LET US HAVE DEMOCRACY WHOLE
SINCLAIR, UPTON
Let Us Have Demoeraey1 Whale Political Democracy Is Doomed Without Industrial Democracy By Upton Sinclair Excerpt* from en mddrt** to th* Fortieth Anniv*r**ry Dinner of the League for Induitriml...
...So I know that it will be the Democratic Party and not the Socialist Party which will bring this grest change to America, It will not be called Socialism...
...and this without taking into account the moral gains of an orderly and general change...
...They want to control the means by which they earn their daily bread, and to save themselves from panics, crises, and universal war...
...and Sir Thomas Mora, yes...
...but we in America have a different civilisation, we have been accustomed to »*¦ If government for three centuriea on this continent and even longer in the motherland of parliaments...
...But he did not know that the modern Socialist movement existed...
...We in America have had native Socialists of whom we should be proud: Edward Bellamy, Albert Brisbane, Charlotte Pcrkine Gilman, Gene Debs, Horace Greeley, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, William Dean Howells, to name only a few...
...FIFTY-THREE year* ago Upton Sinclair started his college education...
...We plan and work for a aocial change by majority consent, one which will take no man's life and no man's property...
...Abraham Lincoln told us that a nation cannot exist half slave and half free...
...What ho read in that forgotten weekly paper, and in other which he quickly came upon, has dominated hit whole life, has provided him with hope and courage in the effort to teach the people thia set of ideas: That the toiling millions of human beings on this globe do not hove to spend their lives as the slaves of monopoly and privilege...
...Therefore he ia not equipped to write authoritatively about the major Chinese problem —the relationship between the Kuomintang and th* Communists...
...Some Socialists were displeased when the Intercollegiate Socialist Society changed its name to the League for Industrial Democracy...
...but never heard of Bellamy, and he thought that German Socialists made bombs in the back rooms of saloons...
...The waste might easily exceed the cost of the industrial plant of our country...
...That the principle upon which our republic was founded, government by the consent of the governed, can and must be applied to industry as well a* to politic...
...tin Yutang • Sine* hit arguments in Tko Vigil of a Nation...
...That need not mean complete government ownership...
...Many years ago the Intercollegiate Socialist Society changed its name to the League for Industrial Democracy, which tells exactly what we aim at...
...we have democracy in our political system and autocracy in our industrial system and these two are like a monkey and a parrot, they fight whenever they see each other...
...Our machines run so much faster now and the products flow out so much faster that three years is equal to a decade...
...A group was formed, which for sorn* tune consisted of myself and several friends sitting up into the small hours of th* morning, mailing out literature, some of which wa* indignantly returned...
...So runs the specious argument of thos* who cannot meet honestly the facta and ideas he so brilliantly sets forth, the wealth of information he got by talking to Chinese who had spent a long time in Yenan, including ex Communist*, and by'reading the literature of Chinese Communists, unfortunately untranslated...
...He is one of those remarkable humans Who win your love...
...Can it be that the youth of the colleges is not ¦ Mowed to know that poverty is unnecessary in the world today...
...He is a citizen of the world...
...Groping as if in a dark tunnel, and spurred by poverty and bitter humiliation, he worked out for himself the conclusion that a condition of organised wholesale greed on one hand and grinding poverty on the other was not the best for the shaping of human character or for the progress of civilization...
...That is what is the matter with our notion today...
...From it he learned that there were o t h o r • who thought as he did and had built a movement around the ideas...
...Lisfo»i M. 0«h...
...Ha to, yes...
...its opponents will insist that it is Communism, while its friends will know that it is Industrial Democracy...
...r* unanswerable, Lin Yutang is accused by sundry fel)«wtravelerish reviewers of ignorance of his own country and his own people...
...I made a scientific teat, fay running first on the Socialist ticket and getting 60,000 votes, and a few years later on the EPIC Democratic ticket and getting 87»,OO0 votes...
...VVk ch«M Jack London a* our president, and b* came eait in tha splendor of his newly won literary fims and delivered an address entitled R*m>l«uo», which you may find In his published book of that nam...
...Anyone who fails to read Tho Viyil of o Satin* is depriving himself of an illuminating experience...
...That an economic system can be built, by which good* will be produced, not for the private profit of exploiters, but for the benefit and use of all...
...All over the world the people crave the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...
...In his personality there is a perfect wedding of East and West...
...It mad* a great .tit, both in New York and at Yale, and Jack w*nt around signing his nam* in hotel register.: "Yours for the revolution...
...But in the minda of the American people the word Socialism has come to be associated with Marxist theories and synonymous with materialism, a dogma which has nothing to do with sociology or economics, and which modern science has thrown upon the scrap heap...
...More were displeased when I set out to take over the Democratic Party in my homt st.t* with the slogan "End Poverty in California...
...Thia discovery waa like the opening of a dungeon door...
...There will ba thirty or forty millions' out of work in America alone, and we shell have a choice or two alternatives: either to install a dictator and put down the labor movement and start the NaaiKascist gangster period all over again...
...Nine years later he emerged from the graduate department of Columbia University, presumably a wall-educated man...
...Thus, and thus alone, can consumption balance production, and from that time on there-can be no more ponies and no more crises...
...Wise, witty, keen, alert, charming, he has had the moral courage to tell the unadorned truth, alienating friends of both extremes, and perhaps sacrificing some of the wide popularity he has won in the western world...
...What influence I possess has always been cast for Compensation, on the ground that the wastes and uncertain outcome of civil strife are not necessary to change in a democracy...
...there can be many variations in the conduct of industry by boards representing management, labor, and the pub' lie interest The point is that the stockholders will be paid off with long-term bonds, and the goods will no longer be sold for private profit, but will be sold to the people at coat, and wages will be increased so that the workers will have the money to buy what they produce...
...I decided that, since the professors would not educate the students, it was up to the students to educate the professor...
...I drafted a proposal for th* organising of a society, and the first meeting waa held in Pack's restaurant on Fulton Street in New York forty years ago...
...and admiration instantly: men whose personal integrity you instantly recognize...
...When, the glut come*, we shall ¦«* a world wiila frills of proportions never dreamed "by any sociologist...
...Let Us Have Demoeraey1 Whale Political Democracy Is Doomed Without Industrial Democracy By Upton Sinclair Excerpt* from en mddrt** to th* Fortieth Anniv*r**ry Dinner of the League for Induitriml Democracy, February 3, 1946*, at th* Hotel Roo*tv,H, Sew York...
...Compensation versus Confiscation ha* been debated in our movement ever since it began...
...That the treasures of nature's resource* do not have to be thrown out into the arena to be aeramblad for and seised by the greediest...
...He didn't visit Yenan, center of Communist China...
...I do not know how long this will last, but surely not the full span of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover...
...Th* years have passed, and we have seen a social revolution, and many of ua were not pleased with «" it* aspects...
...W* are going to see after this war a period of hilarious prosperity while we repair war's ravagea in our own and other lands...
...The writer looked back upon hi* Ave years of college and four years of university education, and asked: "Why was nothing like this taught to me by the professors...
...Among those at the first meeting was a Wesleyan undergraduate by lb* nam* af Harry Laidjer, and I recall that for a long time our dream waa that toe Intercollegiate Soeialiat Society might enjoy a secure income of eighteen dollar* a week ** that Harry might aerv* aa our permanent full-time orgeniaar...
...Beyond any doubt the Soviet system represents a social gain for the Rusaisni...
...There waa a magazine called Currtut Literatmrt, and this unhappy youny man want there to offer a book review, and ran into another young man named Leonard Abbott, who gave him a copy of a weekly paper called Th* Comrade...
...Democracy is a living and growing human right, and it is not going to be confined to the Anglo-Saxon and western European lands...
...I met Lin Yutang last week...
...or else to have the government lake charge of the factories and put up the credit to keep them running...
...They want government of the people, by the people, for the people, and they want it not merely in politics but in industry...
Vol. 28 • February 1945 • No. 6
