The New Christianity; or, The Religion of the New AgeBland, Salem Goldworth
Religion
The New Christianity; or, The Religion of the New Age
Bland, Salem Goldworth
Christian sociology; Church and social problems
In short, nothing will now satisfy the workers but a share in the
control. The most hopeful scheme of harmony would seem to be some such
arrangement as the Whitley scheme which has been officially endorsed by
the British Government. The essential features of the Whitley scheme
are the organization of all the workers in any industrial area, the
organization of all the employers, the creation of joint committees
representative of both groups to fix wages and determine conditions of
labor. And this is not the end but the beginning. The end, at least of
this phase of industrial evolution, would appear to promise to be the
disappearance of the capitalistic control of industry. So far as
industries are not owned and managed by the community, they will be
owned and managed by the workers that carry them on. The revolution
will be accomplished when the men of inventive and organizing and
directive ability recognize that their place is with the workers and not
with the owners. Capitalistic control must pass away. It has, no doubt,
played a necessary and useful part in the social evolution. It has
shown courage and enterprise. But it has been, on the whole, rapacious
and heartless, and its sense of moral responsibility has been often
rudimentary. When the managers on whom it depends desert to the side of
the workers, it will be patent how little capacity or service is in
capitalism, and how little it deserved the immense gains it wrung from
exploited labor and skill.
The process may be harder and slower than even the most sober-minded
would estimate, or it may be much easier and quicker; but the process
has begun, and there can be but one end. Feudalistic industry must
follow feudalistic land holding. Feudalistic landlordism went because
the feudal lords were enormously overpaid in proportion to their
services. When organizing and directive ability breaks the artificial
bond that has associated it with capital, it will be seen how slight is
the service capital has rendered and how enormously it has been
overpaid.
Management is, of course, entitled to its wages, and under present
conditions those wages must be relatively high, for managing ability is
not abundant. What might be called the wages of capital have been
unjustly high and are destined to fall until no man can afford to be a
mere capitalist. To gain a livelihood he will be obliged to develop
some productive function.
So long as industry must be maintained on a capitalistic basis, those
furnishing the capital are entitled to a fair return on their
investment, but the fashion of this capitalistic age passeth away. The
control of money and credit is destined to gradually become a function
of government.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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