Scott Nearing

“ They have seen the red flag of revolution wave where they had expected nothing but the banner of victory. They have seen whole populations, weary of the old order, throw it aside with an impatient gesture and bring a new order into being. They have good reasons to understand and fear the disturbing influences of war. They have felt them even in the United States—three thousand miles away from the European conflict. How much more pressing might this unrest be if the United States had fought all through the war, instead of coming in when it was practically at an end! ”

“ Can the American worker profit by that experience? Can he realize that he is living in a country whose rulers have adopted an imperial policy that threatens the peace of the world? Can he see that the pursuit of this policy means war, famine, disease, misery and death to millions in other countries as well as to the millions at home? The workers of Europe have learned the lesson by bitter experience. Is not the American worker wise enough to profit by their example? ”

“ Now the leaders are prepared—for markets, for trade, for investments. They are indifferent to political conquest, but economically they are prepared to go on—into Latin America; into Asia; into Europe. The war taught them the lesson and gave them an inkling of their power. So they move along the imperial highroad—followed by a people who have not yet learned to chant the songs of victory—but who are destined, at no very distant date, to learn victory's lessons and to pay victory's price. Along the path,—far away in the distance they see the earth like a ball, rolling at their feet. ”

“ The modern system of job-ownership owes its effectiveness to the fact that it has been built upon two of the most potent driving forces in all the world—hunger and ambition—the driving force that comes from the empty stomach and the driving force that comes from the desire for betterment. Thus job-owning, based upon an automatic self-drive principle, enables the job-owner to exact a return in faithful service that neither slavery nor serfdom ever made possible. Job-owning is thus the most thorough-going form of mastery yet devised by the ingenuity of man. ”

“ To-day economic forces are driving relentlessly. Surplus is accumulating in a geometric ratio—surplus piling on surplus. This surplus must be disposed of. While the remainder of the world—except Japan—is staggering under intolerable burdens of debt and disorganization, the United States emerges almost unscathed from the war, and prepares in dead earnest to enter the international struggle,—to play at the master game of "eat or be eaten."
Pride, ambition and love of gain and of power are pulling the American plutocrats forward. The world seems to be within their grasp. ”

“ Popular government lies in the hopes and beliefs of the people. Empire is the servant of ambition and the shadow of greed. Popular government has been evolved by the human race at an immense sacrifice during centuries of struggle against the forms and ideas that underly imperialism. Since men have set their backs on the past and turned their faces with resolute hope to the future, empire has repelled them, while democracy has called and beckoned. ”

“ The owners of American timber, mines, factories, railroads, banks and newspapers may dislike the connotations of imperialism; may believe firmly in the principles of competition and individualism; may yearn for the nineteenth century isolation which was so intimate a feature of American economic life. But their longings are in vain. The old world has passed forever; the sun has risen on a new day—a day of world contacts for the United States. ”

“ None of the foes that the American people have encountered, in two centuries of expansion, have been worthy of the name. The Indians were in no position to withstand the onslaught of the Whites. The Mexicans were even less competent to defend themselves. The Spanish Empire crumpled, under attack, like an autumn leaf under the heel of a hunter. Practically for the taking, the American people secured a richly-stocked, compact region, with an area of three millions of square miles—the ideal site for the foundation of a modern civilization. ”

“ The economic forces—the banks and business men—had used these forms for the promotion of their business enterprises. Capitalism depended on czars and kaisers as a blacksmith depends on his hammer. They were among the tools with which business forged the chains of its power. They were the political side of the capitalist system. While the people accepted them and believed in them, the business interests were able to use these political tools at will. The tools were destroyed in the fierce pressure of war and revolution, and with them went one of the chief assets of the European capitalists. ”

“ The machinery of government and the profits from government remained in the hands of this one class.
Class government from its very nature could not be other than oppressive. "All hereditary government over a people is to them a species of slavery and representative government is freedom." "All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny.... To inherit a government is to inherit the people as if they were flocks and herds." ”

“ Again the profiteers will stop at home and reap their harvests out of the agony and the blood of the nation.
Again, when the killing is over, a few old men, sitting around a table, will carve the world—stripping the vanquished while they reward the victors.
Again the preparations will begin for the next war. The people will be fed on promises, phrases and lies. They will pay and they will die for the benefit of their masters, and thus the terrible tragedy of imperialism will continue to bathe the world in tears and in blood. ”

“ Hunger; the pressure of surplus population; the inrush of new hordes of invaders, drove them on. Ambition; the love of adventure; the lure of new opportunities in new lands, called them further. Meliorism,—the desire to better the conditions of life for themselves and for their children—animated them. In later years the necessity of disposing of surplus wealth impelled them. Driven, lured, coerced, these Aryan tribes have inundated the earth. Passing beyond the boundaries of Europe, they have crossed the seas into Africa, Asia, America and Australia. ”

“ The wealth of Germany or France is greater than that of Argentine, Brazil and Mexico combined, but Germany and France were developed countries, producing enough surplus for their own needs, and, therefore, the investable wealth of Great Britain went, not to her rich neighbors, but to the poorer lands across the sea.
Each nation that produces an investable surplus—and in the nature of the present economic system, every capitalist nation must some day reach the point where it can no longer absorb its own surplus wealth—must find some undeveloped country in which to invest its surplus. ”

“ Economically the United States is a world power. The war and the subsequent developments have forced the country suddenly into a position of leadership among the capitalist nations. The law of capitalism is: Struggle to dispose of your surplus, otherwise you cannot survive. This law has laid its heavy hand upon Great Britain, upon France, upon Germany, and now it has struck with full force into the isolated, provincial life of the United States. ”

“ During this experiment, the workers of the world have been compelled to accept poverty, unemployment and war.
These terrible scourges have afflicted the capitalist world, and it is the workers and their families that have borne them in their own persons. In those countries where the capitalist system is the oldest, the workers have suffered the longest. The essence of capitalism is the exploitation of one man by another man, and the longer this exploitation is practiced the more skillful and effective does the master class become in its manipulation. ”

“ The personal property of the country is valued at less than one fourteenth of the total wealth. It is in reality a negligible item, as compared with the value of the real property, of the public utilities, and of the raw materials and products of industry.
The wealth of the United States is in permanent form—land and improvements; personal possessions are a mere incident in the total. In truth, American wealth is in the main productive (business) wealth, designed for the further production of goods, rather than for the satisfaction of human wants. ”

“ Dreaming of liberty as a maiden dreams of her lover, humanity awoke suddenly, to find liberty on the threshold.
Through the ages mankind has sought truth and justice. Vested interests have intervened. The powers of the established order have resisted, but the search has continued. That eternal vigilance and eternal sacrifice which are the price of liberty, are found wherever human society has left a record. At one point the forces of light seem to be winning. At another, liberty and truth are being ruthlessly crushed by the privileged masters of life. The struggle goes on—eternally. ”

“ Many, if not most of these rich people, carry heavy insurance, invest in securities, or in some other way add to surplus. In the third place there are the small investors, savings-bank depositors, insurance policy holders who, from their income, have saved something and have laid it aside for the rainy day. The masters of economic life—bankers, insurance men, property holders, business directors—are in control of all three forms of surplus.
The billions of surplus wealth that come each year under the control of the masters carry with them an immense authority over the affairs of the community. ”

“ The war-test revealed the United States to the world and to its own people as a great nation playing a mighty rôle in international affairs. Most Europeans had not suspected the extent of its power. Even the Americans did not realize it. Nevertheless, the processes of economic empire building had laid a foundation upon which the superstructure of political empire is reared as a matter of course. Henceforth, no one need ask whether the United States should or should not be an imperial nation. There remained only the task of determining what form American imperialism should take. ”

“ How different has been the fate of the people of the United States! Possessed of what is probably the richest, for the purposes of the present civilization, of any territory of equal size in the world, their isolation has allowed them more than a century of practical freedom from outside interference—a century that they have been able to devote to internal development. The absence of greedy neighbors has reduced the expense of military preparation to a minimum; the old world has failed to realize, until within the last few years, what were the possibilities of the new country ”

“ Across the borders of the United States—almost within arm's reach of the eager, stirring, high-strung men of the new generation, there were tens of thousands of square miles of undeveloped territory—territory that was fabulously rich in ore, in timber, in oil, in fertility. On every side the lands stretched away—Mexico, the West Indies, Central America, Canada—with opportunity that was to be had for the taking. ”

“ Imperial policy is frequently bold, rough and at times frankly brutal and unjust. Where subject peoples and weaker neighbors submit to the dictates of the ruling power there is no friction. But where the subject peoples or smaller states attempt to assert their rights of self-determination or of independence, the empire acts as Great Britain has acted in Ireland and in India; as Italy and France have acted in Africa; as Japan has acted in Korea; as the United States has acted in the Philippines, in Hayti, in Nicaragua, and in Mexico. ”

“ What advantage came to the workers of Rome from the Empire which their hands shaped and which their blood cemented together? Their masters took their farms, converted the small fields into great, slave-worked estates, and drove the husbandmen into the alleys and tenements of the city where they might eke out an existence as best they could. The rank-and-file Roman derived the same advantage from the Roman Empire that the rank-and-file Briton has derived from the British Empire. ”

“ The industrial overlord holds control of the job with one hand. With the other he controls the product of industry. From the time the raw material leaves the earth in the form of iron ore, crude petroleum, logs, or coal, through all of the processes of production, it is owned by the industrial master, not by the worker. Workers separate the product from the earth, transport it, refine it, fabricate it. Always, the product, like the machinery, is the possession of the owning class. ”

“ Feudalism was dying! Divine right, monarchy, aristocracy, oppression, despotism, tyranny—these and all other devils of the old world order were bound for the limbo which awaits outworn, discredited social institutions. The Declaration of Independence officially proclaimed the new order,—challenging "divine right" and maintaining that "all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. ”

“ The early American enterprisers—the pioneers—began a single-handed struggle with nature. Necessity forced them to coöperate. They established a new industry. The factory brought them together. They organized their system of industrial direction and control. The corporation united them. They turned on one another in mortal combat, and the frightfulness of their losses forced them to join hands.
The business men of the late nineteenth century had been nurtured upon the idea of competition. "Every man for himself and the devil take the hindermost" summed up their philosophy. ”

“ It follows, of course, that the more land and machinery there is to own the greater will be the amount of surplus which will go to the owners. Since surplus breeds surplus the owners find that it pays them not to use all of their income in the form of consumption, but rather to invest all that they can, thereby increasing the share of surplus that is due them. The worker, on the other hand, finds that he must produce a constantly larger amount of wealth which he never gets, but which is destined for the payment of rent, interest, dividends and profits. ”

“ The United States emerged from the Great War in a position of unquestioned economic supremacy. With vast stores of all the necessary resources, amply equipped with capital, the country has entered the field as the most dangerous rival that the other capitalist nations must face. Possessed of everything, including the means of providing a navy of any reasonable size and an army of any necessary number, the United States looms as the dominating economic factor in the capitalist world. ”

“ At the end of their era of competition, the leaders of American business found themselves masters of such vast stores of wealth that they were released from the paralyzing fear of starvation, and were guaranteed the comforts and luxuries of life. Had these men sought wealth as a means of satisfying their physical needs their object would have been attained.
The gratification of personal wants is only a minor element in the lives of the rich. After they have secured the things desired, they strive for the power that will give them control over their fellows. ”

“ So simple has been the process of empire building for the United States; so natural have been the stages by which the American Empire has been evolved; so little have the changes disturbed the routine of normal life that the American people are, for the most part, unaware of the imperial position of their country. They still feel, think and talk as if the United States were a tiny corner, fenced off from the rest of the world to which it owed nothing and from which it expected nothing. ”

“ British capitalists are jealously guarding the privileges that they have collected through centuries of business and military conflict. The American capitalists are out to secure these privileges for themselves. On neither side would a military settlement of the issue be welcomed. On both sides it would be regarded as a painful necessity. War is an incident in imperialist policy. Yet the position of the imperialist as an international exploiter depends upon his ability to make war successfully. ”