half is: That the rise of the individual has always been because of, and the result of, the concomitant and ever-increasing Socialism. The two have ever gone, and must ever go, hand in hand. Integration is the inevitable counterpart of individuation.
This is the fundamental law of history and Sociology, recognized the world over, as much as the law of gravitation. To blink it, is to go wild or blind. This is the law of progress upon which all human affairs expand, and there is scarcely a difference in wording it. For instance, in the last book out on “Economics,”—that of Prof. George Gunton, he says (p. 22): “Progress is an integrating differentiation. Only that differentiation is progressive which results in new integrations and greater complexity of social relations.” Comte’s, and Fiske’s, and Herbert Spencer’s statements of the same law are the same in substance, but too well known to quote here. So Professor Huxley in his “Administrative Nihilism,” Henry George in “Social Problems,” and indeed pretty much everybody who touches the subject, except Mr. Savage. He, however, has the grace to admit that “The world began in Socialism,”—and, by the law referred to, it will continue in an ever-enlarging, integrating Socialism, till the rise of “the complete individual” will result. Yes, man’s origin was social; from the “Social Anthropoids,”—says Professor Huxley; and to omit the continuance of this social fact and law in sociology is worse than talking pre-Copernican astronomy. That should be left to our metaphysical anarchists, who chatter as if man was a solitarily created “Adam,” defying the social “compact” of Rousseau, or dickering as to the terms upon which he will “come in.”
From Henry C. Carey’s noble work, “Social Science,” Americans should have heard, if not read, enough of this law of enlarging integration never to forget it, or to let those address them who have. He illustrates it not only by human history, but by the fundamental law of biology from Oken, Goethe, and the evolutionists generally. This application has been continued by them to the present day; the last instance I noticed is that of Prof. Ernst Hæckel, translated in Dr. Paul Carus’ late work, “The Soul of Man.” This law measures the progress of organisms from the homogeneous jelly-fish to the complex elephant or man; from the savage tribe to the Roman Empire, or the future “Federation of Mankind and Parliament of the World.” Integration is the mother, nurse, and protector of the individual.
In history and politics this law stands, however expressed or applied, as the door which opens to the mental vision, the river of human evolution and progress,—a sight grander far than Niagara. Those who see not this fact, law, vision!—are socially blind.
In industrial and economic evolution the same law of progress holds. The tribal homogeneous industry, when one man did work at everything, became heterogeneous, special, and complex, as society enlarged and advanced into higher integrations, and as the life of the individual became more and more advanced through Fetichism, Polytheism, Monotheism, to our modern inception of Humanism.
Do you stop this lecture to say that all this is a truism—a “chestnut”?
Yes, but everybody who talks against Nationalism forgets it. So follow a step farther.
“People will buy where they can buy the cheapest.” But the cheapest can only result from the highest integration of capital, machinery, labor, intellect, and means of wholesale production. Thus industrial integration and progressive civilization, where the people can have the means of a higher life, are indispensable parts and complements of each other. But the result and the difficulty is, that while the people get their travel, oil, sugar, and necessities of life cheaper and better than ever, they become the dependents, wage-slaves, and political and social underlings of the industrial Feudal System which that integration of transporting and producing monopolies builds up. For, those who can and do combine to control the conditions of the people’s life and welfare have the people and their Republic in their power. Under the integration of the Roman Empire and Papacy the “Republic” was continued, but as a name only.
The lesson of history is, that Republics and Liberty always go down when the necessary integrations of civilization and progress, military or other, pass from the control of the people. In a word monopoly in war, politics, industry, or in any form of integration, has been the murder of Liberty, ending in social suicide. Nationalism proposes to prevent this murder and suicide under the law above stated, thus: Whenever the necessary transportation and production are integrated into monopolies beyond the power of competition to control them, then the people must control and operate them, or become the dependents of those who do. Such is the difficulty, the danger, and the remedy, concisely stated. Critics like Mr. Savage can only reply: “The difficulty does not exist; the remedy is worse than the disease; there is a better remedy.” But Mr. Savage admits the difficulty. In an evasive way he says, “the industrial condition of the world is not all that one could wish.” But he has no remedy, and concludes by saying the remedy proposed would kill the patient sooner than the disease. This is the diagnosis of an ostrich who tries to escape by burying his head in the sand. It simply abandons the patient and there is no solution, no health in that. Let our lecture proceed and see if there is not a scientific remedy.
“Capital is the condition of production and the controlling factor of modern civilization.” Those who control it are the masters of the world. The contest of the monopolists of this capital with the workers and producers, that is, the people, is a burning fever which can only end by the healthy triumph of the people. There is not a railroad, mine, or factory, where this is not the daily issue upon which an internecine war is being waged or smothered. In literature, religion, politics, economics, ethics, everything turns upon the relations of these contending parties, from the Pope’s Encyclical to the Platform of the People’s Party. When we speak of our age, as the age of iron, silver, gold, or of steam, electricity, intellect!—we simply say it is the age of integrated capital, material and mental. To destroy this capital is impossible, and if possible would be the suicide of civilization.