A General View of Positivism: Or, Summary exposition of the System of Thought and LifeComte, Auguste
Philosophy
A General View of Positivism: Or, Summary exposition of the System of Thought and Life
Comte, Auguste
Positivism
[Industry requires its
captains as well as War]
There is another point in which Communism is equally inconsistent with
the laws of Sociology. Acting under false views of the constitution
of our modern industrial system, it proposes to remove its directors,
who form so essential a part of it. An army can no more exist without
officers than without soldiers; and this elementary truth holds good of
Industry as well as of War. The organization of modern industry has not
been found practicable as yet; but the germ of such organization lies
unquestionably in the division which has arisen spontaneously between
Capitalist and Workman. No great works could be undertaken if each
worker were also to be a director, or if the management, instead of
being fixed, were entrusted to a passive and irresponsible body. It is
evident that under the present system of industry there is a tendency
to a constant enlargement of undertakings: each fresh step leads at
once to still further extension. Now this tendency, so far from being
opposed to the interests of the working classes, is a condition which
will most seriously facilitate the real organization of our material
existence, as soon as we have a moral authority competent to control
it. For it is only the larger employers that the spiritual power can
hope to penetrate with a strong and habitual sense of duty to their
subordinates. Without a sufficient concentration of material power,
the means of satisfying the claims of morality would be found wanting,
except at such exorbitant sacrifices as would be incompatible with all
industrial progress. This is the weak point of every plan of reform
which limits itself to the mode of acquiring power, whether public
power or private, instead of aiming at controlling its use in whosever
hands it may be placed. It leads to a waste of those forces which, when
rightly used, form our principal resource in dealing with grave social
difficulties.
[Communism is deficient in
the historical spirit]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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