The Leadership of an Industrial Society

Abstract

THERE IS NOT A SINGLE AREA of modern society which does not have its clinics. But even if one were alone in pointing to danger spots of our civilization, very sensing of a drift in human values in a particular direction should have a bearing upon reactions of thinking people. For enduring power of any society is after all in its human values: whatever happens to them is key to future of every other aspect of culture. The ubiquitous clinics of our society point to a problem of action, a problem which has to do with nothing less than permanence of industrial culture. This statement of issues differs, of course, in many important ways from that of a number of writers on industrialism. One would expect it to contrast sharply with that of fanatics of industrialism who think in terms of continuing technological expansion, or of stream-lined markets, or of human ingenuity, or of some other phrase which belongs to golden days of classic industrialism. One would not expect this statement to diverge widely, however, from that of socialist movement. For socialists of all fifty-seven varieties speak ominously of collapse of the system and of its replacement by a new order. But their new order, whether communist, nationalist or gradualist, involves little change in basic structure of massed mechanization; in fact, that structure is assumed: changes, if any, are political and imposed upon it. Thus, Marxian socialism states its case very largely in terms of individual income distribution,