Germany -- Social conditions; Reconstruction (1914-1939) -- Germany; Socialism
Between the separate grades there will not only be the connexion
afforded by the living possibilities of free ascent from one to the
other, but the system of ever-renewed co-operation in rank-and-file at
the same work will in itself promote culture, tradition, and the
consciousness of union. We need only recall the old gilds and military
associations in order to realize what a high degree of manly civic
consciousness can arise from the visible community of duty and
achievement. The mechanical worker will become the instructor of his
temporary comrade and guest, and the latter will in turn widen the
other's outlook, and emulate him in the development of the processes
of production. The manual worker will bring to the desk and the
board-room his freedom from prepossessions and the practical
experience of his calling; he will learn how to deal with abstractions
and general ideas; he will gain a respect for intellectual work, and
will feel the impulse to win new knowledge and faculty, or to make
good what he has neglected.
* * * * *
Two objections remain to be considered and confuted.
First: there are far more places to be filled in mechanical than in
intellectual employment. Is it possible so to organize the interchange
of work that every one who desires intellectual employment can find
it? The answer is: that, whether we like it or not, all work tends
more and more to take on an administrative character. Just as in
industry there is ever more talk and less production, so our economic
life is working itself out through thousands upon thousands of new
organizations. Industrial Councils, Councils of Workers,
Gild-Councils, are forming themselves in among the existing agencies
of administration; and the immediate consequence of this is a
tremendous drop in production, to be followed later by a more highly
articulated and more remunerative system of work. It is as if a marble
statue came to life, and then had to be internally equipped with
bones, muscles, veins and nerves. Or it resembles the transformation
of a shabby piece of suburban building-ground: it has to be dug up,
drained, paved, fenced; and until traffic has poured into it, it
remains a comfortless and dismal waste.
But the administrative side of our future economic and national life
demands the creation of so many posts of intellectual work that at
present there is not the trained _personnel_ to fill it. If the Year
of Labour-Service is introduced, there will be still more defections
and gaps to be filled. The rush for intellectual work is more likely
to be too small than too great.
Let us come to the second objection. Will not confusion be worse
confounded if there are many who have to fill two jobs, if, in these
jobs constant exchanges are taking place, if the periods of work are
brief and subject to untimely interruptions, if time and work are lost
through never-ending rearrangement?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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