Of course, as long as society remains organised so as to permit the
owners of the land and capital to appropriate for themselves, under
the protection of the State and historical rights, the yearly surplus
of human production, no such change can be thoroughly accomplished.
But the present industrial system, based upon a permanent
specialisation of functions, already bears in itself the germs of
its proper ruin. The industrial crises, which grow more acute and
protracted, and are rendered still worse and still more acute by the
armaments and wars implied by the present system, are rendering its
maintenance more and more difficult. Moreover, the workers plainly
manifest their intention to support no longer patiently the misery
occasioned by each crisis. And each crisis accelerates the day when
the present institutions of individual property and production will
be shaken to their foundations with such internal struggles as will
depend upon the more or less good sense of the now privileged classes.
But we maintain also that any socialist attempt at remodelling the
present relations between Capital and Labour will be a failure, if it
does not take into account the above tendencies towards integration.
These tendencies have not yet received, in our opinion, due attention
from the different socialist schools--but they must. A reorganised
society will have to abandon the fallacy of nations specialised for
the production of either agricultural or manufactured produce. It
will have to rely on itself for the production of food and many,
if not most, of the raw materials; it must find the best means of
combining agriculture with manufacture--the work in the field with a
decentralised industry; and it will have to provide for “integrated
education,” which education alone, by teaching both science and
handicraft from earliest childhood, can give to society the men and
women it really needs.
Each nation--her own agriculturist and manufacturer; each
individual working in the field and in some industrial art; each
individual combining scientific knowledge with the knowledge of a
handicraft--such is, we affirm, the present tendency of civilised
nations.
* * * * *
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