The Next Step: A Plan for Economic World FederationNearing, Scott
History
The Next Step: A Plan for Economic World Federation
Nearing, Scott
Economic history
Those who are entrusted with the carrying out of economic policy in a
producers' society may be divided, roughly, into two classes: the
executive and the expert. The executive is the director of general
policy. The expert is the specialist, selected to do a particular piece
of work. For example, the representatives of District 2, United Mine
Workers of America decide that, as a matter of general policy, they will
advocate the nationalization of the coal mines, and they instruct their
president and their executive board accordingly. The executives of
District 2 are therefore charged with the duty of organizing a
propaganda, which, to be effective, must consist of a well-ordered
summary of facts about the coal mining industry, put in a form that can
be easily understood by the average man, and distributed in such a
manner that it will reach the people responsible for coal mine
nationalization. Here, then, are three distinct tasks: (1) an
investigation of the facts; (2) a plan for nationalization; and (3) an
advertising campaign. The first two of these tasks, to be well done,
must be placed in the hands of engineers, statisticians and mine
experts. The third will fall to the lot of an advertising or publicity
man. The president of District 2 is an executive, charged with the duty
of seeing that a program of mine nationalization is carried forward. The
engineers, statisticians and advertising men that he secures to do the
work in their respective fields are experts. These distinctions have
been well established in the world of government and of business, and
they are rapidly finding their way into the world of labor.
There can be no great difference of opinion about the expert. He is a
technically trained man, and as a chemist, an electrician, or as an
auditor of accounts he has a special field in which he is supposed to be
a master craftsman. The selection of such an expert, therefore, is a
question of finding men with the knowledge and experience necessary for
the doing of a certain piece of work.
8. _The Selection of Leaders_
The situation is far more complicated when it comes to the selection, of
the executive. He is the keystone of the social arch--the binding force
that holds the various parts of the group apart and together. Upon his
decisions may depend the success or the failure of an entire enterprise,
because, tie him with red tape as you will, he still has a margin of
free choice in which he registers his success or failure as an
executive.
The executive is put in office to do the will of a constituency and to
carry out a certain policy. But what is the will of the constituency,
and which one of a half dozen lines of action will most completely and
effectively carry out the policy in question? The executive must find an
answer to those questions, and he must find it hour after hour and day
after day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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