Our very existence depends upon finding and keeping employment. Yet, from infancy to old age we are surrounded with poverty and the miseries that are due to poverty. But poverty is not a disease imposed by nature ; it is not due to a shortage of wealth but to the way in which wealth is distributed. It is born out of particular social conditions and its existence to-day is due immediately to the way in which wealth is distributed. The way in which wealth is distributed depends upon the method of production, so that this is the fundamental cause of poverty.
To-day wealth is produced by means of privately owned means of production (land, machinery, and so on), consequently the wealth produced belongs to those who own the means of production. The workers work upon and operate the means of production but they do not own a fraction of the wealth produced. The economic evils that exist are caused solely by the fact that the means of production belong to private individuals and not to the whole people. The only solution of these evils is to change the basis of society; transfer the means of production from the hands of private individuals to the whole of society—change private ownership of these things into social ownership. That is socialism. If you will consider the matter carefully for a little while you will discover that much of the complication existing to-day is due to, and bound up with, the making of profit.
Let us assume for a few moments that the majority of society have considered that socialism is desirable and have elected delegates to Parliament to make the change. What would be the steps to be taken once these delegates had obtained control? We will emulate the prophets and indulge in a little idle surmise, on the assumption that general conditions will be as at present on the morrow of the revolution.
First of all three main lines of investigation would have to be followed. It would be necessary to—
1. Ascertain the needs of the population.
2. The means available to satisfy these needs.
3. The labour required to do the necessary work.
Let us take these three items in turn and examine them.
1. It would be necessary to divide the country up into areas according to the distribution of the population, and to find out the kind and amount of goods required for different areas. The skeleton of such an organisation already exists to-day in the form of Urban, Rural and County Councils. It would only be a question of compiling different kinds of statistics from those which are compiled to-day. The main things we require are food, clothing, and habitations.
2. The means available to satisfy the above needs would include land, raw material, machinery, and transportation facilities—roads, canals, railways, sea routes, air routes. Again a question of compiling statistics.
3. It would be necessary to find out the number of workers, the various kinds of skill, and the distribution of the workers over the country.
In the above three directions it would be a matter of compiling statistics. The vast amount of statistical work that is done at present and its nature show that the organisation for doing such work is already in existence and would be available.
Once having compiled and collected the statistics (a relatively simple matter) it would be necessary to distribute the work according to workers and resources, and spread the work approximately equally over all so that more work would not be demanded from one than from another.
By the time the majority of the people in this country had arrived at the idea that socialism was desirable, the people in other countries would be near, if they had not actually reached, the same view. So that a fundamental social change in Britain would rapidly develop a corresponding change abroad and ease the necessary international dealings. While each country must settle its own social problem, yet each cannot do so without involving the world in its operations. Hence the international character of socialism.
The point to be borne in mind is that financial operations are built up on the production and distribution of wealth, and that without such production and distribution there would be no financial operations. On the other hand production and distribution of wealth can exist, and has existed, without financial operations. When the workers of the world take control of the production and distribution of wealth on their own behalf there will be no room for the financier and the latter’s operations will no longer interfere with the production of the things necessary to life. Born out of profit-making he, and all his tricks and entanglements, will go out with the going out of the profit-making system.
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