Why Men Fight: A method of abolishing the international duelRussell, Bertrand
Philosophy
Why Men Fight: A method of abolishing the international duel
Russell, Bertrand
Liberty; Property; Social problems; State, The; War
The claims of justice, narrowly interpreted, may reinforce this
tendency. It may be thought unjust that some men should have larger
incomes or shorter hours of work than other men. But efficiency in
mental work, including the work of education, certainly requires more
comfort and longer periods of rest than are required for efficiency
in physical work, if only because mental work is not physiologically
wholesome. If this is not recognized, the life of the mind may suffer
through short-sightedness even more than through deliberate hostility.
Education suffers at present, and may long continue to suffer, through
the desire of parents that their children should earn money as soon
as possible. Every one knows that the half-time system, for example,
is bad; but the power of organized labor keeps it in existence. It is
clear that the cure for this evil, as for those that are concerned with
the population question, is to relieve parents of the expense of their
children’s education, and at the same time to take away their right to
appropriate their children’s earnings.
The way to prevent any dangerous opposition of labor to the life of
the mind is not to oppose the labor movement, which is too strong to
be opposed with justice. The right way is, to show by actual practice
that thought is useful to labor, that without thought its positive aims
cannot be achieved, and that there are men in the world of thought who
are willing to devote their energies to helping labor in its struggle.
Such men, if they are wise and sincere, can prevent labor from becoming
destructive of what is living in the intellectual world.
Another danger in the aims of organized labor is the danger of
conservatism as to methods of production. Improvements of machinery
or organization bring great advantages to employers, but involve
temporary and sometimes permanent loss to the wage-earners. For this
reason, and also from mere instinctive dislike of any change of habits,
strong labor organizations are often obstacles to technical progress.
The ultimate basis of all social progress must be increased technical
efficiency, a greater result from a given amount of labor. If labor
were to offer an effective opposition to this kind of progress, it
would in the long run paralyze all other progress. The way to overcome
the opposition of labor is not by hostility or moral homilies, but by
giving to labor the direct interest in economical processes which now
belongs to the employers. Here, as elsewhere, the unprogressive part of
a movement which is essentially progressive is to be eliminated, not
by decrying the whole movement but by giving it a wider sweep, making
it more progressive, and leading it to demand an even greater change
in the structure of society than any that it had contemplated in its
inception.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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