My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyare not insoluble and can be settled in a humane and decent way, but we have to sortthe world out a bit. Facts I first observed in Detroit forty years ago can still be fatal ifsimply released to play havoc in conditions of world anarchy.This book includes some answer to these dilemmas, which, however, as usual inhuman affairs, will soon be followed by new problems. My later visit to Pittsburghsuggested the stage which would follow the period of exploiting backward labour; arenewed triumph of highly skilled labour, which in the end can again turn worldindustry upside down. I was learning a lot in America, and my thinking was beginningto leave Adam Smith far behind. In Pittsburgh I saw the opposite quality, extreme ofskill not only of design but of operation. The most highly developed steel works thenin existence were already being operated in large-scale processes by relatively fewmen. In the huge shed was seated a man in something like a railway signal box,operating levers which controlled the movement on rollers of red-hot lengths of steel;already manual handling as a considerable factor was finished. There, in elementaryform, was the further vision, the ultimate method in which very few skilled menwould manipulate masses of machines. The final process of automation in whichmachines replace men, except for skilled supervisors, was not yet born, but atPittsburgh it was at least in the womb. For those with eyes to see, the future loomed inthese American factories.It was possible to foresee two stages in industrial development. The first would berationalised industry in which unskilled labour would perform simple tasks served bya conveyor belt under a certain amount of skilled supervision. The second would benearly automatic machinery in which highly skilled labour would manoeuvremachines doing nearly all the work which had been performed by unskilled labour.Classic economics would ultimately return in the victory of the skilled, but therewould be chaos in the interval if all development were left to chance. First, theattraction of the unskilled all over the world from primitive, rural occupations tofactories, and the devastating competition of the low-paid against the high-paid. Thenthe return in triumph of the skilled and the throwing into a vast unemployed scrapheapof all the primitive labour thus exploited. One thing was clear: those graveproblems could not be left to settle themselves.Things happen far more slowly than we think, all culminations are delayed; my mainerrors have been not in fact, but in time. Everything took longer than I anticipated, butthese things are now beginning to happen, and the facts must be faced. If we are not tofall into the tyranny of communism with its iron control of all human affairs, we mustevolve a conscious dirigism by government in Britain, Europe, America, andultimately the world, which with foresight will meet these events, and with Stateintervention will at least hold the ring while science, individual initiative and freeindustrial organisation, operating within the limits of an ordered society, win clarityand progress from confusion and chaos. This does not mean universal control by theState; it means the opposite, absolute freedom of industrial initiative within conditionswhich State action makes possible. It is not the duty of government to conductindustry, but rather to create a system which makes possible the free conduct ofindustry by private enterprise. This means the elimination of unfair competition bysweated labour which can be exploited through modern industrial processes withdisastrous consequences to more advanced communities. It is in the sphere of wagesand prices that government must intervene, not in management.170 of 424