CAPITAL AND LABOUR By the Tibetan

First of all, it must be recognised that the cause of all world unrest, of the world wars which have wrecked humanity and the widespread misery upon our planet can largely be attributed to a selfish group with materialistic purposes who have for centuries exploited the masses and used the labour of mankind for their selfish ends. From the feudal barons of Europe and Great Britain in the Middle Ages through the powerful business groups of the Victorian era to the handful of capitalists—national and international—who today control the world's resources, the capitalistic system has emerged and has wrecked the world. This group of capitalists has cornered and exploited the world's resources and the staples required for civilised living; they have been able to do this because they have owned and controlled the world's wealth through their interlocking directorates and have retained it in their own hands. They have made possible the vast differences existing between the very rich and the very poor; they love money and the power which money gives. They have stood behind governments and politicians. They have controlled the electorate, they have made possible the narrow nationalistic aims of selfish politics. They have financed the world businesses and controlled oil, coal, power, light and transportation. They control publicly or sub rosa the world's banking accounts.

CAPITAL

The responsibility for the widespread misery to be found today in every country in the world lies predominantly at the door of certain major interrelated groups of businessmen, bankers, executives of international cartels, monopolies, trusts and organisations and directors of huge corporations who work for corporate or personal gain. They are not interested in benefiting the public except in so far that the public demand for better living conditions will enable them–under the Law of Supply and Demand–to provide the goods, the transportation, light and power which will in the long run bring in heavier financial returns. Exploitation of manpower, the manipulation of the major planetary resources and the promotion of war for private or business profit are characteristic of their methods.

In every nation, such men and organisations–responsible for the capitalistic system–are to be found. The ramifications of their businesses and their financial grasp upon humanity were, prior to the war, active in every land and though they went underground during the war, they still exist. They form an international group, closely interrelated, working in complete unity of idea and intention and knowing and understanding each other. These men constitute the greatest menace mankind faces today; they control politics; they buy prominent men in every nation; they insure silence through threat, cash and fear; they amass wealth and buy a spurious popularity through philanthropic enterprise; their families live soft and easy lives and seldom know the meaning of God-ordained work; they surround themselves with beauty, luxury and possessions and shut their eyes to the poverty, stark unhappiness, lack of warmth and decent clothing, the starvation and the ugliness of the lives of the millions by whom they are surrounded; they contribute to charities and church agencies as a salve to their consciences or to avoid income taxes; they provide work for countless thousands but see to it that these thousands receive so small a wage that real comfort, leisure, culture and travel are impossible.

The above is a terrible indictment. It can, however, be substantiated a thousand times over; it is breeding revolution and a growing spirit of unrest. The masses of the people in every land are aroused and awakening and a new day is dawning. A war is starting between the selfish monied interests and the mass of humanity who demand fair play and a right share of the world's wealth.

There are those, however, within the capitalistic system who are aware of the danger with which the monied interests are faced and whose natural tendency is to think along broader and more humanitarian lines. These men fall into two main groups:

First, those who are real humanitarians, who seek the good of their fellowmen and who have no desire to exploit the masses or to profit by the misery of others. They have risen to place and power through their sheer ability or through inherited business position and they cannot avoid the responsibility of the disposal of the millions in their hands. They are frequently rendered helpless by their fellow executives and their hands are largely tied by the existing rules of the game, by their sense of responsibility to their stockholders and by the realisation that, no matter what they do–fight or resign–the situation remains unchanged. It is too big for the individual. They remain, therefore, relatively powerless. They are fair and just, decent and kind, simple in their way of life and with a true sense of values, but there is little of a potent nature that they can do.

Second, those who are clever enough to read the signs of the times; they realise that the capitalistic system cannot continue indefinitely in the face of humanity's rising demands and the steady emerging of the spiritual values. They are beginning therefore to change their methods and to universalise their businesses and to institute cooperative procedures with their employees. Their inherent selfishness prompts the change and the instinct of self-preservation determines their attitudes. In between these two groups are those who belong to neither the one nor the other; they are a fruitful field for the propaganda of the selfish capitalist or the unselfish humanitarian.

It might be well to add here that the selfish thinking and the separative motivation which distinguishes the capitalistic system is also to be found in the small and unimportant business men in the corner grocery, the plumber and the haberdasher who exploits his employees and deceives his customers. It is the universal spirit of selfishness and the love of power with which we have to contend. The war has, however, acted like a purge. It has opened the eyes of men to the underlying cause of war–economic distress, based on the exploitation of the planet's resources by an international group of selfish and ambitious men. The opportunity to change things is now present.

LABOUR

Let us now look at the opposing group–Labour.

A powerful group, representing the capitalistic system, both national and international, and an equally powerful group of labour unions and their leaders, face each other today. Both groups are national and international in scope. It remains to be seen which of the two will eventually control the planet or if a third group made up of practical idealists may not emerge and take over. The interest of the spiritual workers in the world today is not on the side of the capitalists nor even of labour, as it is now functioning; it is on the side of humanity.

For thousands of years, if history is to be believed, the wealthy landowners, the institutional heads of tribes, the feudal lords, the slave owners, merchants or business executives have been in power; they exploited the poor; they searched for the maximum output at the minimum cost. It is no new story. In the Middle Ages, the exploited workmen, the skilled craftsmen and cathedral builders began to form guilds and lodges for mutual protection, for joint discussion and frequently to promote the finest type of craftsmanship. These groups grew in power as the centuries slipped by yet the position of the employed man, woman or child remained deplorable.

With invention of machinery and the inauguration of the machine age during the 18th and 19th centuries, the condition of the labouring elements of the population became acutely bad; living conditions were abominable, unsanitary and dangerous to health, owing to the growth of urban areas around factories. They still are, as witness the housing problem of munitions workers during the past several years and the situation around the coal fields both in the States and Great Britain. The exploitation of children increased. The sweat-shop flourished; modern capitalism came into its own and the sharp distinction between the very poor and the very rich became the outstanding characteristic of the Victorian era. From the angle of the planned evolutionary and spiritual development of the human family, leading to civilized and cultural living and to fair play and equal opportunity for all, the situation could not have been worse. Commercial selfishness and wild discontent flourished. The very rich flaunted their superior status in the faces of the very poor, paralleled with a patronizing paternalism. The spirit of revolution grew among the herded, overworked masses who, by their efforts, contributed to the wealth of the rich classes.

The spiritual principle of Freedom became increasingly recognised and its expression demanded. World conditions tended in the same direction. Movements of every kind became possible, symbolising this growth and the demand for freedom....Educational facilities also grew and with this came the demand by the labouring classes for better living conditions, higher pay and more leisure. This the employers have constantly fought; they organised themselves against the demands of the awakening mass of men and precipitated a condition which forced labour to take action.

Groups of enlightened men in Europe, Great Britain and the United States began to agitate, to write books which were widely read, to start discussions, and to urge the monied classes to awaken to the situation and to the appalling living conditions under which the labouring class and peasantry lived. The abolitionists fought slavery—whether of Negroes or of whites, of children or of adults. A rapid developing free press began to keep the "lower classes" informed of what was going on; parties were formed to end certain glaring abuses; the French Revolution, the writings of Marx and of others, and the American Civil War all played their part in forcing the issue of the common man. Men in every country determined to fight for freedom and their proper human rights.

Gradually employees and labourers came together for mutual protection and their just rights. The Labour Union movement came into being eventually with its formidable weapons: education for freedom and the strike. Many discovered that in union there is strength and that together they could defy the employer and wrest from the monied interests decent wages, better living conditions and that greater leisure which is the right of every man. The fact of the steadily increasing power of labour and of its international strength is well known and a primary modern interest.

Powerful individuals among the union leaders came to the surface of the movement. Some of the employers, who had the best interests of their workers at heart, stood by them and aided them. They were relatively a small minority but they served to weaken the confidence and power of the majority. The fight of the workers is still going on; gains are steadily being made; shorter hours and better pay are constantly being demanded and when refused the weapon of the strike is used. The use of the strike, so beneficent and helpful in the early days of the rise of labour to power, is now itself becoming a tyranny in the hands of the unscrupulous and self-seeking. Labour leaders are now so powerful that many of them have shifted into the position of dictators and are exploiting the mass of workers whom they earlier served. Labour is also becoming exceedingly rich and untold millions have been accumulated by the great national organisations everywhere. The Labour Movement is itself now capitalistic.

Labour and Labour Unions have done noble work. Labour has been elevated into its rightful place in the life of the nations and the essential dignity of man has been emphasised. Humanity is being rapidly fused into one great corporate body under the influence of the Law of Supply and of Demand which is a point to be remembered. The destiny of the race and the power to make national and international decisions, affecting the whole of mankind, is passing into the hands of the masses, of the working classes and of the man in the street. The inauguration of the labour unions was, in fact, a great spiritual movement, leading to the uprising anew of the divine spirit in man and an expression of the spiritual qualities inherent in the race.

Yet all is not well with the labour movement. The question arises whether it is not sorely in need of a drastic house cleaning. With the coming-in of labour governments in certain countries, with the growth of democracy and the demand for freedom, with the uprising of the rule of the proletariat in Russia, and the higher educational standard of the race, it might well appear that new, better and different methods may now be used to implement the Four Freedoms and to ensure right human relations. If there is a realization that there should be right human relations among nations, it is obvious that such relations should exist also between capital and labour (composed as both groups are of human beings) and between the quarrelling labour organizations. Labour is today a dictatorship, using threat, fear and force to gain its ends. Many of its leaders are powerful and ambitious men, with a deep love of money and a determination to wield power. Bad housing, poor pay and evil conditions still exist everywhere and it is not in every case the fault of the employer. (Written in the 1940’s)

THE WAY FORWARD

Certain questions arise. In the answering of these questions, humanity will solve its problems or, if they remain unsolved, the human race will come to an end....

What standard of living will–in the New Age–seem essential to man? Shall we have a purely

materialistic civilisation or shall we have a spiritual world trend?

What must be done to prevent the monied interests from again mobilising for the exploitation of

the world?

What really lies at the very heart of the modern materialistic difficulty?

This last question can be answered in the well known words: "The love of money is the root of all evil." This throws us back on the fundamental weakness of humanity–the quality of desire. Of this, money is the result and the symbol.

From the simple process of barter and exchange (as practised by the primeval savage) to the intricate and formidable financial and economic structure of the modern world, desire is the underlying cause. It demands the satisfaction of sensed need, the desire for goods and possessions, the desire for material comfort, for the acquisition and the accumulation of things, the desire for power and the supremacy which money alone can give. This desire controls and dominates human thinking; it is the keynote of our modern civilisation; it is also the octopus which is slowly strangling human life, enterprise, and decency; it is the millstone around the neck of mankind.

To own, to possess, and to compete with other men for supremacy has been the keynote of the average human being–man against man, householder against householder, business against business, organisation against organisation, party against party, nation against nation, labour against capital so that today it is recognised that the problem of peace and happiness is primarily related to the world's resources and to the ownership of those resources.

The dominating words in our newspapers, over our radios, and in all our discussions are based upon the financial structure of human economy: banking interests, salaries, national debts, reparations, cartels and trusts, finance, taxation–these are the words which control our planning, arouse our jealousies, feed our hatreds or our dislike of other nations, and set us one against the other. The love of money is the root of all evil.

There are, however, large numbers of people whose lives are not dominated by the love of money and who can normally think in terms of the higher values. They are the hope of the future but are individually imprisoned in the system which, spiritually, must end. Though they do not love money they need it and must have it; the tentacles of the business world surround them; they too must work and earn the wherewithal to live; the work they seek to do to aid humanity cannot be done without the required funds; the churches are materialistic in their mode of work and–after caring for the organisational aspect of their work–there is little left for Christ's work, for simple spiritual living. The task facing the men and women of goodwill in every land today seems too heavy and the problems to be solved seem well-nigh insoluble. Men and women of goodwill are now asking the question: Can the conflict between capital and labour be ended and a new world be thereby reborn? Can living conditions be so potently changed that right human relations can be permanently established?

These relationships can be established, and for the following reasons:

1. Humanity has suffered so terribly during the past two hundred years that it is possible to bring about the needed changes, provided that the correct steps are taken before the pain and agony are forgotten and their effects have passed out of man's consciousness. These steps must be taken at once whilst patent evidences of the past are still present, and the aftermath of world war is before our eyes.

2. The release of the energy of the atom is definitely the inauguration of the New Age; it will so completely alter our way of life that much of the planning at present being done will be found to be of an interim nature; it will simply help humanity to make a great transition out of the materialistic system now dominating into one in which right human relations will be the basic characteristic. This new and better way of life will be developed for two main reasons:

a) The purely spiritual reasons of human brotherhood, of peaceful cooperative enterprise and the constantly unfolding principle of the Christ consciousness in the hearts of men. This may be deemed a mystical and visionary reason; it is already more controlling in its effects than is believed.

b) The frankly selfish motive of self-preservation. The release of atomic energy has not only put into human hands a potent force which will inevitably bring in a new and better way of life, but also a terrible weapon, capable of wiping the human family off the face of the earth.

3. The steady and selfless work of the men and women of goodwill in every land. This work is non-spectacular but surely founded on right principles and it is one of the main agencies for peace.

On account of this energy discovery capital and labour are each faced with a problem, and both these problems will reach a point of crisis in the next few years.

Money, the accumulation of financial assets and the cornering of the earth's resources for organisational exploitation will soon prove utterly useless and futile, provided that these resources of energy and the mode of their release remain in the hands of the people's chosen representatives and are not the secret possession of certain groups of powerful men or of any one nation. Atomic energy belongs to humanity as a whole. The responsibility for its control must lie in the hands of the men of goodwill. They must control its destiny and make it available along constructive lines for the use of men everywhere. No one nation should own the formula or secret for the release of energy. Until mankind, however, has moved forward in its understanding of right human relations, an international group of men of goodwill–trusted and chosen by the people–should safeguard these potencies.

If this energy is released into constructive channels and if it remains safely guarded by the right men, the capitalistic system is doomed. The problem of labour will then be the major problem of unemployment–a dreaded word which will be meaningless in the golden age which lies ahead. The masses will then be faced by the problem of leisure. This is a problem which when faced and solved will release the creative energy of man into channels undreamed of today.

The release of atomic energy is the first of many great releases in all the kingdoms of nature; the great release still ahead of humanity will bring into expression mass creative powers, spiritual potencies and psychic unfoldments which will prove and demonstrate the divinity and the immortality of man

LOOKING AHEAD

All this will take time. The time factor must govern as never before the activities of the men of goodwill and the work of those whose task it is to educate not only the children and the youth of the world but also to train humanity in the major undertaking of right human relations and in the possibilities immediately ahead. The note to be struck and the word to be emphasised is humanity. Only one dominant concept can today save the world from a looming economic fight to the death, can prevent the uprising again of the materialistic systems of the past, can stop the re-emerging of the old ideas and concepts and can bring to an end the subtle control by the financial interests and the violent discontent of the masses. A belief in human unity must be endorsed. This unity must be grasped as something worth fighting and dying for; it must constitute the new foundation for all our political, religious and social reorganisation and must provide the theme for our educational systems. Human unity, human understand-ing, human relationships, human fair play and the essential oneness of all men–these are the only concepts upon which to construct the new world, through which to abolish competition and to bring to an end the exploitation of one section of humanity by another and the hitherto unfair possession of the earth's wealth. As long as there are extremes of riches and poverty men are falling short of their high destiny.

The Kingdom of God can appear on earth, and this in the immediate future, but the members of this kingdom recognise neither rich nor poor, neither high nor low, neither labour nor capital but only the children of the one Father, and the fact–natural and yet spiritual–that all men are brothers. Here lies the solution of the problem with which we are dealing. The spiritual Hierarchy of our planet recognises neither capital nor labour; it recognises only men and brothers. The solution is, therefore, education and still more education and the adaptation of the recognised trends of the times to the vision seen by the spiritually minded and by those who love their fellowmen.

(Problems of Humanity, pp. 70-84)