"The good things at which socialism aims can only be achieved where industry is highly developed and has sunk deep into the habits of the nation. In England or America, socialism, if it could be achieved without prolonged war and industrial dislocation, could bring a very considerable degree of material well-being to the whole population, by exacting only four or five hours of daily labour from every adult citizen. And it would not need to be a centralized bureaucratic system, because the workers, from long practice, have come to understand the industries in which they are employed, and would be thoroughly competent to manage them themselves.
A gradual approach to these benefits is possible without a catastrophic abolition of the capitalist system, and therefore without the very grave dangers to industrialism and the whole fabric of civilization which are involved in a universal class-war. But these benefits cannot be secured in a country as yet almost un-industrial, however much it may be nominally communistic, because in such a country the total produce of labour is not very much more than is needed for subsistence, and there are not, in the general body of the population, the habits, the skill or the knowledge required for a democratic control of the processes of industrial production."
― Bertrand Russell, The Prospects of Industrial Civilization (1959), Part I, Ch. I: Causes of the Present Chaos, p. 26
"It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a 'higher standard of living than any have ever known.' It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival."
--R Buckminster Fuller, 1963
Both men were and are correct. We just aren't so bright as to put it all into place and have ti work for us all, for humankind.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment