FOREWORD
AS TO THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK
We
are confronted by demands for social reconstruction. These pose
grave problems with far-reaching implications. This book is
written with the conviction that their solution must be looked
for along lines not yet considered. Its aim is to show what has
to be done in order that social demands coming from a large
part of mankind may be turned in the direction of
conscious social purpose.
Welcome or unwelcome, the facts of social life are present and
must be reckoned with. Those who may object to the author's way
of discussing proletarian demands should bear this in mind. He
wants to present life as it really is. He is aware of the fatal
consequences that will result if people refuse to look at
the facts. These facts have arisen out of the life of modern
mankind.
The
so-called experts may not be pleased by this approach, which
they may feel is not practical. It is their approach, however,
that has led to the situation from which mankind is suffering
today. They may condemn this book at the start because its
opening pages deal less with the economic life than with the
spiritual-cultural life of modern mankind. Yet it is the
author's conviction, based on experience, that unless
people pay close attention to the spiritual-cultural life
of today they will continue to add fresh mistakes to the old
ones.
On
the other hand, what is said here will not altogether please
those people who keep repeating that man must rise above
absorption in purely material interests, that he must
turn to “ideals,” to the things of the
“spirit.” The author recognizes only that
spirituality which forms the substance of man's own life.
It shows its power just as much in mastering the problems of
practical life as it does in constructing a philosophy that is
able to satisfy the needs of man's soul.
The
important point is not the knowledge (or supposed
knowledge) of a spiritual life, but rather that the
spiritual life enables man to grasp realities. The author's
point of view may be of special use since he avoids any
aloofness from life.
The
social question discussed in this book concerns economic life,
the rights of men, and the spiritual-cultural life. The author
endeavors to show how the true form of the social question
emerges as an outcome of the requirements of these three
aspects of social life.
Only through a perception of this can the impulses come that
make it possible to give these three branches of social life a
shape that can lead to health within the social order. In
earlier stages of mankind's evolution there were social
instincts holding these three branches together in a way
adapted to the human nature of that period. At present
man is faced with the necessity of working out this combination
of functions through conscious social will and purpose.
In
those countries where the question of a social purpose is most
pressing we find an overlapping and interplay of old instincts
and new consciousness. The results of this are quite inadequate
for the needs of modern mankind. A great deal of social
thinking today is neither clear-sighted nor conscious, because
the old instincts are still at work. They weaken men's capacity
for understanding and dealing with urgent facts.
In
the author's opinion it is necessary to recognize this fully
before it is possible to apprehend the forms that the
industrial economy, the rights of man and the
spiritual-cultural life must take to conform to the demands of
the modern age. The following pages indicate the lines that
these new forms must inevitably follow. It is a path leading to
social ends in keeping with the actual realities and urgent
needs of life. The author believes that only through effort in
this direction can our social will and purpose surmount mere
utopianism and wordy sentiment.
If
anyone still thinks this book has a somewhat Utopian character
he should consider the pictures people draw in their own minds
of the kind of society they seek, and how far from life such
pictures are. That is the very reason why these people, when
they meet with something drawn from reality and experience,
look at it as Utopian. To many, nothing is
“concrete” that is outside their own customary line
of thought. So the concrete itself is an abstraction to them if
it is something about which they are not accustomed to think.
[April, 1919. The author has, in the pages which follow,
deliberately avoided confining himself to the terms in common
use in standard treatises on political economy. He knows quite
well the places which a technical economist will pick out as
being amateurish. But he has chosen his mode of expression
partly because he wishes to address himself also to
people who are not familiar with the literature of sociology
and economics. But he has done this chiefly because, in his
opinion, most of what is peculiarly technical in such writings
will be shown by a new age to be incomplete and defective, even
in the very form of its expression.
It
may also be thought that some reference should have been made
to other persons whose social ideas bear an incidental
resemblance to the author's own. But it must be remembered that
in the whole conception presented here, one which the author
believes he owes to long years of practical experience, the
essential point is not whether a particular thought has taken
this or that form. The starting point is the important thing,
and the road one takes in giving practical realization to the
impulses that underlie this conception. As may be seen from
Chapter IV, the author was already doing what he could to
implement these ideas in actual practice at a time when ideas
that seem somewhat similar had not as yet attracted any
attention.] Therefore, they will think this book is
abstract.
With people whose minds are harnessed to a party program the
author's views will also, at first, find no favor. He is well
aware of this. But he believes that it will not be long before
many party men come to the conclusion that the actual facts of
evolution have gone far beyond the programs of their parties.
They will see the urgent necessity of freeing themselves from
all such party programs and forming an independent opinion.
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