The industrial republic: a study of the America of ten years henceSinclair, Upton
History
The industrial republic: a study of the America of ten years hence
Sinclair, Upton
Socialism -- United States; United States -- Economic conditions -- 1865-1918; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918
It is my belief that the student of a generation from now will look back
upon the last two centuries of human history and interpret them as the
final stage of a long process whereby man was transformed from a
solitary and predatory individual to a social and peaceable member of a
single world community. He will see that men, pressed by the struggle
for existence, had united themselves into groups under the discipline of
laws and conventions; and that the last two centuries represented the
period when these laws and conventions, having done their unifying work,
and secured the survival of the group, were set aside and replaced by
free and voluntary social effort.
The student will furthermore perceive that this evolutionary process had
two manifestations, two waves, so to speak; the first political, and the
second industrial; the first determined by man’s struggle to protect his
life, and the second by his struggle to amass wealth. The culmination of
the first occurred successively in the English revolutions, the American
and French revolutions, and the other various efforts after political
freedom. After each of these achievements the historian notices a period
of bitterness and disillusionment, a sense of failure, it being
discovered that the expected did not occur, that Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity did not become the rule of men’s conduct. After that,
however, succeeds a period of enlightenment, it having been realised
that the work has only been half done, that man has been made only half
free. The political sovereignty has been taken out of the possession of
private individuals and made the property of the whole community, to be
shared in by all upon equal terms; but the industrial sovereignty still
remains the property of a few. A man can no longer be put in jail or
taxed by a king, but he can be starved and exploited by a master; his
body is now his own, but his labour is another’s—and there is very
little difference between the two. So immediately there begins a new
movement, the end of which is a new revolution, and the establishment of
THE INDUSTRIAL REPUBLIC.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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