Synthesis on Social Transformation

Extract

It is the most frightful of ironies that our economic system has opened new and valid horizons to the aspiration of our work precisely by that same liberal-commercial drive which has smashed pre-capitalist systems of personal labour and family production. Man’s work and woman’s bearing—the bitter things under the domination of the balance sheet, the world-wide market, the clean-cuffed man of commerce. Because clean-cuffs does not care a damn for man’s work and woman’s bearing. A production which is primarily judged by its export balance (and that means a production which is primarily for the profit and prestige of the clean-cuffs, the telephone-manipulators of marginal prices, the destroyers) runs clean counter to the restoration of the personal in industry. But, says Marcel Melcor, liberalist commercialism at its present stage involves an impossibility and is being destroyed by it. You can’t go on developing the consuming power of a minority at the expense of the majority. You can’t go on developing the consuming power of a minority at a greater pace than that of the majority. Morals aside, you can't do it. The agricultural population of the world (three-fourths of the world's population) cannot continue to be exploited in the interests of export balance sheets. He says we’ve got to stop it before it breaks us. And he says the only way to do it is to turn the trend of economic effort away from international export balances and build up justice through recognizing the existence of our next-door neighbour. And he is speaking here primarily as an economist. The humiliating lesson is rubbed in: if you want to save your bacon you must seek first the kingdom of God and His justice. Which is a bit of a surprise if all you wanted to save was your bacon.