Capitalistic
Era
THE immortal work
done by Descartes, Newton and Leibnitz was to discover powerful
methods for mathematics-the only fit language for expressing
the laws of nature.
Human Engineering
will be the science by which the great social problems will
be solved. For the first time since the first day of man, humanity
will really understand its own nature and status; and will learn
to direct scientifically the living and the non-living forces
for construction, avoiding unnecessary destruction and waste.
It may seem strange
but it is true that the time-binding exponential powers, called
humans, do not die-their bodies die but their achievements live
forever-a permanent source of power. All of our precious possessions-science,
acquired by experience, accumulated wealth in all fields of
life-are kinetic and potential use-values created and left by
by-gone generations; they are humanity's treasures produced
mainly in the past, and conserved for our use, by that peculiar
function or power of man for the binding of time. That the natural
trend of life and the progress of the development of this treasury
is so often checked, turned from its natural course, or set
back, is due to ignorance of human nature, to metaphysical speculation
and sophistry. Those who, with or without intention, keep the
rate of humanity's mental advancement down to that of an arithmetic
progression are the real enemies of society; for they keep the
life-regulating "sciences" and institutions far behind the gallop
of life itself. The consequence is periodic social violence-wars
and revolutions.
Let us carry the
analysis of potential and kinetic use-values a little further.
All potential use-values left to us by the dead are temporal
and differ in utility. Many potential use-values are found in
museums and have very limited value to-day in practical life.
On the other hand some roads or waterways built by the ancients
have use-value to-day; and an almost endless list of modern
potential use-values have or will have use-values for a long
time to come, such as buildings, improved lands, railroad tracks,
certain machines or tools; the use-value of some such items
of material wealth will last for more than one generation. Kinetic
use-values are permanent in their character, for, though they
may become antiquated, they yet serve as the foundation for
the developments that supersede them, and so they continue to
live in that to which they lead.
I would draw attention
at this point to one of the most important kinetic and potential
use-values produced by humanity-the invention of the steam engine.
Through this invention, humanity has been able to avail itself,
not only of the living fruits of dead men's toil, but also of
the inconceivably vast amounts of solar energy and time bound
up in the growth of vegetable life and conserved for use in
the form of coal and other fuels of vegetable origin. This invention
has revolutionized our life in countless directions. To be brief,
I will analyse only the most salient effects. Human Engineering
has never existed except in the most embryonic form. In remote
antiquity the conception and knowledge of natural law was wholly
absent or exceedingly vague. Before the invention of the steam
engine, people depended mainly upon human powers-that is, upon
"living powers"-the powers of living men, and the living fruits
of the labor of the dead. Even then there were manifold complications.
The invention
of the steam engine released for human use a new power of tremendous
magnitude-the stored-up power of solar energy and ages of time.
But we must not fail to note carefully that we to-day are enabled
to use this immense new power of bound-up solar energy and time
by a human invention, a product of the dead.
The full significance
of the last statement requires reflection. The now dead inventor
of the steam engine could not have produced his ingenious invention
except by using the living powers of other dead men-except by
using the material and spiritual or mental wealth created by
those who had gone before. In the inventor's intellectual equipment
there was actively present the kinetic use-value of "bound-up-time,"
enabling him to discover the laws of heat, water, and steam;
and he employed both the potential and kinetic use-values of
mechanical instruments, methods of work, and scientific knowledge
of his time and generation-use-values of wealth created by the
genius and toil of by-gone generations. This invention was not
produced, let us say 6000 years ago, because civilization was
not then sufficiently advanced: mathematically considered, the
production of this great use-value had to await all the accumulated
work of six thousand years of human ingenuity and human labor.
So, if we choose, the steam engine may be considered a kinetic
use-value in which the factor of time is equal to something
like 6000 years, or let us say roughly 200 generations.
It is obvious
that, in one life time, even a genius of the highest order'
could not, in aboriginal conditions, have invented and built
a steam engine, when everything, even iron, was unknown. Of
course if the same inventor could have had a life of several
thousands of years and could have consecutively followed up
all the processes, unhampered by the prejudices of those days,
and been able to make all of these inventions by himself, he
would represent in himself all the progress of civilization.
By this illustration
we see the profound meaning of the words the living powers of
the dead; we see the grave importance in human life of the factor
TIME; we behold the significance of the time-binding capacity
of man. The steam engine is to be seen anew, as in the main
the accumulated production of dead-men's work. The life of one
generation is short, and were it not for our human capacity
to inherit the material and spiritual fruit of dead men's toil,
to augment it a little in the brief span of our own lives, and
to transmit it to posterity, the process of civilization would
not be possible and our present estate would be that of aboriginal
man. Civilization is a creature, its creator is the time-binding
power of man. Animals have it not, because they belong to a
lower type or dimension of life.
Sophistry avails
nothing here; a child, left in the woods, would be and remain
a savage, matching his wits with gorillas. He becomes a civilized
man only by the accumulation of, and acquaintance with dead
men's work; for then and only then can he start where the preceding
generation left off. This capacity is peculiar to men; the fact
can not be repeated too often.
It is untrue to
say that A started his life aided exclusively by the
achievements of (say) his father, for his father's achievements
depended on the achievements of his immediate predecessors;
and so on all the way back through the life of humanity. This
fact, of supreme ethical importance, applies to all of
us; none of us may speak or act as if the material or spiritual
wealth we have were produced by us; for, if we be not stupid,
we must see that what we call our wealth, our civilization,
everything we use or enjoy, is in the main the product of the
labor of men now dead, some of them slaves, some of them "owners"
of slaves. The metal spoon or the knife which we use daily is
a product of the work of many generations, including those who
discovered the metal and the use of it, and the utility of the
spoon.
And here arises
a most important question: Since the wealth of the world is
in the main the free gift of the past-the fruit of the labor
of the dead- to whom does it of right belong? The question can
not be evaded. Is the existing monopoly of the great inherited
treasures produced by dead men's toil a normal and natural evolution?
Or is it an artificial
status imposed by the few upon the many ? Such is the crux of
the modern controversy.
It is generally
known that the invention of the steam engine and other combustion
engines which release sun-Power for mechanical use, has revolutionized
the economic system; for the building of engines in the scale
of modern needs, it is necessary to concentrate a great number
of living men in one place, to build factories, to set up machines
used in producing the engines, and all this requires the use
of vast amounts of money. That is why this era is called the
capitalistic era. But it is necessary to stop here and analyse
the factors of value in the engine to be made and in the money
used for the purpose of making use of the stored-up energies
of the sun. We have found that the major part of the engine
and all factors connected with its production are the combined
power of dead men's labor. We have found that wealth or capital
and its symbol, money, are also, in the main, the bound-up power
of dead men's labor; so that the only way to obtain the benefit
in the release of sun-power, is by using the product of the
toil of the dead. It is further obvious that only the men or
organizations that are able to concentrate the largest amounts
of money, representing the work of the dead, can have the fullest
use of the stored-up energies of time and the ancient sun. Thus
the monopoly of the stored-up energies of the sun arises from
monopolizing the accumulated fruits of dead men's toil. These
problems will, in the future, be the concern of the science
and art of Human Engineering.
Let us glance
briefly at the problems from another angle. The power developed
in the combustion of one pound of coal is theoretically equal
to 11,580,000 foot pounds. But by our imperfect methods of utilization,
not more than 1,500,000 foot pounds are made available. This
is about the amount of physical power exerted by a man of ordinary
strength during a day's work. Hence 300 pounds of coal will
represent the labor of a man for a year. The current production
of coal in the world is about 500,000,000 tons (1906). If we
suppose that only half of this coal goes for mechanical use,
this will give us approximately the number as 1,600,000,000
man-powers that are producers but not consumers.
Let us take a
still broader view of resources; we have approximately 1,600,000,000
living human beings ( all censuses available between 1902 and
1906); a wealth of approximately $357,000,000,000 (Social
Progress, 1906, page 221) which in our analysis is dead
men's work; and sun-power equal, in work, to the work of our
whole living population, or equal to 1,600,000,000 sun man-powers.
Taking, for simplicity's sake, $35.70 as the average living
expenses per annum for each one of the world's population,
we will have:
(1) 1,600,000,000
living men.
(2) 10,000,000,000
living man-powers of the dead.
(3) 1,600,000,000
sun man-powers.
Such classification
needs a reflection: man is intrinsically an increasing exponential
power and always produces two use-values-the potential and the
kinetic. All living men have in some degree this type of power;
they are able to direct and use basic powers.
So we see that
this world is really populated today by three different populations,
all of them dynamic and active: to wit, 1,600,000,000 living
men; 10,000,000,000 riving man-powers of the dead; 1,600,000,000
sun man-powers.
Thus it is obvious
beyond any argument, that this additional producing but not
consuming population, has been produced mainly by the work
of all our past generations. It is said "mainly" because, if
we were the first generation, we would be just aboriginal savages
having nothing and progressing very slowly. The reason why we
progress very rapidly, in this stage of civilization, is explained
very clearly by the mathematical law of a geometrical progression,
with an ever increasing number of terms, the magnitude of the
terms increasing more rapidly all the time.*
This fact is the
reason why the old unscientific and artificial social system
requires and must undergo profound transformation. Human progress,
in many directions, is so far advanced that social institutions
can not much longer continue to lag so far behind. Static ethics,
static jurisprudence, static economics, and the rest must become
dynamic; if they do not continue to progress peacefully in accordance
with the law of the progress of science, they will be forced
by violent readjustments' recurring with ever increasing frequency.
Here we have a
problem of very high importance and enormous magnitude. To serve
1,600,000,000 living men, we have 11,600,000,000 dead man-powers
and all the sun man-powers-SEVEN SERVANTS TO EACH LIVING MAN.
WOMAN AND CHILD included. It looks like the millennium. It would
be so if we but used all this power in a constructive way' eliminating
waste and controversy and all those factors which hamper production
and progress. The present economic system does not realize even
the beginning of the magnitude of this truth and the tremendous
results which are to be achieved through the adjustment of it.
The problem will be solved by Human Engineering, for this will
establish the right understanding of values and will show how
to manage world problems scientifically; it will give a scientific
foundation to Political Economy and transform so-called "scientific
shop management" into genuine "scientific world management."**
There is a chasm
between "Capital" and "Labor," but nature does not know "Capital"
or "Labor" at all. Nature knows only matter, energy, "space,"
"time," potential and kinetic use-values, forces in all their
direct and indirect expression, the energies of living men,
living powers of dead men, and the bound-up powers of Time and
the ancient Sun. Nature made man an increasing exponential function
of time, a time-binder, a power able to transform and direct
basic powers. Sometimes we hypocritically like to delude ourselves,
if our delusions are agreeable- and profitable. We call human
work "manual labor" and we pretend that we need the laborer
for his muscular service, but when we thus speak, we are thoughtless,
stupid, or insincere. What we look for in the worker is his
control of his muscles; mechanical work is or can be
replaced almost entirely by machinery. What we will never be
able to replace by machinery is a Man, because man belongs to
the level of a dimension above machinery. Engine-power, sun
man-power, and capital-mainly the work of the dead-are inanimate;
they become productive only when quickened by the time-binding
energies of living men and women. Then only are the results
proportional to the ever growing magnitude of exponential power.
In nature's economy the time-binders are the intelligent forces.
There is none else known to us, and from the engineer's point
of view, Edison and the simplest laborer, Smith or Jones, are
basically the same; their powers or capacities are exponential,
and, though differing in degree, are the same in kind. This
may seem optimistic but all engineers are optimists. They deal
only with fact and truth. If they make mistakes, if their bridges
break down, then, no matter how clever their sophistry, they
are adjudged criminal. Like severity must be made the rule and
practice toward all those who control the institutions and great
affairs of human society. Periodical break-downs must be prevented.
The engineers of human society must be held responsible, as
the bridge engineer is held to-day.
Things are often
simpler than they appear at the first glance. There may be fire
and plenty of coal in a stove, yet no heat; the fire does not
burn well; an engineer will remove the natural causes of obstruction
of the natural process; even such a simple thing as the removal
of ashes may solve the problem. It seems simple enough. The
truth is often clear and simple, if only it be not obscured
and complicated by sophistry.
"Capitalistic"
reasoning and "Socialistic" reasoning-Nature does not know such
things. Nature has only one "reasoning" in all its functions.
Our falsifying of nature's laws makes the controversy. Socialism
exists as an ism because Capitalism exists as an ism;
the clash is only an expression of the eternal law of action
and reaction.
We are living
in a world of wealth, a world enriched by many generations of
dead men's toil; between the lust of the one to keep and
the lust of others to get, there is little to choose;
such contentions of lust against lust are sub-human-animalistic;
such ethics is zoological ethics-the righteousness of tooth
and claw; below the human dimensions of life, utterly unworthy
of the creative energy-the time-binding capacity-of humanity.
Socialism feels keenly and sees dimly that human affairs are
not conducted in conformity with natural laws. Capitalism neither
sees it nor keenly feels it. Neither the one nor the other stops
to investigate natural laws-nature's laws-laws of human nature-scientifically.
They both of them use the same speculative methods in their
arguments, and there can be no issue. Against one old-fashioned,
speculative argument, there is always a speculative answer.
They both speak about the truth, but their methods can not find
the truth nor their language express it. They speak of "justice,"
"right" and so forth, not knowing that their conceptions of
those terms are based on a wrong understanding of values. There
is one and but one remedy, and that remedy consists in applying
scientific method to the study of the subject. Sound reasoning,
once introduced, will overrun humanity as the fields turn green
in the spring; it will eliminate the waste of energy in controversies;
it will attract all forces toward construction and the exploitation
of nature for the common weal.
There are capitalists
and capitalists; there are socialists and socialists. Among
the capitalists there are those who want wealth-mainly the fruit
of dead men's toil-for themselves. Among the socialists there
are those-the orthodox socialists-who seek to disperse it. The
former do not perceive that the product of the labor of the
dead is itself dead if not quickened by the energies of living
men. The orthodox socialists do not perceive the tremendous
benefits that accrue to mankind from the accumulation of wealth,
if rightly used.
Whether we be
capitalists or socialists or neither, we must learn that to
prey upon the treasury left by the dead is to live, not the
life of a human being, but that of a ghoul. Legalistic
title-documentary ownership-does not alter the fact. Neither
does lust for the same.
When we have acquired
the just conception of what a human being is we shall get away
from the Roman conception according to which a human being is
instrumentum vocale; an animal, instrumentum sermivocale;
and a tool, instrumentum mutum. To regard human beings
as tools-as instruments-for the use of other human beings is
not only unscientific but it is repugnant, stupid and short
sighted. Tools are made by man but have not the autonomy of
their maker-they have not man's time-binding capacity for initiation,
for self-direction, and self-improvement. In their own nature,
tools, instruments, machines belong to a dimension far lower
than that of man.
Talk of dimensions
or dimensionality is by no means theoretical rubbish. The right
understanding of dimensions is of life-and-death importance
in practical life. The intermixing of dimensions leads to wrong
conclusions in our thought and wrong conclusions lead to disasters.
Consider the classes
of life as representing three dimensions (as explained in an
earlier chapter), then human production belongs essentially
to the human or as I call it the third dimension. With the base
of (say) 5, we produce in the third dimension a result of 125
units, and so when humans are paid but 25 units in accordance
with the standards of the second dimension (that of animals),
humanity is deprived of the benefit of 100 units of produced
wealth. That is an illustration of what a part dimensions play
in practical life. The reflective reader may analyse for himself
what effect these same rules would have, if expressed and applied
in the human "time-binding" dimension, time being the supreme
test. The following table gives the visual shock.
|
1st
Dimension
|
2nd
Dimension
|
3rd
Dimension
|
|
5
|
25
|
125
|
|
10
|
100
|
1,000
|
|
100
|
10,000
|
1,000,000
|
|
1,000
|
1,000,000
|
1,000,000,000
|
This explains
why the intermixing of dimensions is the source of tremendous
evil.
Who can now assert
that the problem of dimensions is one only of theory? It is
not even a question of limitation of mind' but it becomes a
question of limitation of eyesight, not to be able to see the
overwhelming differences between the laws of development of
the first, second, and the third dimension.
Dollars, or pounds
sterling, or other units of money follow the same rules: the
strength and in fact the source of power of modern capitalism,
is found in just this difference in dimensions-in the difference
between what is given and what is taken, in the difference between
what is earned and what is "made." The problem of dimensions
is, therefore, a key which unlocks the secrets of the power
of capitalism and opens the door to a new civilization where
the understanding of dimensions will establish order out of
the chaos.
We have seen that
kinetic and potential use-values, produced mainly by the dead,
are bound up in wealth, which is measured and symbolized by
money. This being true, it is obvious that money is a measure
and symbol of power, of work done, of bound-up time.
The space-binding
animal standard of miscivilization has brought us to
an impasse-a blind alley- for the simple physical reason that
there is no more space to "bind." Practically all the habitable
lands, and practically all the natural resources, are already
divided among private legalistic owners. What hope is there
for the ever increasing population?
But we have these
1,600,000,000 living men; 10,000,000,000 living man-powers of
the dead; and 1,600,000,000 sun man-powers: that is indeed a
tremendous power to PRODUCE WEALTH FOR ALL, IF WISELY DIRECTED,
but to-day it is ignorantly and shamefully misdirected, because
human beings are not treated in accordance with their nature
as the time-binding class of life.
Much more is to
be gained in exploiting nature aimfully, all the time, with
a full mobilization of our living, dead, and sun-powers, than
by exploiting man all the time and nature occasionally. Selfishness
and ignorance-is it these that prevent full mobilization of
the producing powers of the world?
Such as contribute
most to human progress and human enlightenment-men like Gutenberg,
Copernicus, Newton, Leibnitz, Watts, Franklin, Mendeleieff,
Pasteur, Sklodowska-Curie, Edison, Steinmetz, Loeb, Dewey, Keyser,
Whitehead, Russell, Poincaré, William Benjamin Smith, Gibbs,
Einstein, and many others-consume no more bread than the simplest
of their fellow mortals. Indeed such men are often in want.
How many a genius has perished inarticulate because unable to
stand the strain of social conditions where animal standards
prevail and "survival of the fittest" means, not survival of
the "fittest in time-binding capacity," but survival of the
strongest in ruthlessness and guile-in space-binding competition!
Wealth is produced
by those who work with hand or brain and by no others. The great
mass of the wealth of the world has been thus produced by generations
that have gone. We know that the greatest wealth producers-immeasurably
the greatest-have been and are scientific men, discoverers and
inventors. If an invention, in the course of a few years after
it is made, must become public property, then the wealth produced
by the use of the invention should also become public
property in the course of a like period of years after it is
thus produced. Against this proposition no sophistry can avail.
One of the greatest
powers of modern times is the Press; it commands the resources
of space and time; it affects in a thousand subtle ways the
form of our thoughts. It controls the exchange of news throughout
the world. Unfortunately the press is often controlled by exploiters
of the "living powers of the dead," and so what is presented
as news is frequently so limited, colored and distorted by selfish
interests as to be falsehood in the guise of truth. Honest,
independent papers are frequently starved by selfish conspirators
and forced to close down. Thus the press, which is itself the
product in the main of dead men's toil, is made a means for
the deception and exploitation of the living. Indeed the bitter
words of Voltaire seem to be too true: "Since God created man
in his own image, how often has man endeavored to render similar
service to God." Those who want to use such "God-like" powers
to rule the world are modern Neros, who in their wickedness
and folly fancy themselves divine. To deceive, and through deception,
to exploit, rob and subjugate living men and women' and to do
it by prostituting the living powers created by the dead, is
the work, I will not say of men, but of mad men, greedy,
ignorant and blind. What is the remedy? Revolution? Revolution
is also mad. - The only remedy is enlightenment-knowledge, knowledge
of nature, knowledge of human nature, scientific education,
science applied to all the affairs of man-the science and art
of Human Engineering.
* Of
course, the geometric progression does not represent precisely
the law of human progression; it is here employed because it
is familiar and serves, better perhaps than any other simple
mathematical means, to show roughly how human progress goes
on. The essential elements of a progression are the first term
P and the ratio R and the number of the terms T; in the human
progression PR1, PR2, PR3,
. . . PRT, P is the starting status of the first
generation, R is the peculiar capacity of humans to bind time
and is a free gift and law of nature, which it would be folly
not to recognize and accept as such, T is time, or number of
generations. It is obvious that the magnitude, PRT,
is entirely dependent on the magnitudes of PR, and T. The existence
of R and T is independent of humans, R being a law of nature,
T a gift of nature, P the starting status of the initial generation.
With P = 0 or R = 0 THERE WOULD BE NO PROGRESS or progression
at all; each term in the case of human progression is mainly
dependent upon the time and the work done by the dead. The existence
of R and T is entirely beyond human control. Humans can control
only the MAGNITUDE of those elements by education. Here comes
the tremendous responsibility of education. It is not necessary
to use much imagination to see that if humanity had always been
rightly educated, science would have long ago discovered the
natural forces and laws essential to human welfare, and human
misery would today be relatively small.
** See
Appendix III.
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