Edward T. Curnick - "The Kentucky Ranger"

G. A. Henty - "At the Point of the Bayonet"

Various - "Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882"

An Old Scout - "Young Wild West at Forbidden Pass"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation

T >> Thorstein Veblen >> An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation




* * * * *

Evidently this is a point in the articulation of the modern economic
system where a sufficiently ruthless outside authority, not actuated by
a primary regard for the pecuniary interests of the employers, might
conceivably with good effect enforce a more economical consumption of
the country's man-power. It is not a matter on which one prefers to
dwell, but it can do no harm to take note of the fact for once in a way,
that these several national establishments of the democratic order, as
they are now organised and administered, do somewhat uniformly and
pervasively operate with an effectual view to the advantage of a class,
so far as may plausibly be done. They are controlled by and administered
in behalf of those elements of the population that, for the purpose in
hand, make up a single loose-knit class,--the class that lives by income
rather than by work. It may be called the class of the business
interests, or of capital, or of gentlemen. It all comes to much the
same, for the purpose in hand.

The point in speaking of this contingent whose place in the economy of
human affairs it is to consume, or to own, or to pursue a margin of
profit, is simply that of contrasting this composite human contingent
with the common man; whose numbers account for some nine-tenths or more
of the community, while his class accounts for something less than
one-tenth of the invested wealth, and appreciably less than that
proportion of the discretionary national establishment,--the government,
national or local, courts, attorneys, civil service, diplomatic and
consular, military and naval. The arrangement may be called a
gentlemen's government, if one would rather have it that way; but a
gentleman is necessarily one who lives on free income from invested
wealth--without such a source of free, that is to say unearned, income
he becomes a decayed gentleman. Again, pushing the phrasing back a step
farther toward the ground facts, there are those who would speak of the
current establishments as "capitalistic;" but this term is out of line
in that it fails to touch the human element in the case, and
institutions, such as governmental establishments and their functioning,
are after all nothing but the accustomed ways and means of human
behaviour; so that "capitalistic" becomes a synonym for "businessmen's"
government so soon as it is designated in terms of the driving
incentives and the personnel. It is an organisation had with a view to
the needs of business (i.e. pecuniary) enterprise, and is made up of
businessmen and gentlemen, which comes to much the same, since a
gentleman is only a businessman in the second or some later generation.
Except for the slightly odious suggestion carried by the phrase, one
might aptly say that the gentleman, in this bearing, is only a
businessman gone to seed.

By and large, and taking the matter naively at the simple face value of
the material gain or loss involved, it should seem something of an idle
question to the common man whether his collective affairs are to be
managed by a home-bred line of businessmen and their successive filial
generations of gentlemen, with a view to accelerate the velocity and
increase the volume of competitive gain and competitive spending, on
the one hand, or by an alien line of officials, equally aloof from his
common interests, and managing affairs with a view to the usufruct of
his productive powers in furtherance of the Imperial dominion.

Not that the good faith or the generous intentions of these governments
of gentlemen is questioned or is in any degree questionable; what is
here spoken of is only the practical effect of the policies which they
pursue, doubtless with benevolent intentions and well-placed
complacency. In effect, things being as they are today in the civilised
world's industry and trade, it happens, as in some sort an unintended
but all-inclusive accident, that the guidance of affairs by business
principles works at cross purposes with the material interests of the
common man.

So ungraceful a view of the sacred core of this modern democratic
organisation will need whatever evidence can be cited to keep it in
countenance. Therefore indulgence is desired for one further count in
this distasteful recital of ineptitudes inherent in this institutional
scheme of civilised life. This count comes under the head of what may be
called capitalistic sabotage. "Sabotage" is employed to designate a
wilful retardation, interruption or obstruction of industry by
peaceable, and ordinarily by legally defensible, measures. In its
present application, particularly, there is no design to let the term
denote or insinuate a recourse to any expedients or any line of conduct
that is in any degree legally dubious, or that is even of questionable
legitimacy.

Sabotage so understood, as not comprising recourse to force or fraud, is
a necessary and staple expedient of business management, and its
employment is grounded in the elementary and indefeasible rights of
ownership. It is simply that the businessman, like any other owner, is
vested with the right freely to use or not to use his property for any
given purpose. His decision, for reasons of his own, not to employ the
property at his disposal in a particular way at a particular time, is
well and blamelessly within his legitimate discretion, under the rights
of property as universally accepted and defended by modern nations. In
the particular instance of the American nation he is protected in this
right by a constitutional provision that he must not be deprived of his
property without due process of law. When the property at his disposal
is in the shape of industrial plant or industrial material, means of
transportation or stock of goods awaiting distribution, then his
decision not to employ this property, or to limit its use to something
less than full capacity, in the way for which it is adapted, becomes
sabotage, normally and with negligible exceptions. In so doing he
hinders, retards or obstructs the working of the country's industrial
forces by so much. It is a matter of course and of absolute necessity to
the conduct of business, that any discretionary businessman must be free
to deal or not to deal in any given case; to limit or to withhold the
equipment under his control, without reservation. Business discretion
and business strategy, in fact, has no other means by which to work out
its aims. So that, in effect, all business sagacity reduces itself in
the last analysis to a judicious use of sabotage. Under modern
conditions of large business, particularly, the relation of the
discretionary businessman to industry is that of authoritative
permission and of authoritative limitation or stoppage, and on his
shrewd use of this authority depends the gainfulness of his enterprise.

If this authority were exercised with an eye single to the largest and
most serviceable output of goods and services, or to the most economical
use of the country's material resources and man-power, regardless of
pecuniary consequences, the course of management so carried out would be
not sabotage but industrial strategy. But business is carried on for
pecuniary gain, not with an unreserved view to the largest and most
serviceable output or to the economical use of resources. The volume and
serviceability of the output must wait unreservedly on the very
particular pecuniary question of what quantity and what degree of
serviceability will yield the largest net return in terms of price.
Uneconomical use of equipment, labor and resources is necessarily an
everyday matter under these circumstances, as in the duplication of
plant and processes between rival concerns, and in the wasteful use of
all resources that do not involve expenditure on the part of the given
concern.

It has been the traditional dogma among economists and publicists in
these modern communities that free competition between the businessmen
in charge will indefeasibly act to bring the productiveness of industry
to the highest practicable pitch and would lead to the most unreserved
and vigilant endeavour to serve the community's material needs at all
points. The reasons for the failure of this genial expectation,
particularly under latterday business management, might be shown in some
detail, if that were needed to enforce the argument as it runs in the
present connection. But a summary indication of the commoner varieties
and effects of sabotage as it is systematically applied in the
businesslike conduct of industry will serve the purpose as well and with
less waste of words and patience.

It is usual to notice, and not unusual to deplore the duplication of
plant and appliances in many lines of industry, due to competitive
management, as in factories engaged in the same class of manufacture, in
parallel or otherwise competing railways and boat lines, in retail
merchandising, and in some degree also in the wholesale trade. The
result, of course, is sabotage; in the sense that this volume of
appliances, materials and workmen are not employed to the best advantage
for the community. One effect of the arrangement is an increased
necessary cost of the goods and services supplied by these means. The
reason for it is competition for gain to be got from the traffic. That
all this is an untoward state of things is recognised on all hands; but
no lively regret is commonly spent on the matter, since it is commonly
recognised that under the circumstances there is no help for it except
at the cost of a more untoward remedy.

The competitive system having been tried and found good--or at least so
it is assumed--it is felt that the system will have to be accepted with
the defects of its qualities. Its characteristic qualities are held to
be good, acceptable to the tastes of modern men whose habits of thought
have been standardised in its terms; and it would be only reluctantly
and by tardy concession that these modern men could bring themselves to
give up that scheme of "Natural Liberty" within the framework of which
runs this competitive system of business management and its wasteful
manifolding of half-idle equipment and nugatory work. The common man, at
the worst, comforts himself and his neighbour with the sage reflection
that "It might have been worse." The businessmen, on the other hand,
have also begun to take note of this systematic waste by duplication
and consequent incompetence, and have taken counsel how to intercept the
waste and divert it to their own profit. The businessmen's remedy is
consolidation of competing concerns, and monopoly control.

To the common man, with his preconceptions on the head of "restraint of
trade," the proposed remedy seems more vicious than the evil it is
designed to cure. The fault of the remedy plainly is not that the
mismanagement of affairs due to competitive business can not be
corrected by recourse to monopoly, but only that the community, it is
presumed, would still suffer all the burdens and discomforts of the
regime of competition and sabotage, with, possibly, further
inconveniences and impositions at the hands of the businesslike
monopoly; which, men are agreed, may fairly be depended on to use its
advantage unsparingly under the business principle of charging what the
traffic will bear.

There is also this other singular phenomenon in this modern industrial
world, that something not very far short of one-half the industrial
equipment systematically lies idle for something approaching one-half
the time, or is worked only to one-half its capacity half the time; not
because of competition between these several industrial concerns, but
because business conditions will not allow its continued productive use;
because the volume of product that would be turned out if the equipment
were working uninterruptedly at its full capacity could not be sold at
remunerative prices. From time to time one establishment and another
will shut down during a period of slack times, for the same reason.

This state of things is singular only as seen from the point of view of
the community's material interest, not that it is in any degree
unfamiliar or that any serious fault is found with the captains of
industry for so shutting off the industrial process and letting the
industrial equipment lie waste. As all men know, the exigencies of
business will not tolerate production to supply the community's needs
under these circumstances; although, as is equally notorious, these
slack times, when production of goods is unadvisable on grounds of
business expediency, are commonly times of wide-spread privation, "hard
times," in the community at large, when the failure of the supply is
keenly felt.

It is not that the captains of industry are at fault in so failing, or
refusing, to supply the needs of the community under these
circumstances, but only that they are helpless under the exigencies of
business. They can not supply the goods except for a price, indeed not
except for a remunerative price, a price which will add something to the
capital values which they are venturing in their various enterprises. So
long as the exigencies of price and of pecuniary gain rule the case,
there is manifestly no escaping this enforced idleness of the country's
productive forces.

It may not be out of place also to remark, by way of parenthesis, that
this highly productive state of the industrial arts, which is embodied
in the industrial plant and processes that so are systematically and
advisedly retarded or arrested under the rule of business, is at the
same time the particular pride of civilised men and the most tangible
achievement of the civilised world.

A conservative estimate of this one item of capitalistic sabotage could
scarcely appraise it at less than a twenty-five percent reduction from
the normally possible productive capacity of the community, at an
average over any considerable period; and a somewhat thorough review of
the pertinent facts would probably persuade any impartial observer that,
one year with another, such businesslike enforced idleness of plant and
personnel lowers the actual output of the country's industry by
something nearer fifty percent of its ordinary capacity when fully
employed. To many, such an assertion may seem extravagant, but with
further reflection on the well-known facts in the case it will seem less
so in proportion as the unfamiliarity of it wears off.

However, the point of attention in the case is not the precise, nor the
approximate, percentages of this arrest and retardation, this partial
neutralisation of modern improvements in the industrial arts; it is only
the notorious fact that such arrest occurs, systematically and
advisedly, under the rule of business exigencies, and that there is no
corrective to be found for it that will comport with those fundamental
articles of the democratic faith on which the businessmen necessarily
proceed. Any effectual corrective would break the framework of
democratic law and order, since it would have to traverse the
inalienable right of men who are born free and equal, each freely to
deal or not to deal in any pecuniary conjuncture that arises.

But it is at the same time plain enough that this, in the larger sense
untoward, discrepancy between productive capacity and current productive
output can readily be corrected, in some appreciable degree at least, by
any sufficient authority that shall undertake to control the country's
industrial forces without regard to pecuniary profit and loss. Any
authority competent to take over the control and regulate the conduct of
the community's industry with a view to maximum output as counted by
weight and tale, rather than by net aggregate price-income over
price-cost, can readily effect an appreciable increase in the effectual
productive capacity; but it can be done only by violating that
democratic order of things within which business enterprise runs. The
several belligerent nations of Europe are showing that it can be done,
that the sabotage of business enterprise can be put aside by
sufficiently heroic measures. And they are also showing that they are
all aware, and have always been aware, that the conduct of industry on
business principles is incompetent to bring the largest practicable
output of goods and services; incompetent to such a degree, indeed, as
not to be tolerable in a season of desperate need, when the nation
requires the full use of its productive forces, equipment and man-power,
regardless of the pecuniary claims of individuals.

* * * * *

Now, the projected Imperial dominion is a power of the character
required to bring a sufficient corrective to bear, in case of need, on
this democratic situation in which the businessmen in charge necessarily
manage the country's industry at cross purposes with the
community's--that is the common man's--material interest. It is an
extraneous power, to whom the continued pecuniary gain of these nations'
businessmen is a minor consideration, a negligible consideration in case
it shall appear that the Imperial usufruct of the underlying nation's
productive forces is in any degree impaired by the businessmen's
management of it for their own net gain. It is difficult to see on what
grounds of self-interest such an Imperial government could consent to
tolerate the continued management of these underlying nations'
industries on business principles, that is to say on the principle of
the maximum pecuniary gain to the businesslike managers; and recent
experience seems to teach that no excessive, that is to say no
inconvenient, degree of consideration for vested rights, and the like,
would long embarrass the Imperial government in its administration of
its usufruct.

It should be a reasonable expectation that, without malice and with an
unprejudiced view to its own usufruct of these underlying countries, the
Imperial establishment would take due care that no systematically, and
in its view gratuitously, uneconomical methods should continue in the
ordinary conduct of their industry. Among other considerations of weight
in this connection is the fact that a contented, well-fed, and not
wantonly over-worked populace is a valuable asset in such a case.
Similarly, by contraries, as an asset in usufruct to such an alien
power, a large, wealthy, spendthrift, body of gentlefolk, held in high
esteem by the common people, would have but a slight value, conceivably
even a negative value, in such a case. A wise administration would
presumably look to their abatement, rather than otherwise. At this point
the material interest of the common man would seem to coincide with that
of the Imperial establishment. Still, his preconceived notions of the
wisdom and beneficence of his gentlefolk would presumably hinder his
seeing the matter in that reasonable light.

Under the paramount surveillance of such an alien power, guided solely
by its own interest in the usufruct of the country and its population,
it is to be presumed that class privileges and discrimination would be
greatly abated if not altogether discontinued. The point is in some
doubt, partly because this alien establishment whose dominion is in
question is itself grounded in class prerogatives and discrimination,
and so, not improbably, it would carry over into its supervision of the
underlying nations something of a bias in favor of class privileges. And
a similar order of things might also result by choice of a class-system
as a convenient means of control and exploitation. The latter
consideration is presumably the more cogent, since the Imperial
establishment in question is already, by ancient habit, familiar with
the method of control by class and privilege; and, indeed, unfamiliar
with any other method. Such a government, which governs without
effectual advice or formal consent of the governed, will almost
necessarily rest its control of the country on an interested class, of
sufficient strength and bound by sufficiently grave interest to abet the
Imperial establishment effectually in all its adventures and
enterprises.

But such a privileged order, that is to be counted in to share dynastic
usufruct and liabilities, in good days and evil, will be of a
feudalistic complexion rather than something after the fashion of a
modern business community doing business by investment and pecuniary
finesse. It would still be a reasonable expectation that discrimination
between pecuniary classes should fall away under this projected alien
tutelage; more particularly all such discrimination as is designed to
benefit any given class or interest at the cost of the whole, as, e.g.,
protective tariffs, monopolistic concessions and immunities, engrossing
of particular lines of material resources, and the like.

The character of the economic policy to be pursued should not be
difficult of apprehension, if only these underlying peoples are
conceived as an estate in tail within the dynastic line of descent. The
Imperial establishment which so is prospectively to take over the
surveillance of these modern peoples under this projected enterprise in
dominion, may all the more readily be conceived as handling its new and
larger resources somewhat unreservedly as an estate to be administered
with a shrewd eye to the main chance, since such has always been its
relation to the peoples and territories whose usufruct it already
enjoys. It is only that the circumstances of the case will admit a freer
and more sagacious application of those principles of usufruct that lie
at the root of the ancient Culture of the Fatherland.

* * * * *

This excessively long, and yet incomplete, review of the presumptive
material advantages to accrue to the common man under a regime of peace
by unconditional surrender to an alien dynasty, brings the argument
apparently to the conclusion that such an eventuality might be fortunate
rather than the reverse; or at least that it has its compensations, even
if it is not something to be desired. Such should particularly appear to
be the presumption in case one is at all inclined to make much of the
cultural gains to be brought in under the new regime. And more
particularly should a policy of non-resistant submission to the
projected new order seem expedient in view of the exceedingly high, not
to say prohibitive, cost of resistance, or even of materially retarding
its fulfillment.




CHAPTER V

PEACE AND NEUTRALITY


Considered simply on the face of the tangible material interests
involved, the choice of the common man in these premises should seem
very much of a foregone conclusion, if he could persuade himself to a
sane and perspicuous consideration of these statistically apparent
merits of the case alone. It is at least safely to be presumed that he
has nothing to lose, in a material way, and there is reason to look for
some slight gain in creature comforts and in security of life and limb,
consequent upon the elimination, or at least the partial
disestablishment, of pecuniary necessity as the sole bond and criterion
of use and wont in economic concerns.

But man lives not by bread alone. In point of fact, and particularly as
touches the springs of action among that common run that do not
habitually formulate their aspirations and convictions in extended and
grammatically defensible documentary form, and the drift of whose
impulses therefore is not masked or deflected by the illusive
consistencies of set speech,--as touches the common run, particularly,
it will hold true with quite an unacknowledged generality that the
material means of life are, after all, means only; and that when the
question of what things are worth while is brought to the final test, it
is not these means, nor the life conditioned on these means, that are
seen to serve as the decisive criterion; but always it is some
ulterior, immaterial end, in the pursuit of which these material means
find their ulterior ground of valuation. Neither the overt testimony nor
the circumstantial evidence to this effect is unequivocal; but seen in
due perspective, and regard being had chiefly to the springs of
concerted action as shown in any massive movement of this common run of
mankind, there is, after all, little room to question that the things
which commend themselves as indefeasibly worth while are the things of
the human spirit.

These ideals, aspirations, aims, ends of endeavour, are by no means of a
uniform or homogeneous character throughout the modern communities,
still less throughout the civilised world, or throughout the checkered
range of classes and conditions of men; but, with such frequency and
amplitude that it must be taken as a major premise in any attempted
insight into human behaviour, it will hold true that they are of a
spiritual, immaterial nature.

The caution may, parenthetically, not be out of place, that this
characterisation of the ulterior springs of action as essentially not of
the nature of creature comforts, need be taken in no wider extension
than that which so is specifically given it. It will be found to apply
as touches the conduct of the common run; what modification of it might
be required to make it at all confidently applicable to the case of one
and another of those classes into whose scheme of life creature comforts
enter with more pronounced effect may be more of a delicate point. But
since it is the behaviour, and the grounds of behaviour, of the common
run that are here in question, the case of their betters in this respect
may conveniently be left on one side.

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