第136章 THE SOCIAL WILL AS AN ECONOMIC FORCE(1)

§1.To secure by education and reflection such a revaluation of human activities, aims and achievements, as will set economic processes and products in a definitely lower place than that which they occupy at present, is, I think, essential to safe and rapid progress.For the early steps towards a better industrial order will very likely involve some economic sacrifice, in the sense of a reduced output of personal energy and of wealth-production on the part of the average member of society.Although this loss may be more than compensated by the elimination of large wastes of competition and by improved organisation, we are not warranted in assuming that this will at once take place.

We need not assume it.For even if we do not, our analysis has shown that an economic system, thus working at a lower rate of human costs, and turning out a smaller quantity of goods, may nevertheless yield a larger quantity of human welfare, by a better distribution of work and product.

But the great gain, of course, will consist in the increased amount of time, interest and energy, available for the cultivation of other human arts outside the economic field.Upon the capacity to utilise these enlarged opportunities the actual pace of human progress in the art of living will depend.At present this capacity may seem small.The increased opportunities of leisure, travel, recreation, culture, and comradeship, which have come in widely different degrees to all classes, have often been put to disappointing uses.But a great deal of such waste is evidently attributable to that prevailing vice of thought and feeling which the domination of industrialism has stamped upon our minds, the crude desires for physical sensations and external display.Not until a far larger measure of release from our economic bonds has been acquired, shall we enjoy the detachment of mind requisite for the larger processes of revaluation and realisation.

§2.One word remains, however, to be said upon the all-important subject of motives and incentives.We have seen that, in so far as it is possible to displace the competitive system of industry, with its stimulation of individual greed and combativeness, by a more consciously cooperative system, the will of the individual engaged upon industrial processes will be affected in some measure by the social meaning of the work he is doing, and will desire to forward it.The efficacy of this social will is not, however, adequately realised so long as it is regarded merely as a feeling for the public good originating from a number of separate centres of enlightened personality.The growing recognition on the part of individual workers, that the structure of society establishes a strong community of interests, will no doubt supply some incentive to each to do his fair share to the necessary work.But this personal incentive may not go very far towards overcoming the selfishness or sluggishness of feebler personalities.If, then, the social will be taken merely to mean the aggregate of feeling for the public good thus generated in the separate wills, it may not suffice to support the commonweal.But if our organic conception of society has any validity, the social will means more than this addition of separately stimulated individual wills.The individual soldier may have a patriotic feeling expressing his individual love of his country, which has a certain fighting value.But, as his attachment to his profession grows, another feeling of wider origin and more enduring force fuses with the narrower feeling, enhancing greatly its effectiveness.That feeling is esprit de corps, a corporate spirit of the service, capable of overcoming personal defects, the cowardice, apathy or greed of the individual, and of evoking an enormous volume of united effort.I have no intention of suggesting that the routine of ordinary industry can yield scope for displays of this esprit de corps comparable in intensity with the dramatic examples of great military achievements.But I do affirm that every conscious corporate life is accompanied and nourished by some common consciousness of will and purpose which feeds and fortifies the personal centres, stimulating those that are weaker and raising them to a decent level of effort, reducing dissension, and imparting conscious unity of action into complex processes of cooperation.

The power of this social will as an economic motive-force ought not to be ignored.As the processes of industrial cooperation grow closer, more numerous, more regular in their operation, this cooperation and coordination, representing a unity of will and purpose far transcending the vision and the purpose even of the most enlightened and altruistic member, will form a powerful current of industrial consciousness, influencing and moulding the will and purposes of individuals.

Such a force, emanating from the social whole, will of necessity not be clearly comprehensible to the individuals who feel its influence and respond to it.They are the many, while it flows from their union, which must always be imperfectly mirrored in the mind of each.Yet this direct social will only works through its power to stimulate and direct the will of each, so as to produce a more effective harmony.Vague theory this will seem to some, utterly remote from the hard facts of life! The problem is how to induce public or other salaried employees to do a fair day's work, when they might shirk it without loss of pay.Well, we suggest that when that fair day's work is not unduly long or onerous, when it is fairly paid, and when each sees that all the others are called upon to do their proper share, the general sense of fairness in the arrangement will come to exercise a compelling influence on each man to keep his output up to a decent level.