(discusses human nature and its weaknesses, and what happens to these in the new world.)
we have briefly sketched the economic arrangements of the co-operative commonwealth. let us now consider what are the effects of these arrangements upon the principal social diseases of capitalism.
the first and most dreadful of capitalism's diseases is war, and the economic changes here outlined have placed war, along with piracy and slavery, among the half-forgotten nightmares of history. we have broken the "iron ring," and are no longer dependent upon foreign concessions and foreign markets for the preservation of our social system and the aggrandizement of a ruling class. we can stay quietly at home and do our own work, and as we produce nearly everything we need, we no longer have to threaten our neighbors. our neighbors know this, and therefore they do not arm against us, and we have no pretext to arm against them. we take toward all other civilized nations the attitude which we have taken toward canada for the past hundred years.
we have a small and highly trained army, a few regiments of which are located at strategic points over the country. this army we regard and use as we do our fire department. when there is widespread damage by fire or flood or storm or earthquake, we rush the army to the spot to attend to the work of rescue and rebuilding. also, we have a small navy in international service; for, of course, we are no longer an independent and self-centered nation; we have come to realize that we are part of the world community, and have taken our place as one state in the international socialist federation. we send our delegates to the world parliament, and we place our resources at the disposal of the world government. however, it now takes but a small army and navy to preserve order in the world. we govern the backward nations, but the economic arrangements of the world are such that we are no longer driven to exploit and oppress them. we send them teachers instead of soldiers, and as there are really very few people in the world who fight for the love of fighting, we have little difficulty in preserving peace. we pay the backward peoples a fair price for their products which we need. our world government takes no money out of these countries, but spends it for the benefit of those who live in the countries, to teach them and train their young generations for self-government.
next, what are the effects of our new arrangements upon political corruption and graft? the social revolution has broken the prestige of wealth. money will buy things, but it no longer buys power, the right to rule other men; it no longer buys men's admiration. everybody now has money, and nobody is any longer afraid of starvation. it is no longer the fashion to save money—any more than it is the fashion to carry revolvers in drawing-rooms or to wear chain mail in place of underclothing. so our political life is cleansed of the money influence. people now get power by persuading their fellows, not by buying them or threatening them. the world is no longer full of men ravenous for jobs, and ready to sell their soul for a "position." so it is no longer possible to build up a "machine" based on desire for office.
the changes have resulted in an enormous intensification of our political activities. we have endless meetings and debates; we have so many propaganda societies that we cannot keep track of them. and some of these societies, like the catholic church, have a large membership, and large sums of money at their disposal. but a few experiments at carrying elections by a "campaign-chest" have convinced everybody that to have the facts on your side is the only permanent way to political power. our new society is jealous of attempts to establish any sort of ruling class, and the surest way to discredit yourself is to advocate any form of barrier against freedom of discussion, or the right of the people's will to prevail.
next, what is the status of crime? we have too recently escaped from capitalism to have been able to civilize entirely our slum population, and we still have occasional crimes of violence, especially crimes of passion. but we have almost entirely eliminated those classes of crime which had to do with property, and we have discovered that this was ninety-five per cent of all crime. we have eliminated them by the simple device of making them no longer profitable. anybody can go into our community factories, and under clean and attractive working conditions, and without any loss of prestige or social position, can earn the means of satisfying his reasonable wants by three hours work a day. almost everybody finds this easier than stealing or cheating.
but more important yet, as a factor in abolishing crime, is the abolition of class domination and the prestige of wealth. we no longer have in our community a ruling class which lives without working, and which offers to the weak-minded and viciously inclined the perpetual example of luxury. we no longer set much store on jewels and fine raiment; we do not make costly things, except for public purposes, where all may enjoy them; and nobody stores great quantities of money, because everyone has a guarantee of security from the state. so we are gradually putting our policemen and jailers and judges and lawyers to constructive work.
next, what about disease? the diseases of poverty are entirely done away with. we are now able to apply the knowledge of science to the whole community, and so we no longer have to do with tuberculosis and typhoid, or with rickets and an?mia in children, or with heavy infant mortality. we have sterilized our unfit, the degenerates and the defectives, and so do not have to reckon with millions of children from these wretched stocks. we now give to the question of public health that prominence which in the old days we used to give to war and the suppression of crime and social protest. our public health officers now replace our generals and admirals, and we really obey their orders.
next, as to prostitution. just as in the case of crime, we are still too close to capitalism not to have among us the victims of social depravity, both men and women. we still have a great deal of vice which springs from untrained animal impulse, and we have some cultivated and highly sophisticated pornography. but we have entirely done away with commercial vice, and we have done it by cutting the root which nourished it. women in our communities are really free; and by that we do not mean the empty political freedom which existed in the days of wage slavery—we mean that women are permanently delivered from economic inferiority, by the recognition on the part of the state of the money value of their special kind of work, the bearing and training of children. this kind of work not merely receives the standard wage, it also receives the best surgical and nursing treatment free. housework and home-making are legally recognized services; and the woman before marriage and after her children have been nursed is free to go into the community factories and earn for herself the standard wage, with no loss of social position. consequently, no woman sells her sex, and no man buys it.
this does not mean, of course, that we have solved the sex problem in our new society. there are two great social problems with which we have to deal, the first of these being the sex problem, and the second the race problem. our scientists are occupied with eugenics, and we are finding out how to guide our young people in marriage, so that our race may be built up, and the ravages of capitalism remedied as quickly as possible. also we are trying to find out the laws of happiness and health in love. we are founding societies for the purpose of protecting love, and, as hinted in the book of love, we have a determined social struggle between two groups of women—the mother-women and the mistress-women—those who take love gravely, as a means of improving the race, and those who take it as a decoration, a form of play. our men are embarrassed by having to choose between these groups, and occupy themselves with trying to keep the struggle from turning into civil war.
second, the race problem. our economic changes have, of course, done away with some of the bitterest phases of this strife. white workingmen in the north no longer mob and murder negro workingmen for taking their jobs, and in the south our land values tax prevents the landlord from exploiting either white or negro labor. but our white race is still irresistibly bent upon preserving its integrity of blood, and the more far-seeing among the negroes have come to realize that there can never be any real happiness for them in a society where they are denied the higher social privileges. there is a movement for the development of a genuine negro republic in africa, and for mass emigration. also there is a proposition, soon to be settled at an election, for the dividing of the united states into three districts upon racial lines. first, there are to be, in the far south, three or four states which are inhabited and governed solely by negroes, and to which white men may come only as temporary visitors; a large group of states in the north which are white states, and to which negroes may come only as visitors; and finally, a middle group of states, in which both whites and black are allowed to live, as at present, but with the proviso that no one may live there who takes part in any form of racial strife or agitation. this program gives to race-conscious negroes their own land, their own civilization, their own chance of self-realization; it gives to race-conscious white men the same opportunity; and it leaves to those who are not troubled by the problem, a country where black and white may dwell in quiet good fellowship.
finally, what has been the effect of our economic changes upon the purely personal vices which gave us so much trouble and unhappiness in the old days? what, for example, has been the effect upon vanity? you should see our new crop of children in our high schools! there are no longer any social classes among them; the rich ones do not arrive in private automobiles, to make the poor ones envious, and they do not isolate themselves in little snobbish cliques. they arrive in community automobiles, and all wear uniforms—one of the simple devices by which we repress the impulse of the young toward display of personal egotism. they are all full of health and happy play, and their heads are busily occupied with interesting ideas. our girls are trained to thinking, instead of to personal adornment; they are developing their minds, instead of catching a rich husband by sexual charms. so we have been able, in a single generation of training, to make a real and appreciable difference in the amount of vanity and self-consciousness to be found among our young people.
and the same thing applies to a score of other undesirable qualities, which, under the system of competitive commercialism, were overstimulated in human beings. in those old days everyone was seeking his own survival, and certain qualities which had survival value became the principal characteristics of our race. those qualities were greed and persistence in acquisitiveness, cunning and subtlety, also bragging and self-assertiveness. in that old world people destroyed their fellows in order to make their own safety and power; they wasted goods in order to be esteemed, to preserve what they called their "social position." but now we have cut the roots of all these vile weeds. we have so adjusted the business relationships of men that we do not have to have hysterical religious revivals in order to keep the human factors alive in their hearts. we have established it as a money fact, which everyone quickly realizes, that it pays better to co-operate; there is more profit and less bother in being of service to others. so we have prepared a soil in which virtues grow instead of vices, and we find that people become decent and kindly and helpful without exhortation, and with no more moral effort than the average man can comfortably make. of course, we have still personal vices to combat, and new virtues to discover and to propagate; but this has to do with the future, whereas we are here confining ourselves to those things which have been demonstrated in our new society.
