第29章 応用科学、一つの公益
我々の中の誰もが、熟考を困難にするような馬鹿げた出世競争、懸念、および心配の渦中において、次のようなことを時々自問しなかっただろうか?
生産の全ての分野、すなわち、農業、衣料、建築、医療、輸送、保管などの分野において、著しい進歩が見られるのに、たとえ、今日の心配は無いとしても、未来に対してまだ心配せざるを得ないのはどうしてなのなのだろうか?
Worries and a feverish life
Note that
the worries in question are not brought about by war. War, on the contrary,
reduces worries about finding a means of providing daily bread in many homes. It
is a question of worries in peacetime, when grain elevators are glutted with
wheat, when shop windows display products of all kinds, when advertisements
invite us to buy the abundance of goods that just wait to be sold.
How is it
that with the invention of so many sophisticated machines to serve him, man is
compelled either to sit around idly and die of hunger, or to work frenziedly in
factories, mine holes, during the day, at night, on Sundays, to leave his home
early and quickly in the morning, or late at night, to be there at the whistle's
blow; to leave the factory tired, bewildered, embittered by the continual
growing exactions of his employers, who are themselves prey to feverish
activities and calculations?
Science that punishes
What is
the use of science, inventions, machines, electricity, chemistry, if all of
these serve man well only in slaughters, if all of these leave man in misery and
need as soon as the large-scale destruction of men and things stops?
Science
has become an agent of suffering and death, because the benefits of science do
not reach the consumer, the mass of consumers.
Science
multiplies products while reducing the number of wage-earners; however, one has
not yet come up with the means to distribute the products of science to those
who do not get wages or salaries. Hence the miseries and growing disorder in the
midst of nations where shine the applications of science. To maintain production
activities, each country seeks to push its accumulated production towards other
countries, whereas it does not want to buy anything from them; hence the
frictions which end up in wars between nations.
What
caused Professor Frederick Soddy (1924 Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry), one of
the great learned men of the present time, to say, on October 2, 1942, at the
height of the war: “Science without Social Credit is sheer suicide.”
Science with Social Credit
Why did
Professor Soddy say “without Social Credit”? Because with Social Credit, the
products of science — all farm produce and goods issued from forests and
industry, which respond to the needs of consumers — would go to the consumers,
even if the wages and salaries are taken away by machines.
The
Social Crediters are of the opinion, advisedly, that it is worthwhile to exert
oneself to bring a little more joy on earth, even in peacetime, even when one
stops mobilizing men and machines to dig graves.
But what
novel thing is Social Credit bringing again, for science to be serving instead
of punishing? Social Credit does one very simple thing; it recognizes that
science is a common good, and that the more science enters into production, the
more claims on this production that must go to each and every member of
society.
Example: the electric current
To
understand this better, let us spend five minutes in front of an electric lamp.
Everybody knows what an electric lamp is, even those who have no electricity yet
in their homes.
I push a
button: the lamp becomes luminous and lights up the whole room. Why? Because,
upon pushing the button, I made two wires join, and an electric current
immediately runs into the filaments of the bulb, and makes these filaments
incandescent.
But where
does this electric current come from? Where does this so convenient current come
from, ready to light up, heat up, turn motors, at the simple pushing of buttons?
This current which travels into wires at the speed of light, where does it come
from? What is it made of?
This
current comes from a waterfall. Somewhere, in a forest, on a slope, or at the
bottom of a mountain, a river takes a fall in its run towards the sea; a body of
water falls twenty, forty, sixty feet.
Our
ancestors saw these waterfalls: they were beautiful in the eyes of the poets,
but very inconvenient for the rowers who had to do portage. Our ancestors did
not take advantage of these waterfalls, except sometimes to turn the vanes of a
mill. They did not use water power to get light, heat, or an energy
transportable over great distances. Why? They lacked science, which, accumulated
and transmitted from generation to generation, sometimes slowly, more quickly at
other times, brought forward Ampere's and Faraday's beautiful discoveries. And
today, a waterfall is a treasure.
Dams are
built, turbines installed, then pylons, wires, and the waterfall supplies
current, without growing tired, without wearing out, without requesting a
holiday, over distances of tens, hundreds of miles.
This is
where the current comes from which makes my electric bulb incandescent and
luminous.
A
waterfall — science — material — work — and there you have the electric
current.
The owners
To whom
does the waterfall belong? Who pumps the water from the sea to carry it in the
form of rain over the summits and slopes of mountains? Is it not the work of the
sun, without one ounce of human labour? Who moulded the mountains, the slopes,
the land declivities which make the water precipitate into waterfalls? Who, if
not the forces of nature —upthrusts, subsidence, volcanoes, erosion?
Therefore, who can name himself the absolute owner of this waterfall?
This waterfall is a common good. In the Province of Quebec, it belongs to the
province, therefore to all the province's inhabitants, not to one more than to
another, but to all to the same degree.
Then,
what about science? The accumulation of inventions which allowed the production
of the electric current —to whom does it belong? To whom, if not to all of
humanity, to all men without exception? To the newborn baby, to the elderly who
can no longer work, to the sick as well as to the healthy, to each and everyone
without exception and to the same degree.
As for
the material for the dam — it was bought and paid for. The work for the dam was
paid for in wages and salaries.
What is
private property is recognized and paid for. But has what constitutes common
property in this given an income to each and everyone, since each and everyone
is a co-owner of it?
Ask the
settler, the farmer, who is not able to electrify his farm, the poor worker who
uses a paraffin lamp as light or does not have any light at all — ask them what
share of current production, or what equivalent share of other products, they
have received in return for their claims as co-owners.
We could
go further. There is not only the waterfall which is common property. There is
not only science which is common property. There is the social organization,
without which none of these things would be possible. The social organization,
which multiplies the possibilities of production, is a common good too.
Birthrights
All this
means that each and every one — from the sole fact of his entrance into an
organized society, from the sole fact of his birth into a country with natural
resources and into a world of applied science — is entitled to at least
something, as a co-owner of a great many common goods. Not only is this so in
the field of electricity, but also in all fields of modern production, which
more and more often borrow the fruits of applied science, and less and less
those of human labour.
Let us
now leave the electric lamp, and come close to a newborn child's cradle, close
to a sick person's bed, close to the woman who does her housework, close to the
pioneer who cuts down trees and pulls up stumps to build, with much difficulty
and misery, a small property in a new land, and let us ask them if an annual or
monthly income on their share of the common capital would not be good for them,
if they would not use it profitably.
Well,
this is the common capital that the Social Crediters recognize. They believe in
private property, and respect it. They believe in the reward for work, and
support it. But they also believe in a common property, and they say that it is
precisely because each person is denied his share of the income from this common
property, that goods are wasted, are destroyed, under the very eyes of a
multitude who are in need of them.
The national dividend
A
capitalist draws dividends when his capital produces, even if it is not he who
does the work.
Likewise,
each citizen, from the cradle to the grave, being a capitalist, a co-owner of a
common capital, must draw a dividend on this common capital when this common
capital produces. He must receive his dividend in his role of capitalist, not of
worker. When he works, he receives a wage or salary; but — on top of his wage or
salary if he works, and without a wage or salary if he does not work — he should
draw his dividend on a capital which belongs to him. This capital belongs to him
in common with all of his fellow citizens; and this is why each and every one is
entitled to the same dividend as regards this common capital that became
productive.
Do you
understand now why the Social Crediters call for a national dividend?
And the
facts prove them right, so right that, to maintain modern production, one must
absolutely put much of it somewhere. One fires it into the enemies' heads in
wartime, in the form of bombs and shells. One throws it into rivers, the fire,
the sea, the sewers, in the form of destroyed products or despicable
unemployment. In the first case, one kills human brothers of another nation. In
the second case, one weakens and kills brothers at home.
Science without Social Credit is suicide for humanity. With Social Credit, it would put plenty, joy, and peace into homes and nations.