Binding Up the Wounds of War

If, for example, in the field of industry, the mainspring of production is materialistic profit regardless of the effect upon human personalities and human welfare, if labor is treated as something merely to be bought and sold like any commodity, what can follow but the competitive forcing down of the price of labor to marginal levels with dread social consequences? What can follow but permanent mass unemployment, with substantial proportions of workers receiving less than sufficient to support themselves and the dependent members of their families above the level of abject poverty even in times of normal prosperity, and the inevitable harvest of hardened and twisted personalities? In the field of international trade and commerce, if we build our world upon materialistic profit alone, what can happen but political domination in each country by groups of producers bent on excluding the competition of less expensive foreign products in order to reap larger profits for themselves? Thus tariffs and trade barriers in every nation are forced by inescapable pressures to ever greater heights. During the 1930's we observed the fatal consequences of that inevitable sequence-the increasing resort to economic fighting weapons, the accelerating pace toward autarky and economic self-sufficiency, the rapid breeding of economic rivalries, discriminations and bitter struggles for commercial mastery, and in the end, one nation after another swept along in the racing currents over the dam and into the vortex of war

Computer Science · Political Economy and Marxism