The Next Step: A Plan for Economic World FederationNearing, Scott
History
The Next Step: A Plan for Economic World Federation
Nearing, Scott
Economic history
Man's sense of justice tells him that the product should belong to him
who is responsible for creating it, and his experience teaches him that
human beings take a greater interest in that which is theirs than they
take in the property of another. The results of production should go to
the producers; the machinery of production and the materials entering
into production should belong to those responsible for the carrying on
of the productive process. How shall these things be? Only when the
producers themselves decide to make them come true.
All power to the producers!
This sentence carries with it the key to the society of the future.
VI. WORLD ADMINISTRATION
1. _The Basis for World Administration_
When the producers of the world are organized along the lines of their
economic activities, and are federated in local, district and divisional
federations, and in a world producers' federation, the structural side
of the producers society will be complete. Such a structure is built for
use, not for appearance, and its effectiveness depends upon the way in
which it works. The handling or administration of the producers society
is therefore the determining factor in its success. A world producers'
society may fail as miserably as any other form of social organization
unless it is deliberately utilized to attain the ends for which it was
created.
The establishment of a world parliament consisting of representatives
from the major industrial groups would create an authority more powerful
than that of any existing state because, in the first place, it would be
more extensive than any existing state. But even supposing that one of
the great nations--Britain or the United States--was to conquer the
world and attempt to administer it, the world producers' federation
would be far more effective than such a victor, because its rule would
be founded on the will and on the consent of the governed and not on the
imperial foundation of organized might. The world producers' federation
could therefore look for a support from its constituency that no empire
could hope to demand from its conquered subjects.
The centralization involved in maintaining the authority of an imperial
ruling class in a large and complex state is so great that it invariably
results in friction and disaffection. The self-governing state, less
efficiently co-ordinated and centralized, still has a far better chance
for survival. Its energy-generating centres are so much more numerous
and more localized than those of the class governed empire that they
necessarily reach a larger share of the population. The roots of the
self-governing social group may go no deeper than the roots of the group
under a bureaucratic government, but there are more of them, and they go
to more places. The foundations are sounder because they are broader.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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