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In any case the assertion that Labor's demands | necessarily involve the kind of outcome indicated is as | false as it is uncalled for. Not the future as Labor | sees it, but the past as Capitalism has made it is the | era of bloodshed, chaos and disillusion. The Industrial | management of society heretofore has been so full of | disorder and so tainted with injustice that very few | remain who are so intellectually poor as to now do it | reverence. The whole world of working people is | convinced that industry conditioned by profit-making and | directed by the agents of capitalism can no longer be | regarded as satisfactory.
| That is the primary realisation. It is admitted by
| Labor that adjustments are possible, even under
| capitalism, by which work could be better remunerated
| and made more tolerable
Thus we have reached definitely the time when the
| demand is for a new social order altogether. Labor wants
| a deliberately planned co-operation in production and
| distribution for the benefit of all. It is no longer
| content to see the great populations of the globe
| victims of a chaotic hotch-potch in which the whole life
| of the workers is dependent on circumstances they are
| shut out from influencing or controlling. All the
| ruthless flats of the balance of trade, the buoyancy or
| stagnation of markets, the opening up or the shutting
| down of industries, the putting on or the putting-off of
| "hands", is a matter so vital to the well-being of Labor
| that it refuses to further permit capitalism to alone
| hold the field. Labor puts forward the dictum that as
| work is part and parcel of life itself work and the
| places of work
The suggestion that democracy in industry postulates | chaos and disorder while admitting as the |
We venture the view that anti-labor publicists | persistently miss the social implications of their | capitalist make-shifts. Take for example the question | of the "dilution" of labor. Here is a development of | the last five years which the newspapers have acclaimed | as an economic necessity. Now they have it the | discovery is made that, while it enables a marked | departure from the conditions of craft-training and | technique in the workshop, it has also greatly quickened | and strengthened the class organisation of the workers. | It has as a matter of fact so "diluted" trade crafts as | to bring to a close the era of craft unionism. That | terminates the policy which expressed itself in demands | for fair wages, etc, and ushers in the epoch when the | mass of workers, organised along the lines of industry | evolved willy-nilly, proceed to the formulation of | projects in keeping with the wider structure of their | unity. If the
If the
Hence no alternative is left the workers but to | organise definitely to control the industries | themselves. From this necessity arises the propaganda | of the One Big union and the case for the abrogation of | the wages system itself. In the main it is recognised | as impossible that there should be any reversion to the | status quo of 1914. Not only has the public policy been | employed as a motive force expanding and contracting | industries in accordance with their utility or | otherwise, but example after example has been given of | the greater efficiency that has resulted because the | directive authority of the nominal proprietary in a | given shop or factory has been superseded. Labor | realises its future can neither lie in the past or | remain in the present. It must either go on or go | under. And as a sane society is one in which the work | to be done is the concern of all, so should its | performance minister to the good of all. Pre-war | capitalism did not do that. Neither has the | pseudo-State capitalism of the war period done it.
|On the contrary in proportion as one stage gave place | to the next the inequalities and injustices inherent in | the industrial structure became accentuated. The last | stage was infinitely worse than the first. To | perpetuate either will not, cannot, ensure equity in the | social order. And democracy fails if it cannot | establish a basis of fair-dealing between the citizens. | A democracy that is everywhere but in the places where | is produced the subsistence of the race is a mockery and | a sham. It would indeed be the disillusion the |