The Profit Motive in Wartime
Light, L. K.
The Profit Motive in Wartime By L. K. Light THE war hat turned out to be a heaven-sent opportunity for every special-interest group in the United States to feather and bolster its own nest snd...
...So successful did Big Business become in the nineteenth century and the.early decades of the twentieth and so envious did sll outsiders become of it, thst everybody with any sort of power-drive began to ape it consciously or unconsciously...
...What now* about the editorial writers who scribble about the necessity of "rewarding" skill and talent...
...Where, then, if business did not produce them, did automobiles, radios, washing machines, skyscrapers and the rest of our paraphernalia corns from...
...Selfishness of the pecuniary kind turned out, in the end, to be self-defeating...
...Prime consideration of profit today means that society is harmed rsther thsn benefitted...
...These materials sre being produced by engineers, scientists, and skilled and unskilled workers sll along the line, in accordance with orders transmitted through officers and directors, orders received from the government...
...For this reason Americans almost instinctively equate sacrifice with the relinquishment of some fraction of personal gain, some minor comfort or luxury...
...The Profit Motive in Wartime By L. K. Light THE war hat turned out to be a heaven-sent opportunity for every special-interest group in the United States to feather and bolster its own nest snd every singls one of thorn has turned to the task with a will Each special-interest group, egocentric to a degree, sees its own interest ss the national interest, snd this is one of the grave wesknesses in the internal structure of American morale today...
...In s Pasteur, a Lister or a Harvey it leaves tremendous medical knowledge...
...And it is self-defeating in a time of national crisis like the present, when corporation profits are again, by leaps and bounds, moving up to unprecedented heights under the stimulus of cost-plus government contracts...
...Counsels sre therefore divided, snd whst emerges as policy has a pale, uninspiring color and a faintly disagreeable odor...
...Just how this egocentric group interest ^operates, superior to any conception of national interest, is shown by the revelstion of how tha Stsndsrd Oil Company of New Jersey agreed with the Germsn Chemical Trust in October, 1939, not to release synthetic rubber patents to the United States "whether or not the United States esme in" to the wsr...
...U/HAT the United States needs is s leader-" ship that would silence snd harness to the war effort the belligerer.t captains of every single special-interest group, whatever its clsims to tender consideration might be...
...It is out to knife labor, for one thing, and for this reason we see the Smith-Connally bill not only in Congress but get accepted by the White House...
...Indeed, it is injured...
...In a Beethoven it lesves the world s tressure of music...
...If theie is any group leader with a broad conception of the national interest, if there is sny one who sees it as composed of many interests, he is not very prominent...
...But Standard Oil figures in this business, really, only ss s symbol...
...Wouldn't the United States be safer if it put a higher-salaried "genius" like Henry Ford, Eugene Grace or William Randolph Hearst in Eisenhower's place ? Curiously enough, no such fears are expressed and, indeed, they would be baseless...
...Business only preempted them, as it preempted agriculture, fishing and animal husbandry...
...Before we proceed any further it is necessary to understand one all-embracing fact about the United States: every institutionalised group in the United States is organized in accordance -with the philosophy of Big Business, including oven groups that are opposed to Big Business...
...Not st all, because the Eisenhowers, the trained technicians up and down the line, would all be functioning as usual, that is, J00 per cent...
...And, from a domestic competitive point of view, they are entirely right in this attitude...
...Yet the whole of sgricultursl producs now pssses through business chsnnels...
...Whst, then, about the huge war profits being profit-making were prevented through effective price control...
...Here the profit-motive was an incentive, and a strong incentive, an historically useful incentive...
...For it quickly became evident that huge^profita for a few did not mean mass well-being...
...The public record, as mads by spokesmen for the various special-interest groups, shows all of the following accused of lack of pstriotism: the corporations, the dollar-a-year men, the labor unions, the farmers, the foreign born, tha Jews, the Catholics, the liberals, the radicals, the New Dealers, the conservatives, the reactionaries, and all the rest...
...All the specisl-interest groups, of course, srs brimming with oral patriotism, making it difficult to criticise any of them without seeming to impugn patriotism in genersl...
...We get bread through business channels...
...the aged, the foreign born, the descendants of the early settlers, et al...
...The salary paid to General Dwight Eisenhower today is, according to War Department salary schedules, precisely $8,000 a year, while the pay of a top-ranking admiral in the Navy is the same...
...But there are differences in the wsy selfishness msy express itself...
...Just how over-rated they are we may see by contrasting their self-voted salariea of 1200,000, $300,000 and $400,000 a year with the salaries paid to the highly trained technicians in charge of our military forces...
...If the government wants to stop internal wrangling and bickering here is a program...
...But the government n Washington is conducting itself more like a genteel parliamentary caucus in a political , campaign, acting as the patient mediator between contending groups, playing one group off against the other, and in general behaving as though this were an election campaign instead of a deadly struggle...
...These officers and directors sre little mors thsn office boys...
...What business did create, however, was relatively efficient bureaucratic organization that facilitated the development and distribution of all these products...
...It is afraid to show the leaders of the various groups the firm fist of authority, and one reason for this is that all the groups have deeply penetrated the government with representatives who are cspsble only of thinking in terms of one interest group or the other...
...It was shown to be obviously self-defeating in the successive disastrous economic slumps...
...This attitude derives st the second remove from Big Business, whose philosophy, ss I have indicated, permeates every other group without anyone's being aware of it Primarily the attitude stems from individual selfishness, which is one of the big psychologicsl motive forces in humsn beings, snd a highly useful force, too...
...Is it ** not the duty of the government to crack down?- But on whom to crack down first...
...The answer, of course, is that none of these products—nor ten thousand others—has snythlng whatever fundamentally to do with business big or little...
...The underlying notion in laissez-faire economics was that if everybody is allowed to make money for selfish reasons the whole of society would be benefitted...
...And.as labor and the farmers fight back the war effort is certainly not forwarded...
...Unselfishness" is pure nonsense, snd if it is present to a marked degree in any individual exists only as sn indication of maladjustment...
...But it became less snd less true ss the system became institutionalised, until today it is not true at all...
...They are very good office boys, to be sure, very bright ones...
...In Eisenhower we have a man—and the last word should be stressed—who is conceded by sll to hold a very responsible post, a post which for responsibility mskes the president or chairman of a big corporation or a bank seem by contrast to be engaged in making mudpies...
...The government in Washington seems, literally, afraid to offend any specisl-interest people...
...But the various contending snd competitive groups, nothing dauted, simply ignore each other's claims to patriotism, and get down to concrete tacts...
...One difference between this war and the last one is that now many non-business groups are thoroughly organized along business lines and capable of making themselves felt in the national councils...
...So bright, indeed, that they have been able with the company funds to hire all this talent...
...Business merely preempts things—everything out of which it can make a profit...
...The recipients of the huge self-voled, self-declared salaries and dividends would, naturally, if they were thwarted, make a disturbing noise through their editorial puppets, who would cry that "the American way" of "free enterprise" was being endangered...
...It is on selfishness that human progress has rested...
...Realizing this, Big Business is out to knife sll other groups and, through its control of the orgsns of public opinion, is well on its way to doing so...
...In a Rockefeller, a Rothschild or a Morgan it leaves — a tremendous personal fortune...
...Even sfter Pesrl Harbor, according to former Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold, Standard OH had refused to release synthetic rubber products to the United States and it was necessary to get a court order to obtain the stuff...
...But might not Big Business become profoundly discouraged and cease producing war materials, slack off in production...
...Its full play, however, made necessary defensive organizations such as labor unions, and gave rise to rival interests...
...Business periodically went into a slump after it had exchanged its products for mass purchasing power...
...For this is a war to the death...
...And it is the same with Organized religion, t he farmers, the small political parties and sects of the Left, and indeed every organize...
...Others sre now prepared to match Big Business in selfish demands, and they are doing so...
...The result is thst the record shows everyone sccused or suspected of lack of patriotism, which is all to the good ss fsr ss the sims snd interests of the Third Reich are concerned...
...Obviously Big Business should bo dealt with first, and after it has been brought into line other groups that showed a disposition to emulate Big Business in extreme egocentricity might also be dealt with...
...The practical principles by which all American social groups guide themselves (as distinct from the professed principles) have to do with personal, concrete, and immediate gain...
...Did business bring bread and wheat into the world...
...And the answer to this is that Big Business is not producing war materials...
...Seeing that Big Business is getting whst it wsnts—vast profits—other groups sre determined to see that they are not left behind...
...But hssn't American business given the country marvelous things—skyscrspers, automobiles, radios, washing machines, mechanical refrigerators, mass production, motion pictures, etc...
...But one brief rejoinder frbm, say, Eisenhower would put an end to that...
...But they are vastly over-rated office boys in the public press which they largely operate...
...CELFISHNESS in the Big Business sphere wss expressed wholly slong the pecuniary route, snd it wss institutionalized...
...If Standard Oil were the only culprit the problem would be simple...
...No matter how much we extol the sacrifices of the pioneers, we never can understand sacrifice in terms of giving up real necessities and suffering real deprivation—as, for example, food, wsrmth, or shelter...
...1JOW can we got out of this impasse...
...The general public, seeing that no favorites were being plsyed, would support the action...
...And up to s certain point this was true...
...Aren't they afraid that Eisenhower might fail to do his job right at such a relativdy low salary?' Doesn't the fact that he is willing to work for such a low salary argue that lie values himself too cheaply...
...They csme, simply, from science snd engineering...
...Thus, organized labor, which is a competitor of Big Business for a share of the national -income, operates in the United States like Big Business and has for itself essentially the same aims: to get for itself and its members as much as it possibly can for as little as possible...
...If the accusations are correct, and I don't say they are in any case, then it follows that nobody is patriotic, that nobody gives s dsmn what happens to the United States...
...special-interest group: teachers, ex-soldiers, the unemployed...
...In the last wsr Big Business alone* wss organized sufficiently to fully assert its selfishness...
...Agrirulturs wss old in the world long before business wss heard of...
Vol. 27 • January 1944 • No. 5
