Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

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M A S M I D tion of palliatives? What is the Beveridge Plan but another dose of palliatives? Social Democracy, New Deal, Beveridge Plan — none of them goes to the root of the trouble. None of them is calculated to eliminate the causes of economic, political and social diseases. None of them is brave enough to carry analysis to its ultimate conclusion. All of them ore palliative, stop- gap measures. They may mitigate, and indeed have mitigated for a time, the pain- ful pangs of the illness. But they cannot and do not cure it. And to the extent that procrastination is substituted for radical action will the world continue to languish in its misery, a misery which because oi its very nature becomes progressively worse. The true emancipation of mankind will begin only with the inauguration of total and all embracing measures based on the realization that in the present state of affairs, nothing short of the drastic will suffice. What, then, must be done? In the first place the conviction that freedom of enter- prise in the accepted sense is port and parcel of democracy, must be thrown over- board with gusto. Far from being the cor- nerstone of individual freedom which the National Association of Manufacturers claims it to be, freedom of enterprise today constitutes the greatest single instru- ment of economic barbarism and political injustice everywhere. It is an eighteenth century relic whose meaningfulness de- clined towards the end of the nineteenth century and whose survival thus far in the twentieth has been detrimental to progress and destructive of human dignity and free- dom. Freedom of enterprise is a mis- nomer. It is not freedom at all. It is syno- nymous with collossal economic injustice on both a national and international scale; it is synonymous with a society stratified into classes and cliques; it is the germ of serfdom, poverty, sickness, crime, falseness and war. It is the central root of the agony and suffering of our generation. It con- stitutes the foremost anachronism of our age and as such it must be totally de- stroyed. Once upon a time, freedom of enter- prise was in harmony with democratic principles. It was a necessary condition for social, political and economic progress. Those were the days when the perennial vested interests was feudalism in its un- disguised form. Laissez-Faire then was a revolutionary doctrine, just as its destruc- tion todcry is revolutionary. Unfortunately the term revolutionary has come to be regarded with horror by broad sections of the people because of a fallacious associa- tion with violence. As a matter of fact most revolutions in the history of mankind were accomplished in a natural, evolutionary fashion, devoid of either violence or terror. Revolution and progress, for the most part, have gone hand in hand, and the role of reaction has always been to postpone revolution and thus doing to retard prog- ress. But in the long run it is impossible to stem an ever surging tide. In a sense one may speak of revolutionary change as natural law. Ultimately the realization of neither can be denied. Any attempt to obstruct the path of natural development will create those artificial pangs of pain which result from dislocation and dis- equilibrium. The recent developmental stage reached by industry and all of its appendent char- acteristics in the context of a capitalist so- ciety, viz., mass production, specialization, wage labor, accumulation and concentra- tion of capital, monopoly competition, co- lonial exploitation, international aggression and imperialist rvialry, economic depres- sions and large scale warfare, clearly point in one direction, namely, the necessity for a new economic framework to replace one that has become obsolete.

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LjlimpSeA of a f- ost- l Uar Jrcler BY RABBI MORRIS MARGOLIES ' E ARE HEADING directly into World War III, even before we have achieved victory in World War II. The groundv ork for the coming catastrophe is sv iftly being laid and the handwriting on the wall is becoming increasingly legible. No exag- gerated pessimism is required for an alarmed view of the present trend of things. To anyone who will only observe and digest, it is obvious thcrt the dark forces of reaction are feverishly at work on all fronts — economic, political and social. They are busily engaged in a Herculean attempt to push the clock of time backwards — back- wards into the abyss of slavery, tyranny and bigotry. They were at work in Africa when the Girauds and Peyroutons ascended to power; they were at work at Red Cross headquar- ters where Negro blood was being segre- gated; they were at work in the State de- partment when it decided to continue the appeasement of General Franco; they were at work in the United Stales Senate when the Anti-Poll Tax bill went down to defeat; they were at work in Downing Street when Winston Churchill declared that he had not become His Majesty ' s first minister to pre- side over the dissolution of the British Em- pire; they were at work in the last election when Ham Fishes were returned to Con- gress; they were at work simultaneously throughout the country when the 40-hour week lie was being broadcast by 95 per cent of all American newspapers. And they are still at work now, only with doubled energy, greater insistence and more savage determination. They have grasped the situation fully and have planned their mode of campaign accord- ingly. They have correctly understood present day compulsives and have taken measures to adapt them to their own ad- vantage. The tragedy of the situation con- sists of the fact that the forces of liberalism and enlightenment, those forces diamet- rically opposed to the means and ends of the exponents of reaction, ore blind to their own grave peril and are currently in a state of torpor which bodes ill to the cause they represent. In their dormant con- dition they fcdl to realize that extreme situ- ations call for extreme measures and that powerful antidotes are imperative when the patient is exceedingly ill. The patient IS exceedingly ill and has been thus for a long time. In 1914 his illness headed into a crisis which lasted four years. Then, instead of pjerforming a badly needed operation to destroy the virus, the doctors resorted to the adminis- tration of palliatives, which, though they temporarily tempered the malady, were destined to aggravate the inevitable crisis of the future. We are now in the midst of that crisis and seemingly have the intention of administering another palliative. Only this time even such superficial measures may not be applied for, as was above indicated, the forces of reaction are hard at work and their growth in strength is co- extensive with the growth of the malady ' s proportions. It is therefore in their interest to oppose even the administration of pal- liatives. It is readily recalled that both Fascism and Nazism followed socially pro- gressive governments and to a certain ex- tent were products of those governments. And what was Social Democracy in both the Germany and Italy before Hitler and Mussolini but a goverrmient of palliatives ' What was the New Deal but an administra-

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M A S M i D The wealth of society in the present stage of economic development is the prod- uct of social labor. No longer ore the necessaries of life and its luxuries created by him who enjoys them alone. Even un- der the present economic organization, it would be utterly impossible to go on living if social cooperation were to be eliminated. Contrary to the contention of Thomas Hobbes, society has become a natural, organic, interdependent body. It is no more than logical, therefore, that any ele- ments of schism, conflict, and division in that society should run counter to its spirit and be destructive of its nature. Those elements are atavistic remnants from a dead era, an era which was characterized by individual- ism and in which it was still possible to survive under individualistic patterns of action. It was then that such terms as rugged individualism ' and freedom of enterprise had some meaning. Oppor- tunities for self-advancement and economic success based on initiative still abounded. The avenues of endeavor were still open to the resourceful and capitalist democracy was still democracy. All of this is no longer true. Internal industrial development has just about reached its zenith in most industrialized countries. The exploitation of natural re- sources has proceeded to the point of near exhaustion. And all of this has been ac- companied by ruthless, cut-throat compe- tition and the subsequent birth of gigantic monopolies. Competition amongst these huge monopolies has led in normal times to the constant lowering of the standard of living as a result of cuts in industrial wages. These cuts arose from the ne- cessity of augmenting capitalist profit at the expense of economies elsewhere. Such a situation when prolonged leads and has led to two results. The first is the curtail- ment of the home market for manufactured goods. This in turn is the result of the inability of the large laboring masses to purchase these goods in the large quan- tities produced with their constantly more limited means. The second is the vast one sided accumulation oi capital in the hands of the capitalist class. This capital cannot be invested profitably at home, the market already limited as it is. The combined factors of the curtailment of the home market plus the necessity for the investment of surplus capital have been the primary causes of imperialism — the act of capital investment abroad. One of the most important functions of capitalist gov- ernment has become the acquisition of co- lonial bases for the industrial activity of a very small percentage of its citizenry. Thus has competition become keen among industrialized nations for securing unde- veloped territory. This has led to bitter economic nationalism in the form of trade barriers and political discrimination, and finally to war — war engaged in by a ma- jority on both sides with common social and economic interests for the sake of a minority on both sides with clashing in- terests. On the other hand of the scales the aggravation of the living conditions of the masses of the people has continued apace. All over the world they have been ruth- lessly exploited and condemned to ever increasing suffering. One hears proud talk of the American standard of living and one is constrained to an ironic smile. It is unnecessary to repeat the fact that one-third of our nation is ill fed, ill housed and ill clothed. Forty million disinherited children in a land capable of providing for all in comfort. Most of them wallow in condi- tions of undernourishment, ignorance, filth and disease. Seventy-five thousand persons out of one hundred thirty million are in effective control of America ' s industrial tools. Seventy-five thousand in control of the des- tiny of one hundred thirty million in a land