Of course we can compass whichever result we will. We may shut our eyes
to the omens and let matters drift to disaster, or we may take thought
and council and avert the penalty that threatens us; the event is in our
own hands. It is as criminal to foresee and predict only catastrophe as
it is to compass this through lethargy, selfishness and illusion. We are
bound to believe that righteousness will prevail, even in our own time,
and believing this, what, in general terms will be the construction of
the new system that must take the place of industrialism?
I have already indicated what seem to me the fundamental ideas as: the
small social unit that is self-sustaining; production primarily for use,
coöperation in place of competition; a revived guild system with the
abolition of capitalism, exploitation and intensive specialization as we
now know these dominant factors in modern civilization. In the
application of these principles there are certain innovations that will,
I think, take place, and these may be listed somewhat as follows:
Land holding will become universal and the true proletariat or landless
class will disappear. It may be that the holding of land will become a
prerequisite to active citizenship. Industrial production being for use
not profit, the great city becomes a thing of the past, and life is
rendered simpler through the elimination of a thousand useless and
vicious luxuries; those employed in mechanical industries will be
incalculably fewer than now, while those that remain will give only a
portion of their time to industrial production, the remainder being
available for productive work on their own gardens and farms. The
handicrafts will be restored to their proper place and dignity, taking
over into creative labour large numbers of those who otherwise would be
sacrificed to the factory system. Where bulk production, as in weaving
and the preparation and manufacturing of metals, is economical and
unavoidable and carried on by factory methods, these manufactories will
probably be taken over by the several communities (not by the state as a
whole) and administered as public institutions for the benefit of the
community and under conditions and regulations which ensure justice and
well-being to the employees. All those in any community engaged in a
given occupation, as for example, building, will form one guild made up
of masters, journeymen and apprentices, with the same principles and
much the same methods as prevailed under the ancient guild system.
Fluctuating scales of prices determined by fluctuating conditions of
competition, supply and demand, and power of coercion, will give place
to "the fair price" fixed by concerted community action and revised from
time to time in order to preserve a right balance with the general scale
of cost of raw materials and cost of living. A maximum of returns in the
shape of profits or dividends will be fixed by law. The community itself
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