TRINITY OF PRODUCTION.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 July 1925, Page 11

TRINITY OF PRODUCTION.

LABOUR, CAPITAL AND BRAINS. The Welfare League writes:—lf you have, read Robert Louis Stevenson's stirring tale, "Kidnapped,” you will remember how David Balfour and Alan Bieck, when they were hiding on the mountains and had nothing to eat but a little porridge, added to their food by groping for trout in the stream. Alan and David could only supply themselves with one or two small fish. A modern steam trawler can feed a sizeable town. The difference in result is enormous. In one ease you have individual and primitive effort; in the other, the union in modern industry of three partners, eaeli contributing a. share to the final result, but each dependent on the other two. We talk loosely about individualism, but. in truth there is no such thing in modern industry. It is the union of th:; three factors that counts; the collaboration of the three partners that brings the results. Who arc these part-

Tlie first of these is labour. The trawler will be in the harbour till it rots if no men go on board to get up steam and head her to tile fishing grounds. Nowadays, practical men of affairs, anxious only to obtain the best results, have learnt to regard labour as what it is, namely, one of the partners in industry. But if labour is to maintain its title to rank as a partner, it must act as a partner. Labour that goes slow, that won’t work, tiiat declines to co-operate with the other partners ceases to be labour at all. It loses all economic value to itself and others. That is a mad individualism we unfortunately witness too often for the social weal. Labour in society spells service, and to be truly service it must in the spirit of partnership recognise others than self.

The second partner is capital. In the earliest days of human existence man must have caught his fish as David and Alan caught, their trout, by labour alone. Mingled, however, with the bones of later men are found the rough fishhooks, which they invented to aid them in their fishing. These, fish-hooks then represented capital, just as in our time the steam trawler does. People make the mistake of thinking that capital is another word for money. It is not so. Capital is anything that ean be used in conjunction with labour to increase production. The man who supplies his labour ha® a right to his share in' the product as a partner, and he who supplies the capital is also entitled to a share for what he contributes. It is on that basis the whole structure of property rests, and social order of any kind of unthinkable apitrt from man’s right to the property he produces. The third -partner is brains, variously interpreted as inventive power, initiative, organising ability, management. In the primitive state labour, capital, management may be all combined in one person. With increase of population and human needs there comes naturally ever greater complexity which calls for differentiation of function. The law of evolution is that of development from the simple to the complex, and it is no less in the social kingdom of man than in the physical kingdom of Nature. Thus labour, capital and management becomes identified with separate personalities. The bond of association" then becomes one of partnership, not simple identity. From misunderstanding these facts many social and political fallacies have arisen. The greatest of the fallacies is the Bolshevist doctrine that there is no partnership, that “labour produces all wealth,” and that the historic mission of the class named labour is to destroy all other classes and be itself supreme. What is the matter with Soviet Russia. It is simply that the partnership of brains, labour and capital has been at least temporarily destroyed. Capital was driven out. Brains, under the mad impulse of destroying the bourgeoisie, was exiled and starved. Labour was enthroned as the all in all, with what sad results for poor suffering Russian humanity. Now the movement is to bring capital back and the brains of the technician and wise administrators. The partnership of labour, brains, and capital is again being slowly but. surely recognised as the absolute essential of modern industrial life. The economic monism of Karl Marx is found to be unworkable. Labour is not all, nor can it be made so. For the great operations of modern industry the best brains are required. Science and art are brought into the partnership an equal with capital -and labour. Tile trinity of productive powers is equivalent to all who are not blind to fact. It establishes classes but not necessarily “class consciousness,” "class war ’ and class destruction. With the growing recognition of partnership and the interdependence of all classes the three powers of labour, capital and brains will become one in social spirit to the well-being -of humanity as a whole. Unity in diversity is another law of Nature that man is gradually learning to comprehend.