In this world, as in our own, nearly all the chief means of production, nearly all the land, mines, factories, railways, ships, were controlled for private profit by a small minority of the population. These privileged individuals were able to force the masses to work for them on pain of starvation. The tragic farce inherent in such a system was already approaching. The owners directed the energy of the workers increasingly toward the production of more means of production rather than to the fulfilment of the needs of individual life. For machinery might bring profit to the owners; bread would not. With the increasing competition of machine with machine, profits declined, and therefore wages, and therefore effective demand for goods. Marketless products were destroyed, though bellies were unfed and backs unclad. Unemployment, disorder, and stern repression increased as the economic system disintegrated. A familiar story!
Olaf StapledonRelated topics
able bread chief control force goods increasing land machinery mass might needs pain production profit repression small story wages work means profits fulfilment mines unfedRelated quotes
The concept of the « struggle for existence » has been applied to microbial interrelationships in nature in a manner comparable to the effects assigned by Darwin to higher forms of life. It has also been suggested that the ability of a microbe to produce an antibiotic substance enables it to survive Giom. in competition for space and for nutrients with other microbes. Such assumptions ppear to be totally unjustified on the basis of existing knowledge. Before we proceed with a discussion of the formation and activities of antibiotics under natural conditions, we must consider certain fundamental aspects of the problem of antibiotic production under controlled laboratory or factory conditions... All the discussion of a "struggle for existence" in which antibiotics are supposed to play a part, is merely a figment of the imagination, and an appeal to the melodramatic rather than the factual.
Selman Waksman
We must be prepared to accept the will of God. The Lord permits all sorts of things to happen to us contrary to our will, for if we always have it our way, we will not be prepared for the Kingdom of Heaven. Neither heaven nor earth will receive those who are self-willed.
God has a Divine plan for each one of us, and we must submit to His plan. We must accept life as it is given to us, without asking, "Why me?” We must know that nothing on earth or in heaven ever happens without the will of God or His permission. We must not become too engrossed with our hardships but concentrate on preserving our inner peace.
Even when we are praying for something, we are trying to force our will instead of accepting God's. All hardships and sorrows that God sends us are necessary for us, but we do not understand this when we are young. When we are older, then we understand that this is the way God shows His love for us.
Tadej of Vitovnica
Administrative efficiency is not merely a matter of paper clips, time clocks, and standardized economies of motion. These are but minor gadgets. Real efficiency goes much deeper down. It must be built into the structure of a government just as it is built into a piece of machinery. Fortunately the foundations of effective management in public affairs, no less than in private, are well known. They have emerged universally wherever men have worked together for some common purpose, whether through the state, the church, the private association, or the commercial enterprise. They have been written into constitutions, charters, and articles of incorporation, and exist as habits of work in the daily life of all organized peoples. Stated in simple terms these canons of efficiency require the establishment of a responsible and effective chief executive as the center of energy, direction, and administrative management.
Louis Brownlow
I have to inform the House that the present situation is so critical that the Government are compelled to seek special powers from the House by a Bill to be passed through all its stages in both Houses of Parliament to-day. The situation is grave. ... The Government are convinced that now is the time when we must mobilise to the full the whole resources of this country. We must throw all our weight into the struggle. Every private interest must give way to the urgent needs of the community. We cannot know what the next few weeks or even days may bring forth, but whatever may come we shall meet it as the British people in the past have met dangers and overcome them. But it is necessary that the Government should be given complete control over persons and property, not just some persons of some particular class of the community, but of all persons, rich and poor, employer and workman, man or woman, and all property.
Clement Attlee
The principal contradiction within capitalism from the outset was that between the capitalists and the workers. To keep their system going, the capitalists had constantly to step up the rate of exploitation of their workers. At the same time, European workers were gaining increasing mastery over the means of production in the factories and mines, and they were learning to work collectively in big enterprises and within their own trade union structures. If the bourgeoisie continued to deprive them of the major part of the fruits of their own labor and to oppress them socially and politically, then those two classes were set on a collision path. Ever since the mid-nineteenth century, Marx had predicted class collision would come in the form of revolution in which workers would emerge victorious. The capitalists were terribly afraid of that possibility, knowing full well that they themselves had seized power from the feudal landlord class by means of revolution.
Walter Rodney