Economic reconstruction

“ With natural opportunities thus set free to labour, with capital and improvements exempt from tax and exchange released from restrictions, the spectacle of willing men unable to turn their labour into the things they want would become impossible; the recurring paroxysms which paralyse industry would cease; every wheel of production would be set in motion; trade would increase in every direction and wealth augment on every hand. ”

“ These farmers on the other hand were beginning to be very much interested in a number of economic reforms which would vitally affect their welfare, such as the reduction and readjustment of the burden of taxation, the control of corporations in the interests of the people, the reduction and regulation of the cost of transportation, and an increase in the currency supply. ”

“ The economy’s triumph as an independent power at the same time spells its own doom, because the forces it has unleashed have eliminated the economic necessity that was the unchanging basis of earlier societies. ”

“ Instead of resisting the global economy, you became one of its engines —- reforming the licensing raj and unleashing an economic marvel that has lifted tens of millions of people from poverty and created one of the world’s largest middle classes. ”

“ It needed two centuries more before the conditions in which the modern State could flourish had been fully and finally established. Economic conditions had to change—a process always gradual and slow; and a national economy based on money had to replace the old local economy based on kind. ”

“ Demand for commodities stimulates and regulates the machinery of production.
Those in control of the modern economic system have no choice but to produce surplus, and once having produced it, they have no choice except to dispose of it. An inexorable fate drives them onward—augmenting their burdens as it multiplies their labors.
Investment opportunities, of necessity, are eagerly sought by the plutocracy, since the law of their system is "Invest or perish"! ”

“ Capital offered facilities for the planting of new industries, the development of trade, and the opening up of mines and other natural advantages; so that the means lay at hand for promoting material progress of every kind. Hence new questions of economic policy came to the front. The efforts of traders were no longer confined to retaining exclusive commercial rights; but they began to consider how the various resources within a given area might be developed, so that by the interaction of different interests the greatest material prosperity might be attained in the community as a whole. ”

“ The nationalization of capitalistic undertakings shall be begun immediately. It shall be carried through without delay in the mining industry and production of energy (coal, water, electricity) , iron and steel production as well as other highly developed industries, and in the banking and insurance business. Large estates and forests shall immediately be converted into the property of society, whose task it shall be to raise all economic undertakings to the highest point of productivity by the employment of all technical and economic means, as well as to further comradeship. ”

“ Since the 1979 revolution, the banks, petroleum industry, transportation, utilities, and mining have been nationalized, but the new five-year plan—the first since the revolution—passed in January 1990, calls for the transfer of many government-controlled enterprises to the private sector. War-related disruptions, massive corruption, mismanagement, demographic pressures, and ideological rigidities have kept economic growth at depressed levels. ”

“ The people had thought the reformers made rather large promises as to what the new system would do in the way of wealth-making, but now they charged them of keeping back the truth. And yet the result was one that need not have surprised any one who had taken the trouble to calculate the economic effect of the change in systems. The incalculable increase of wealth which but for the profit system the great inventions of the century would long before have brought the world, was being reaped in a long-postponed but overwhelming harvest. ”

“ The world is still in the throes of economic readjustment following the greatest cataclysm of history. America is enmeshed in this like all the rest of the world, though not so acutely as Europe. The readjustment is far from being completed. ”

“ The restoration of the infrastructure and the raising of incomes in this ravaged economy depend on the implementation of sound macro- and micro-economic policies of the new government, including the encouragement of foreign investment. Recent growth has been from a low base, and continued growth will require major policy successes and containment of armed rebellion. ”

“ The American workers, as a part of the price of empire, will be compelled to produce surplus [Pg 265] wealth—wealth which they can never consume; wealth the control of which passes into the hands of the imperial ruling class, to be invested by them in the organization of the Empire and the exploitation of the resources and other economic opportunities of the dependent territory. ”

“ Will the economic history of the next few decades be the story of a restoration of the capitalistic system upon a new basis? Shall we all become investors, speculators, or workers toiling our way to a new period of security, cheapness and low interest, a restoration of the park, the enclosure, the gold standard and the big automobile, with only this difference--that the minimum wage will be somewhere about two pounds, and that a five-pound note will purchase about as much as a couple of guineas would do in 1913? ”

“ We will turn pressure into impetus for growth, unwaveringly protect and develop advanced productive forces, shut down backward production facilities, integrate factors of production and create more room for development. We will balance our efforts to sustain economic growth, adjust the structure and improve economic performance to raise the overall quality of the national economy and strengthen the basis for its further development.
Third, we must press ahead with reform to make the economy more vigorous. ”

“ Thus to reform our notions of what is valuable and distinguished would bring about an economic reformation; or, if other forces were needed, would make the benefits of such economic reformation completer, its hardships easier to bear; and, altering our views of loss and gain, lessen the destructive struggle of snatching and holding. ”

“ The proposed economic policy of reform, in so far as it were successful, would also tend to stimulate labor to more efficiency, and to diminish its grievances. The state would be lending assistance to the effort of the workingman to raise his standard of living, and to restrict the demoralizing effect of competition among laborers who cannot afford to make a stand on behalf of their own interest. ”

“ First in England, and then in all of the important countries of Europe, the industrial revolution turned the simple grazing, farming, craft-industry life of the village topsy-turvy, by providing a new method of converting nature's bounty into goods and services calculated to meet the increasing needs and wants of mankind. So far-reaching was the change that it has compelled a reorganization of virtually all phases of social life, but for the present purpose, it has been felt chiefly in four fields: manufacturing, commerce, wealth-surplus and population. ”

“ Trade had developed under the new rule, and had expanded with improved means of communication. Capital had begun to accumulate, and the moneyed classes were in favour of a government that would support public credit and refrain from extortion. The mass of the people were contented, prices being cheap, wages on the rise and employment brisk. ”

“ It will take time to direct the new national spirit to industry and to utilize it to the full.” He believes that the economy practised during these days will become habitual; that the increased capital as a result of saving will aid in the reconstruction of industry when peace returns. Finally, he develops a new responsibility in industry. Industry is to be conceived not as an evolutionary process but as a problem, that of attaining a harmonious relation among men concerned in production. ”

“ Economic history abounds in cases of the displacement of labour by the decay, temporary or permanent, of some industry which is ceasing to be lucrative: it abounds also with examples of legislative attempts to maintain the decaying industries, and to compel some one or other to provide employment for the displaced labour. ”

“ Second, that a long period must be required before the re-actions produced by an enlarged industry can cause a re-construction of the whole society, and before the countless re-distributions of capital and labour can again reach a state of equilibrium. ”

“ In the second place, industries—the gold industry and the host of subsidiaries which must follow—should be given free scope for development by enlightened legislation, and the removal of burdens from the raw material of progress. Finally, a sufficient revenue must be secured to meet the vast reproductive expenditure which the country demands. ”

“ We need to make ensuring steady and rapid economic development the main task of our economic work. We need to strengthen and improve macroeconomic control, vigorously expand domestic demand, particularly consumer demand, change the pattern of development and speed up strategic economic restructuring, and deepen reform and improve our work of opening to the outside world. We need to improve the people's lives, increase social harmony and promote all-round progress in socialist economic, political, cultural, social and ecological development. ”

“ Political economy requires farther expansion in order to include all the elements of this great social problem.
It is a true doctrine that demand and supply regulate the price of all things, labour included. ”

“ Although the story of these economic changes necessarily involved some account of the quantitative relations between the volume of production and of consumption in the social industries and in the economic system as a whole (thus compelling a restatement of my “heresy” of over-saving) , I did not yet fully explore the saving and the spending processes so as to make over-saving a necessary implication of capitalism. ”

“ Has the progress of wealth and industry no effect in regard to cost of production, but to diminish it? Are no causes of an opposite character brought into operation by the same progress, sufficient in some cases not only to neutralize, but to overcome the former, and convert the descending movement of cost of production into an ascending movement? ”

“ In curbing and regulating the combinations of capital which are, or may become, injurious to the public we must be careful not to stop the great enterprises which have legitimately reduced the cost of production, not to abandon the place which our country has won in the leadership of the international industrial world, not to strike down wealth with the result of closing factories and mines, of turning the wage-worker idle in the streets and leaving the farmer without a market for what he grows. ”

“ To prohibit either is to paralyze industry, to stand still as a producing power, and to stand still is only the temporary pause before retrogression begins. Commercial prosperity is simply this expansion of industry and trade consequent upon the development of new resources. ”

“ Nay, as the cradle may enrich the household through the new incentives to labor and frugality which it supplies, so protections of industry may evoke new industrial powers, and thus at once begin to enrich the nation, though the capital which supports these fresh industries could not at first hold its own, as against other capital, without the motherly cares it receives. ”

“ My pre-War experience, as teacher, journalist, traveller, and general mixer in movements and groups, went to confirm my earlier view that progress would come by a concessionaire policy of the owning classes, together with elements of economic betterment for the workers achieved by public policy and finance. This, at any rate, seemed to be the path to be taken by a people averse alike to idealistic theories and revolutionary practices and conscious of their power to bend their popular Government to meet their urgent economic needs. ”

“ Therefore society as a whole must take possession of industrial capital, production for use must be substituted for {334}production for profit, work at a good wage must be guaranteed to every one who asks for it, and the fair distribution of wealth among the workers must be regarded as of more primary importance than the quantity which is produced. Socialists differ widely about methods and the rapidity with which the economic change is to be effected. ”

“ Having a monopoly of the safe investments, the great masses of unremunerative capital would be directed, not to the production of more surplus value, but to the making of permanent improvements, which would give employment to the people, and make them content with the new order of things. ”

“ Material progress became impossible, industry languished, and the inability to meet foreign competition assisted the mistaken internal policy of the government in prolonging and intensifying the poverty of the people. ”

“ As the State formerly played a most important part in the revolutions which abolished the old economic systems, so it must again be the State which should abolish capitalism. ”

“ And when not only the East, but all the now undeveloped countries, confront, with surplus products in their hands, the old industrial nations, capitalistic production will have attained its maximum development. ”

“ Surplus capital presses forward with frenzy into all established branches of production, whose market suddenly widens, and into new ones, as railroads, etc., the need of which springs from this development. In all such cases must large masses of men suddenly, and without loss to the leaders of production in other places, be ready to be employed at the important point. These masses are furnished by the surplus population. ”